Qualli - Week 2: Marketing for dummies (aka me)

Week: 2

🙋‍♂️ Customers: 0
👀 Active Trials: 0
🤩 Sign-ups: 1
💰 MRR: $0

Table:
Launch Week Wrap-Up 🚀
What I Did Right 🔥
What I Did Wrong 🛑
Marketing for Dummies

Launch Week Wrap-Up

Week 2, launch week. A few emotions to summarize the week: excitement, stress, disappointment, hope.

Last week, I launched my platform on LinkedIn, to my network. The overall sentiment was great; people were happy for me, supportive, and I received some kind words. From a person-to-person standpoint, it was great. But from a business perspective, there were no sign-ups, which I found strange as I am connected with various app developers and founders. But I didn't expect it to be that easy.

What I did get is valuable feedback in the last few days! Making it public and showing it to friends and family resulted in great feedback. Small issues with navigation, responsiveness that wasn't fully on point, positioning.

All in all, the launch itself wasn't the biggest, but I was able to make great changes to Qualli itself last week. Qualli, like most SaaS services, has a long time period to get to actual value for the user: User visits website -> User signs up -> installs SDK -> launches -> waits for users to update -> users answer -> results come in. And between those, there are a lot of smaller steps, resulting in what I would guess is a 2-week time period to get to company value.

I wanted to create a smaller "aha" moment in between, the moment I picked was the survey creation. Feedback I've gotten: I don't know what to ask, how do I know my questions are right, how do I start. So, what I aimed for is an AI assistant survey builder. When creating a survey, there is the option to ask my Qualli AI what your use case is. Combined with company information, it will draft a survey to your needs, and I must say it does a good job. Far from perfect, but great for someone to start with.

Other things for this week include: New onboarding, LinkedIn posts, website updates, platform updates, YouTube demo video, and miscellaneous things.

What I Did Right

Session Replays for UX Improvements

Last week, I had 1 sign-up, and I was very quick to see what he was up to 🤭. Using highlight.io, I could see how he signed up and how he was using the platform. Doing that, I could see how and where he was getting stuck. For example, he found it difficult to create a survey or see why he couldn't save it. So, I created a "launch checklist" to indicate the steps he still needs to take.

He also struggled with having to create a trigger before creating a survey, so now you're able to do that on the survey page.

Onboarding Revamp

There was no real onboarding, so people came to the platform and just dropped off. My registration form was now 1 big form, with questions about company size, name, etc., which could scare off users. So I took a page from PostHog's book and made it simpler -> the first step is email/password. Once you've done that, you get into an onboarding step wizard, setting up your account.

It's not for certain, but I think it is an improvement.

What I Did Wrong

I Wasn't Selling, Selling, Selling

I should have started reaching out sooner. Contacting companies, people, looking for anyone that could use my service. Cold contacting has never been my strong suit, but I should get over that hurdle and get comfortable with it.

When your website is still small, and you don't have SEO credibility built up, you need to go get them first.

Time wasting on GPTs

Although its important to try out new things, creating a custom GPT that doesn't really do much wasn't critical to the business. So note to self: focus on what grows your business now.

Thinking One Post Would Result in Tons of Sign-ups

Lowering expectations is a great thing in the beginning; this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. Putting out a post on LinkedIn was more likely not going to result in tons of sign-ups, but a part of me hoped it did. Overall, being more realistic that it's going to take work, it isn't happening overnight.

Marketing for Dummies

I have almost no real marketing experience; as a developer, I kind of resented it for so long. But now I have the ambitious goal of having 5 paid plan trials by the end of November, and in order to achieve that, I need to become the marketer myself now.

Last week, I've been brainstorming on how to best reach my niche audience, and I do find it hard to come up with an answer.

My target audience:

• Startups to SMBs (preferably smaller SMBs)
• They have an app
• That app has to be React Native (or they can put themselves on the waitlist)
• CEO/Founder/Product Researcher/Product Managers

Where do they hang out most:

• LinkedIn
• Social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit)
  Google
• Newsletters like "The Product Manager"
• (Business) Podcasts

I'm thinking my main 2 strategies are going to be LinkedIn and Google (SEO).

SEO has a very long lead time, but it's a given to be doing. I'm aiming at 2 posts/pages a week, based on keyword research.

LinkedIn: 1-2/week. These are probably going to be shorter versions of my website posts.

Next to that, I am going to get into a routine of cold contacting.

Does the community have any ideas how I could help my marketing move forward?