Marketing: where to start?
This image from Plausible really hit me.
I've been building an open source product feedback platform (https://getfider.com) for the last 5 years and although it's growing month after month, it's dead slow. Most of the acquisition has been through "Powered by Fider" link I have on each site, so every new customer is potentially generating new customers! 🎉
I'm an engineer at heart and love building things (and usually over-engineering it 🙂). Over these years I've focused 100% of my spare time on creating new features or improving what's already there, I never really did any marketing aside from a few tweets here and there.
For 2022 I decided to invest some time on marketing, but the question is, where do I start? I'm not a good writer, does it matter? Or should I hire a freelancer to write posts for me? Spend some money on Ads? Any books that I can read to get some inspiration?
Thanks IH!
IMHO, start with a audience and a newsletter weekly. Over time, nudge , nurture and educate. You can hire a writer, or outsource the whole thing to get started. After some time, you will see the next steps.
Step (2), the Powered by link should go to a funnel page. Most importantly you catch leads. Even if your sales funnel is using the Powered by link as organic customer acquisition, you need to build a email list of the visitors that bounced. As not every click through will sign up. So maximize that funnel. https://heyflow.app/
Don't spend money on ads.
Create, "My story" page. Tell your story.
It depends. Marketing is a game of specifics. It completely depends on the current situation, objectives, capabilities, targets, etc.
How do you even know that you need posts? I am not saying you won't, you probably do need some written content. But how do you know that you need posts?
A lot of people will say "yes". "Duuuude, you need to do FB ads", "maaan, you need to start Google ads right away". But the real answer is... It depends. I do not generally advise going into the "paid media" territory without setting up your "owned media" territory properly. But as I said, it depends. If you have solid foundations and need quick boost and have the resources, it would work.
Sorry, but you don't need inspiration. You need education. You need to understand how to do marketing properly. As you can see, stuff changes after a "proper" marketer join the team. And as you might know, it is a separate discipline. So, I'd advise either putting in real time to learn it properly or either getting a "client-focused" co-founder (head of marketing and sales) or hiring a real marketer.
And if you are serious about learning the practice, I'd suggest getting a "Marketing Management" textbook, instead of the other super-hyped stuff.
@goenning, I can list all the growth strategies here that you can learn and test, but it'll take you hours to go through it, so I'll recommend something (for free) ... it's a database, specifically for bootstrappers, looking to test what's been working for other founders
in a nutshell, content worked for most of them ... because it's not marketing, or it's less marketing and more true value ... the downsize, it takes time
right now I'm going through Justin Welsh's course, he's doing a phenomenal job on Linkedin, building followers, a truly engaged community, and converting them to paying users for his digital products (courses, info products, etc.)
what I'm seeing over and over again that is working the best regarding content, are templates, checklists, these type of info products that you can make to increase your visibility