Struggling before the "finishing line": Continue, sell or hire marketing? 🤔

Launch it. Get Paid.
There is no validation unless there are paying customers.

This video from YC about launching and launching again, helped me get over the hump of "when do I launch?"

Basically: Always Be Launching.

ABL

A is Always
B is Be
L is Launching

Always Be Launching

I totally feel you. When I started my coaching business, I hated marketing and sales. I thought I wouldn't get it. Then I filled my practice without spending anything on marketing. I learned to do it as an introvert. My strategy is to be human and connect with others.

It seems like there are two fears that are blocking you: you don't know marketing and you don't know if your product is good enough. Both are variables you have 100% agency to control.

The options you're listing out are just to avoid the above work in your mindset. You've created a wonderful product. You've not had evidence that it's not working. The hardest part is in starting - in your case, deciding to test it out with real people.

It can be simple as follow:

• What if your product is good enough? Who would want to use them? Where can you find them? How can you get in touch with them?
• What do they care about? What are their problems? How do they like to talk?

Oftentimes I see founders getting stuck because they try to solve everything at once. You don't need to figure out a sustainable marketing strategy that is driving a huge amount of traffic right this moment.

You just need to find your people and start having conversations with them. From there, you can start to think about the next steps (for example, how do I show them I can solve their problem).

Marketing takes time to generate revenue, but it will give you direct effect right away. You just need to know where to look. At this phase, it's not fair to measure your efforts by customers created. It's more appropriate to measure the effects with qualitative feedback, conversations created, etc.

I hope this helps. Cheering you on :)

Your product seems awesome. I'm sure there is a market for it. If you're looking to sell, try to reach out to big companies like Envato and others.

They might be interested. They already have a market to offer this product.

Letting their users customize and build their own mockups is something that would be useful to their audience. Maybe you could even negotiate a sale with royalties on usage.

If you're looking to market yourself, you might want to look into Facebook ads, connecting with agencies and designers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

I wouldn't continue building without further validation.

Sorry for all these random soundbites Chris. Further to my previous comment, they've also come back with this

"This is the level of mockups we would want to go for: https://www.mockup.maison/best-practice This company creates them from photos and customises them for individual projects, they also have heaps of mockups you can buy"

Hey Chris, I showed you site to one of our senior designers to see if he had come across the site and his feedback was this "I have not but the mock ups don't look that great? They look very computer 3D generated and not realistic?" I hope that helps with your decision-making.

Push forward - the product looks like it’s ready to roll.

It’s easy at this point to back away from the unknown, but afaict “the unknown” comes with the territory of running a business. You’ll need to deal with that at some stage, probably a lot more often than you’d imagine.

I’d suggest getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Building stuff is easy, we can control it - it’s the stuff we don’t know how to control/do that often gets in the way of progress, and success, IMO.

Find the tribe and sell the offer :)

Good luck!
🍻

Launch it as fast as possible. Not only because it's the only way to validate your idea, but also it's so easy to get stuck into further development and thinking "I'll just change this one thing...". No. Please stop - just launch.

For the marketing, cause this is my field of expertise - there are communities and knowledge hubs that'll give you knowledge about starting to advertise wisely, but it takes loads of time. On the other hand, (professional) marketer is one of the most expensive things you can get (except from not doing marketing at all - this is more expensive at the end ;)). That's why we're developing https://app.digitalfirst.ai that is going to guide you step by step through best recommended (adequate for your business) marketing and growth tactics. Even if you still don't have time to do it on your own, you can easily share instructions and even not that experienced marketing adept can execute them, so you can outsource it more consciously. Let me know if you want to know more!

Hi, Chris.

That's a fantastic execution! Your products look amazing, a great landing page and concept.
I think that the users will come - they just need to be able to find you!

If you need help, I'm here - I have 14 years of experience in marketing (I run a service that helps tech founders get more visibility - https://DevelopersVsMarketing.com ).
We can jump on a video call, and I'll give you some pointers.

Bart

Your product visually looks great.
There may be established designers out there who'd be open to showcase their work using your tool via their social media channels.
And budding designers who'd love to be better at marketing themselves and their work again via your tool.
Finally I'd consider paying for a room to be designed e.g. via upwork, and ask for the design work to be done via your tool and fully documented.
Hope that helps!