This marketing strategy actually made me happier
Like many of us in the Indie Hackers community, marketing is not an activity that I inherently enjoy. I much prefer building something cool rather than talking about it. And when I first launched GQueues back in 2009, the old “build it and they will come” approach actually worked – that was before the productivity space became saturated with very well-funded venture-backed startups (and now public companies).
So…over the last several years I’ve been forced to put energy into driving growth, and have experimented with a variety of approaches including:
- Content Marketing
- Referral Program
- Google Ads
- Hacking Quora to increase SERP ranking
- Webinars
Some failed miserably (I’m looking at you Google Ads), while others had a moderate impact (hacking Quora) and others I’m still waiting to see the results (content marketing). All of these, though, have been PAINFUL for my “builder” self to pursue.
So when I heard about engineering-as-marketing, I instantly knew it was something I wanted to try.
Strategy
In short, engineering-as-marketing entails building a valuable product for your target audience that’s given away for free, but also promotes and drives traffic to your paid product.
Or as I like to think of it:
You're building a free product that serves as an advertising platform where you can show ads indefinitely, for free, to your ideal customer, with no competition.
When framed that way, it seems like the smartest marketing strategy ever!
What I like most about this approach, though, is that you get to build a new product -- an activity I truly enjoy, where I can use my expertise.
Criteria
As a first step I listed the criteria to help me figure out what to build. I decided the product should:
- Target my exact ideal customer
- Include built-in virality so it would spread easily
- Cost very little to provide (in terms of server resources)
- Solve a real problem for my ideal customers
- Require minimal support for people to use
- Only take a few weeks to build
- Be fun!
With everything going on in the world, I wanted to build something that added a little bit more joy to people’s lives. And solving a real problem that actually helps people is not only essential to the product’s success, but also gives me the motivation I need to persevere in the development process.
Product
After much brainstorming I decided on building a Chrome extension that allows people to play games with their teams directly inside a Google Meet call.
In terms of my criteria, it checked all the boxes:
- targets teams using Google Workspace (our ideal customer)
- is always used by multiple people (which leads to sharing)
- runs on Firebase with minimal expense
- enables team-building for remote workers
- is super easy to use
- can be written entirely in Javascript over a few weeks
- and will be fun to play!
Now, 8 weeks later, I’m launching Hijinx on the Chrome Web Store!
For me, the best part is I got to spend the last two months designing and coding a new product – instead of writing blog posts, configuring ads, or hosting webinars! My general mood was elevated so much that my girlfriend commented several times on how much happier and less stressed I seemed this winter while building Hijinx.
Results
Of course what really matters is if this approach actually ends up driving traffic to GQueues and increases our number of paid subscribers. You’ll notice the bottom of Hijinx is essentially an advertisement for GQueues. My hope is that people will be impressed with Hijinx and become curious about how GQueues might help their team too. We’ll see if anyone actually clicks though!
The launch of Hijinx today is really just the beginning, and I will be tracking metrics over the next several weeks / months to measure the overall impact. I will post updates here to share how this experiment shakes out.
In the meantime, if you’ve already tried the engineering-as-marketing approach I’d be very curious to hear about your experience and the impact it’s had on growth.
If you have questions about how I implemented this strategy, or want to poke holes in anything I’ve said, I welcome that too :)
And if you want to play a game on your next Google Meet call, I’d love to hear your feedback on Hijinx as well!
I love the idea. how are you going to market Hijinx?
It’s an excellent question, @printscreen! And one could argue that with a second product I now have 2 marketing challenges instead of just one! 😳
And that may very well turn out to be the case. But here is my initial plan and thinking:
#1. I sent an email newsletter to all existing GQueues users telling them about Hijinx. This obviously won’t drive any new traffic to GQueues, but I’m hoping it will jump-start people using Hijinx. And because Hijinx is always played with a group of people, hopefully from these initial players it will spread to non-GQueues users.
#2. I am going to email all people in my personal and professional network to let them know about this app I built to make remote meetings better. If I were promoting my paid product, I would feel a little sheepish doing this, but since Hijinx is free and will make their life better, I feel much better about it. This message now comes from a place of giving instead of taking.
#3. I will reach out to, and post everywhere online I can think of where people might be looking for ways to do virtual team building (bloggers, tangential products, forums, Quora, etc..). Again, since Hijinx is fun, useful and free, my thinking is it will be received and spread fairly easily.
