If You Build It, They Might Come ✍
So much of the advice lately is about how product people can become better marketers. However, I think a lot of us still dream of hitting that elusive concept of viral growth. What if we could just put something out there and it’d grow on its own? (Ideally, exponentially.)
I've been trying this for well over 5 years now and I think it comes down to 4 components:
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Product: Build a product that solves one small problem, and make it fun to use. It needs to be worthy of conversation. Variability is key here!
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Optimize for usability: Find your hurdles and optimize the hell out of them. Figure out new ways to hook your users back into the product. What unique angle can you use?
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Create growth hooks: Sharable moments, evergreen content, and micro-sites. Maintain a social media presence so users have someone to connect with!
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Filling the funnel: Marketing still matters, but here's how I approach it: (1) Keep the product open from the start, launch with a super simple product and get as much feedback as possible, and (2) “Turn on” marketing spend and big launches when the engine is working.
I share more details and examples of how this can work:
https://medium.com/@mattkandler/if-you-build-it-they-might-come-f079128497d6
What are your thoughts? Does it make sense to spend so much effort trying to build a product that can sell itself?
As an engineer, building something that "solves one small problem" and is at the same time "fun" doesn't intersect.
Are you suggesting that something cannot solve a small problem and be fun at the same time? Or that engineers would not enjoy solving small problems?
I understand that some engineers (people in general) only want to go after huge problems, but I personally get a lot of enjoyment from solving small problems. That's at least a tiny intersection 😅
I think small problems are boring. That said, sometime you look at a problem it seems small and the solution can be very complex.
Anyway, doing simple things is more difficult that what we may think.
That's a good point. You can have very complex systems solving simple problems: some chatbots are probably a good example of this. Messaging seems simple to the end-user but maybe there's AI handling the backend.
I am curious about this. I heard we can sell "apps" but not "tools". How do we distinguish the difference? For example, a tool to just manage your inventories can't be a paid product since it is too easy to replicate, but then you start adding invoice generation, some stats/dashboard, etc.
What can be called a "tool" and what can be called an "app"?
I call tool many things in particular I often use the term "tool" in place of "technology". A tool can be anything from an "app", a "library" or an "algorithm"