How Do You Manage the Struggle Between Marketing and Dev Time?
I keep track of my marketing versus development time and always find marketing lacking. For instance, this is my past week
Marketing - Green
Development - Purple
I'm aiming for 50/50 but clearly coming up short.
My main marketing activities now are creating Instagram posts and working on my landing page (which is also kinda dev). Maybe I just need to have more diverse marketing activities.
Keeping track of my time in this way has really helped me increase and value the time that I spend marketing. It's still a struggle.
Does anyone else have techniques they use to keep their time balanced?
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Hey @cll
Not sure where I read about it but someone (@robwalling ?) had this idea of dividing that time weekly.
I.e. one week for development,
the next week for marketing.
Rinse & repeat for better focus.
Thanks @Raf!
That’s a good idea. It would be hard for me to come up with marketing tasks, but maybe that’s exactly why I should do it haha
I have a very different perspective. But hey, I have been helping small to medium businesses for yonks. Marketing that works, is actually feedback from people (prospects, users, business focused app style people).
For me a better indicator than 50/50, is every week (or month), app has delivered 1 additional thing their user base wanted.
A robust feedback loop from pre-MVP thru to launch thru to release etc.. will mean marketing is now integrated into your build process. Each of these 'users' become WOM-ers. Many of these WOM-ers become champions, stewards.. who will do more for you willingly...
Other change that is underway is how business use the web to discover. Chatgpt has finally de-noised the web for many. They can find their answers without all the marketing nonsense.
Brand Management is different. Crafting a brand story is value add. But get solid traction first and then spend the $ on the brand story. Brands can be re-crafted at any point in time in a business evolution. Many UX people advocate they can craft a brand story and they are dreaming. It is a unique skill. My favourite is the brandethos who re-crafted the horrid council website into ReLondon https://brandethos.co.uk/work/relondon
I like that idea of measuring based on user-feedback implemented (it's also an input metric which is good). I guess my problem is still that early on, it's a little difficult without any users to get feedback from.
Not sure what is a good input-based metric for marketing besides time that I can use this early
That is the exact assumption most dev have wrong. If you have no users then stop. Find at least one. There are heaps of people here on IH. Leverage that access.
I am not sure if the app your referring is the one you posted about re LP. I replied there. Lmk if it is not the app in question.
Yeah. I need to leverage my existing platforms more. I've been trying to grow IG and Twitter, but it's a slog.
Part of the reason for no sign ups is that it's not officially launched on any app store. Right now, someone needs to sign up using a form on the website. Then I'll send them an invite to closed testing based on their platform (iOS or Android).
I see. I feel you could better communicate this fact. I have test piloted many iOS before and understood it was available. I will try and find how they communicated to me, as I did not get this at all on your LP
That would be great thanks :)
This company Creaceed, I testpiloted their image to text app (Prizmo) as was looking for solution for citizen use, image to text -> transaction record in db.
They described their Beta program well for me, such that I did the 1-click to play + feedback.
Yup my product is focuspocusapp.com. I think it needs to be approved yet, but here's the IH product page https://www.indiehackers.com/product/focus-pocus