#4. I might try Facebook/Instagram/Google Ads. But only for a short period of time and small amount of money, just to seed that initial set of users. (I’m still on the fence about this, since I wasted so much money on ads in the past with GQueues).
#5. I may eventually try to launch it on Product Hunt after some initial traction.
In essence, my main hypothesis is that it will be easier to promote and spread a free and inherently fun product with built-in virality. My paid product, GQueues, is super valuable to people, but I wouldn’t consider collaborative task management inherently fun ;)
Btw, I just checked out Flowful and I’m going to try it out today while I work. Super cool!
I didn't want to be the one to say it! but seems like youre onto something with this viral spreading tactic. perhaps you could implement some sort of referral bonus in the app to push it even further. not a financial bonus of course, but maybe unlocking a certain game or feature.
either way, intrigued to know how this goes for you. youll have to make sure to do a follow up follow up post with your findings
and thanks for checking out Flowful! hope it helps you get in the zone
Haha! I have two employees at GQueues and that was the VERY FIRST question they asked when I presented my idea for Hijinx to them.
I love this idea of sharing to unlock other games / features! I'm definitely going to explore this. Thanks for the suggestion!
"engineering-as-marketing" - ahhh, now I have a name for what I've been doing. Thank you!
I've created multiple side projects all with the aim of bringing traffic to my primary SaaS Dronedesk. Some have worked better than others - these are numbers for the last 12 months
I think it's fair to say that this isn't a method which helps you avoid having to do marketing; each side projects demands its own marketing attention. And, for me at least, the marketing channels are broadly the same as they are for the core product.
EAS (yay, a new acronym!) does have other benefits to it though I think - and that is to give you a break from the development of your main product.
I don't know about you but, as a solo dev, I can get really bored just working on one thing most of the time. Creating something new and different every now and then, really helps alleviate the boredom and I find I come back to the main project with renewed enthusiasm.
Thanks for sharing these metrics and your experience, @GreyRock!
The ATC review site is incredible - that's a 7% conversion rate! And since it's based on community reviews, it seems like it will just keep growing over time.
And I totally agree about spicing up dev life - after so many years in the same code base it's fun to work on something completely new every now and then!
Despite the ATC site being widely regarded as a great resource in the UK drone community, it's still really difficult to generate engagement. It requires a fair amount of marketing on its own - which to some extent defeats the object. Having said that the conversion rate is pretty cool!
How did you push it in the very beginning? As it's community-led did you create a community first somewhere or how did you market it? Seems like soo much work to get those first constant users to come!
For me, it's all about FB. There is a very active FB community around drones in the UK so I tend to focus on that.
On any given week, you'll see at least one FB drone group user ask "Anyone got the contact number for X ATC?", or "Anyone know what ATC X is like to deal with?" - that's my opportunity to be helpful and point them towards this great resource ;-)
Sounds really nice, I guess it depends on the niche. For some products it's quite hard to find communities on FB that would be open to suggestions you know :) In some they block you even if your product could be useful :D
Let's gooo, is the traffic from Dronedesk bigger than the small tools?
No, it's dwarfed in terms of volume. But that direct traffic is far higher quality than what comes from the other sites (ATC advisor being the exception).
That's really inspiring. I wasn't aware of the "engineering-as-marketing" name convention. We used to talk about "free tools" within our company. We have built some and indeed it's really a good strategy to make everyone happier within the team. And sometimes, it's even a marketing success.
Here are a few examples of free tools that we have built:
Thanks for sharing these @Frenchcooc! It looks like all 3 of these free tools would be really useful for a person who might use your paid product, Mailmeteor - which seems really smart!
Would you be willing to share the impact these tools have had?
#1. Are they driving new traffic to your paid product?
#2. Would you consider it worth the time/effort spent to develop them?
#3. Was there anything you did to market the free tools when you launched them?
#4. Anything you would do differently for your next free tool?
Hey 👋
#1. I won’t share metrics but it’s really something. Just enter "Email Permutator" in Google and you should find Mailmeteor on the first page
#2. Totally worth it if you consider (1) that it’s engineering as marketing - so you don’t feel like you’re doing marketing - and (2) long-term impact, especially SEO.
#3. It’s free tools, so you shouldn’t be afraid to launch early and share them everywhere. We did a Product Hunt for one of them. We weren’t product of the day of course, but it’s not our main product so it doesn’t really matter.
