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24 Comments

New years resolution: stop building, start promoting

For the past three years, I've been working like crazy on my side project SiteGuru. I'm looking back on these three years with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm proud of what SiteGuru has become. It's a super-smart SEO tool that has helped hundreds of people improve their website. It has over 7000 users and it's generating some money.

But there's a flip side to it. SiteGuru is not a household name in the SEO world. I haven't been able to reach the right audience that would happily pay for the tool, because it makes their lives easier. As a result, it's generating far less revenue than it could, based on its value.

I believe this is because I've spent most of my time building the product. I've long thought that if you built a great product, your audience your find you and growth comes naturally. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I spent much more time shipping new features, and not enough time getting the word out.

That's going to change now.

I've decided that the product is 'finished'. From now on, I'll put all my efforts into promoting the product to the right audience - SEO professionals. I'm convinced this will help grow the user base, increase MRR and help many SEOs around the world do their job. I'm transforming myself from a developer into a marketer.

I'll be sharing my progress on IH regularly. I'm pretty sure a lot of fellow founders face the same challenge, so I hope to share my learnings with you guys. I'm excited to see where this takes me, and hope you'll follow along!

  1. 2

    It would have been much better if you teamed up with a cofounder with marketing/sales skills. Marketing and sales start before the MVP is ready.

    You still can catch up as this market is huge. I'd recommend you go after a niche market, one that can pay you a minimum of $20+/month. I'd immediately remove the free plan. Just give a 7 day free access. This is the best way to filter out the noise.

    I'd start your basic plan at $20/month. Your agency pricing should increase to around $99. You should not be shy to increase your prices as you do have solid standing on Capterra. Good luck!

  2. 2

    Look forward to see your exponential growth soon! Marketing is everything if you need a revenue growth instead of being the best bun unknown

  3. 2

    I did this for Pod Hunt.

    After I was happy with the core features, I focused more on promoting. Did out reach to podcasters and was a guest on over 10 podcasts. Saw some immediate results with traffic and people talking about Pod Hunt, and hoping for a longer term SEO bump.

    Good luck!

    1. 2

      Awesome, glad it worked for you!

      Any suggestions for the outreach process?

      1. 1

        Mostly I tried to focus on the person I was trying to reach out too, what information could I share that would be interesting and helpful for them.

        What would make them think it would be a good idea to have me on their podcast.

        In most cases I didn't even bring up Pod Hunt, but the hosts ended up bringing it up because they thought it was interesting.

  4. 2

    I like to hear that there was people who wants to expand the presence of the product in its market.

    I'm interested in reading about your in journey improving the SEO

  5. 1

    Hey Rick - I may be late to this discussion, but I have some thoughts (from 19 years of SEO/product experience):

    First, I'd say you're doing a lot of the right things. Writing about SEO topics to build an inbound strategy, exploring targeted outbound, and talking shop on places like IH are all great channels. Have you tried Adwords or targeted social ads? Reached out to influential SEO's and publications like Brian Dean & SearchEngineJournal for a free test account?

    In terms of becoming a house-hold name in the SEO space, that's going to take some next-level ingenuity. The big players (SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz, Screaming Frog, etc) have a good head start in professional recommendations, backlinks, product maturity and brand awareness.

    Not to say it can't be done - DuckDuckGo is a great example of a project taking on the big boys and making it work. Key point there: they differentiated by focusing on privacy. What makes SiteGuru different (and ideally better) than SEMRush?

    Some ideas... no need to answer these questions - they're posed to help you consider the concepts behind them:

    • How comfortable are you with the current product-market fit? Are you interviewing/surveying the leads you collect to learn more about what they need to make the switch, or is this more for SMB's that aren't ready to pay $100+ for a known product? Is there a niche you can dial in on (SaaS, ecommerce, etc)?

    • What features can you add/improve upon that the others aren't focusing on? Help with content (like ClearScope) is one, but competitor analysis and keyword research seem to be missing - validating the needs of your leads/customers may shine some light here.

    • Outreach could be a hot channel if done ala ABM. You could ID target websites and send them a free report, or research SEO/general agencies and create a campaign to get them on board. You'd likely need a CRM to help enrich and track those prospects - I like Apollo.io but there are others.

    • Make sure SiteGuru is listed anywhere the big boys are. Sites like G2 Crowd, Quora, software lists, etc - and I'd imagine you know how to analyze their backlinks for more ideas.

    • An SEO tool needs to show up in search results for relevant terms IMO. Have you explored an affiliate/referral program to help you catch up on backlinks while opening new channels for partners, traffic, and referral sales? Guest posts could help here too - both guest posts on your site and you guest posting elsewhere.

    No shortage of things to explore, but if it was me, I'd start with some of these ideas.

    Hope that helps! I'd love to connect and follow your progress - I'm also happy to get on a call to explore ideas further.

    1. 1

      Hey Rod, thanks so much for your input! Let's hop on a call soon.

  6. 1

    Can you share, how did you use siteguru to boost SEO for siteguru?

  7. 1

    Very true. Thanks rick!

  8. 1

    Thanks for sharing Rick!

    When you said this I was kind of confused:

    I haven't been able to reach the right audience that would happily pay for the tool, because it makes their lives easier.

    You seem to have great traction with SiteGuru. 7,000 users is the real deal. You should be proud that you provide value to that many people. It's impressive. What is interesting is how you feel that you feel like you haven't reached an audience that would pay though?

    Is their competition doing what you are doing successfully? What is it that your competition has that you don't that would cause people to pay for their offering? Are you serving a market that doesn't have money to spend? Is SiteGuru just a way to bring people to you for a more valuable offering?

    Maybe those questions will get your gears turning!

    1. 1

      Thanks Justin! You're right, 7000 people is a lot and I'm proud of that. However, the vast majority of these 7000 users are people running small businesses or hobby projects, varying from your local wedding DJ to a small cleaning business.

      Don't get me wrong: I'm really excited I can help all these people improve their online presence. It's just that SiteGuru has the potential to become an indispensable tool for every professional SEO out there. They would get more value out of the tool, and would happily pay $ 100 a month if it makes their lives easier. I'm passionate about realizing that potential:-)

  9. 1

    Have you built anything within your product to allow for viral growth? So that marketing becomes an integral part of the product.

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      Yeah, kinda. You can share site reports with anyone (customers, colleagues, developers). That helps reach new potential clients.

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        Ok, and you're closing the loop with them? i.e getting them to register before viewing the report?

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          They can see the report without registering. I think that makes it very useful (also for the person sharing the report, who may need input, or get someone else to fix something). I'm showing a message on top to get them to register, but it's not required.

          Good point though, I'll look into improving this funnel.

  10. 1

    You have any concrete plans on how to promote your product yet?

    I'm pretty happy that this is a problem I'm probably not gonna face to your extent, because my target audience is pretty niche and small (World of Warcraft players), that means it's way easier to get the word out.

  11. 1

    I'm currently on the similar outlook as I had just recently started throwing up my ideas for feedback while still working on them. I was so scared to claim a project as "complete" due to the over-work not being received well by peers. I finally out the time into selling, marketing and networking to take the leap. Good luck and congrats on your success.

    1. 1

      True, I feel the same. A web product is never really 'finished', but at some point it's good enough to start promoting. I feel I'm way past that point already:-)

  12. 1

    I would love to hear updates on this as it feels like it is the right thing to do.

    Do you have any specific plan in mind for what you plan to do?

    1. 1

      Thanks! Plenty of plans, I'll post them here soon, to get some feedback.

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