Following the Lean Startup methodology and the wise words of Seth Godin. The name of the game has been learning and understanding. Specifically who my market is and what their needs are. Finding that market, and growing a direct marketing channel with them.
The biggest piece of advice that has worked for me, is to find and grow your following before launching your product or service.
I validated my product idea by running ads on LinkedIn to a landing page with 3D mock ups of the product.
I capture emails of people who were interested in the product.
I sent out surveys to see who was interested in trying out the free deck. I learnt about what products they were already using, what their expectations of my product were, and their industry / team make up.
The feedback I got from sending out 30 prototypes was phenomenal. In doing this I also gained 30 advocates/evangelists of the product!
Whilst this was going on, I was slowly growing my instagram following. I chipped away, making and scheduling content I felt would be useful for my target audience and eventually honing in on hashtags that my audience were using.
I posted a couple of personal posts to my peers on Twitter and LinkedIn about the product.
From this, I grew a list of 220 email subscribers. Word of mouth, and others seeing the prototype grew this list a little more too.
I gained so many insights about the product that I wasn't expecting. I learnt what features were missing, and what weren't necessary.
I sent out an email to let my list know the beta was available for pre-order, and now here I am. The initial response has been great, there isn't a buzz quite like it.
But now I have to get my head back down, brush off the pride and success feeding my ego - remain humble and get on with the work that needs to be done.
The product is a set of curated workshop exercises for digital product teams to work better together, and get stuff done. (Coming up with ideas, making decisions, evaluating work and projects, facilitating discussion)
Neat product! Clear description.
Tips:
All the best!
Do you have any subreddit in mind that might benefit from learning about the kind of content in the product?
Please note: Each subreddit usually have their own specific rules. Cheers!
Do people really engage with social share buttons? What’s the trigger for them to be used if someone hasn’t purchased yet?
People usually have a sudden instinct to share something that they like/ find appealing, when they get a good first impression. My first instinct was to share the product. But I simply had to copy the URL, since I didn't find a share button.
ps: Your product/website design is awesome by the way. Keep it up!
Thanks for the tips!
Nice - really great artwork.
Great execution, love the illustrations!
Great approach and the landing page is excellent.
The artwork is beautiful and fits really well. How & where did you find the artist to create it?
My good friend Dave Hill did the illustrations. https://www.davehillustration.co.uk/. IG: @imcalleddave
Yes would also like to know!
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Love the landing page, congrats!
Congrats!
Wow, that's awesome. Great job! Must be a great feeling to get that many orders so soon!
I'm really interested in how you set this up. Can you share more details? What did the landing page have, exactly? Was it immediately clear to visitors that you were pre-launch, or did you wait until they took some action to tell them (ie. after clicking "Purchase", they were told "sorry, we're not ready yet").
I'm in the process of trying to validate my idea pre-launch and I would love to hear more examples than just the famous "Buffer landing page" one. :)
The landing page is a few iterations old of what you see now. It was proposing the product, its benefits and details of the product, with the call to action to get notified of its launch.
I spoke about the product as if it existed, and the sign up was "Let me know when its ready!" or "Get notified of alpha product launch".
The reason I didn't do a purchase smoke test, is because I didn't want to piss people off, and I wanted to grow an email list of people who were genuinely interested about the product. I wanted to learn what their expectations were of what i was proposing.
That's what I'm struggling with now. Is it worth annoying people and getting the click data about what plans they are interested in? Or is it better to be up front and ask for email address? It's a tough one... :/
If you’re going to do it. Set it up as an actual product they can actually purchase. Clicking with intent to buy is a different measure to an actual conversion of the purchase. It can only ever give you a steer. I would rather measure intent of interest by growing a following, than losing the opportunity on a click which is a similar metric. It’s not a science, they both tell you a similar thing. One you get an email, the other you don’t. It also means upfront they are already aware the product is in development. I think people value honesty instead of meeting a brick wall.