#4. Two things: (1) Share it even more. Like I just said it’s free tool, so talk about it freely. (2) Timebox how much time you want to dedicate to it (including for maintenance). If it takes more than 1 or 2 days, it probably doesn’t worth the effort to give it for free.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this, Corentin!
I searched "Email Permutator" and Mailmeteor's free tool is the second result! That is very impressive and a great proof point for this strategy.
Your second point totally resonates - that's what I like most about this approach - that it makes marketing a little more enjoyable. 🙂
#3 and #4 are really great insights. I have been more slow and calculated about sharing Hijinx, but I'm going to try and embrace this "share more everywhere" advice -- seems smart.
And I agree on timeboxing : by spending 6 weeks developing Hijinx, I definitely feel a lot pressure for it to have a big impact on traffic - otherwise all that time will seem wasted. If I kept dev time to a few days for a free tool, then if it works, great! And if not, then I can move on to something else, without much loss. Makes a lot of sense.
I'm a fan of this method, I've done it a few times with mixed success.
Best part for me is that one of my freebies went semi-viral and I've since monetized it. It's now my main product (SVGBG $1K/mo).
Lately I've been trying other styles of marketing and dreaming of the days where I can just build :)
That's awesome, Matt!
Was there something different or special about SVG Backgrounds that you think made it more successful than your other attempts?
Were there any downsides or "things to look out for" that you experienced with the engineering-as-marketing approach?
As much as I like to think I'm a genius :) I think luck played a big part.
I created my tool at the RIGHT time. According to this chart, SVG exploded in popularity Jan 2018 and I published my site on Feb 2018: https://w3techs.com/diagram/history_overview/image_format/all/y
I got product #4 of the day on PH without a following, and it helped get the initial buzz out. Think that's near impossible these days, as PH can be a bit of a popularity contest, at least to get on the frontpage initially.
As few downsides: you can invest a bunch of time into a flop. My second attempt on PH netted me 10 upvotes. Actually on PH day it was closer to 36 votes, but I watched as all products were spam upvoted that much. Needless to say, you can't rely on just PH for this strategy.
I definitely recommend keeping build times down for this very reason when offering freebies. Keep it simple.
That's great insight! Yeah, luck definitely always comes in to play in my experience too. But it sounds like you also keyed into timing (building something for a topic already trending) and generating initial buzz (which may be harder on PH now, but there might be others ways to do this too).
And thanks for the warning about dev time. I fell down this hole with Hijinx -- I thought I could build it in a couple of weekends, and ended up spending 6 weeks of dev time on it. Which is fine if it works, but if it flops, that's probably more than I would have liked to spend on this experiment.
tthanks this is very specific to your market, any tips for non social type saas?
I definitely struggle with traditional marketing. Direct sales and social media marketing are tough as a pretty introverted person.
This post inspired me to try this out for one of my apps - I'll let you know if it works!
That's great, @behn. Please do let us all know how it goes! I think the more examples and data points we have around this the more we'll learn.
Also, I just tried out SecondThought - what a great tool for dealing with the struggles so many of us face as entrepreneurs!
Thanks so much! To be honest, you are our first user 🎉
Hi Cameron, this is such an interesting post!
"Engineering as marketing" (EAM) isn't new to me per se, but what you did with Hijinx to promote GQueues is a stroke of genius. You can promote Hijinx in GQueues, and GQueues in Hijinx too. Heck, you can even promote other products in Hijinx if you get critical mass.
Suggestion for improvement
In my opinion, the most successful EAM products out there are those that are personalized to the user and brings the user massive value for sharing it, so they're super-incentivized to share it.
For example, SurveyMonkey allows users to share their personalized surveys hosted on their domain name, ditto Gumroad with personalized product sales pages, while Linktree allows users to share their personalized list of links on their domain name.
The difference is that these EAM assets, as I would call them, are inherently viral.
The user must share these EAM assets to even begin getting utility from them, and share them often.
Is there a way you can offer Hijinx or GQueues users something public, that's personalized, and that would bring massive value to the user when shared?
I think that's one way to "jumpstart" the marketing of Hijinx or GQueues with some baked-in virality!
These are really great questions and suggestions, Jay! And it's definitely got me thinking in some new ways.
GQueues already has a way to publish a list or embed it on a webpage, but maybe I could create a customized dashboard that a person/company could share with others, that would be at their own subdomain. I'm definitely going to think on this some more.
Nothing's coming to mind right now for Hijinx, but if you or others have ideas I definitely welcome them! I'm going to ponder this over the weekend.
Hey @cameronh, this was a great read and I love the idea.
I have some critical feedback I can offer you below, based on your invitation to do so.
Did you build in the ability to test different ads at the bottom to see their response rates? Could see that being useful.
I ask because IMO, the ad you have at the bottom is very vague and not super compelling. (I see that it matches your headline on your homepage, so I guess I'm critiquing both your homepage copy AND your ad) I once read a great little post on marketingexamples about this that I think you might like: https://marketingexamples.com/landing-page/titles — In particular the example in there of "all-in-one social automation" -> "turn followers into customers" is something you may resonate with. Even after reading your whole homepage, I'm a little bit unclear about what exactly GQueues is. Is it a CRM? A project management tool? A to-do app? Streak.com might be a good reference for you of a google-integrated tool with more clarity on what it is on their landing page
I don't mean to just sh*t all over all your positioning on your website — the main reason I even brought this up is that I think it could be cool for you to experiment with ads ad the bottom that would appeal more to people who know nothing about your business. You could even experiment with email opt-in lead magnet sorts of things. Given that when someone plays this game, you have no way to get in touch with them, having that ad at the bottom be for something like.... "Learn the top 5 things that erode team cohesion and make people hate meetings — free cheat sheet" or whatever, you could have a funnel that looks more like
-- split test different ads to see which has the best opt in rate
vs. what you have now, which is more like...
Again, I love this idea and I think it lends itself well to marketing more easily than your main product because the cost of use is so much lower — they don't need to learn anything, they just need to install a chrome extension and remember to use it (or maybe they don't even need to remember). And thus, I suspect it'd be much cheaper to get leads for with paid ads than your main software. And I also bet that with some honing of your CTA within the game, you'll be able to get even better results.
Thanks for posting :)
Thanks for the thoughtful critique, @zachswinehart!
I see your point about the ad copy being vague. Right now the extension randomly chooses from a set of 10 messages for the ad when it loads in the meeting - most of them section headings from the website. It is tracking clicks for each message to see which ones perform best. But I really like this idea of advertising a lead magnet in this space so we can contact people later and nurture them down the funnel. I think I’ll add this to the testing!
It also got me thinking just now that it might be worth testing an ad where the CTA is to start a free trial of GQueues directly. The ad copy would definitely need to be clearer - probably something along the lines of “manage tasks with your team”.
And thanks for the feedback on the website positioning. We actually just re-wrote the copy on the entire website back in January, with an emphasis on benefits for our ideal customer. Perhaps we went a little too far though! To me, GQueues is obviously a collaborative task manager for teams -- but after building the product for 13 years I’ve completely lost the perspective of someone who may be new to the site/product! So thanks for those fresh eyes. And I can see now that by just reading the text on the homepage it’s not necessarily clear. We’ll do some A/B testing of other messages. And thanks for the references to Streak and marketingexamples!
You're welcome for the feedback; glad to hear it didn't come across as overly-critical. :) I'm happy to give input on product page clarity if you decide to hone it; just reach out to me directly. I know how hard it can be to explain something for total newbies when you're so close to your own product.
this es exactly what I am doing and how I grew my saas to around 1k monthly. I made a web app that was complementary for the saas, but 100% free, no signup, nothing, but I had my own ads.
As part of that one I have other web apps that brought traffic to that site. in fact, I am building right now one more tool to drive traffic to my next project.
also, this projects have been featured on youtube on really big channels,...so it works even better.
now that saas has been acquired, together with the traffic driver. :-)
Iit's so underrated...to not build free stuff
That's great to hear you've found success with this approach, @Michael_Andreuzza!
Are you willing to share how you got the product featured on big YouTube channels? Is there something you'd recommend to others to increase the chances of getting this kind of exposure?
Well, for example, colorsandfonts.com was featured by Gary simons
I did not asked to get it featured, it was luck.
then Mr Povilas featured wickedblocks.dev, which it has been acquired
the thing is that both of them went viral on Reddit and other channels.
Got it. Seems like luck often plays a role, and perhaps a free tool that's useful to people increases the chances of something going viral and finding that good luck.
yeah, being free definitely helps, wonder. The backlinking is pure joy.
In fact I just built two tools exactly for this reason.
I am working on my next saas and Io want traffic,...
Well that's an awesome project
Massive gains for Gqueues
I could Market your product here in Africa
Thanks for taking the time to pen this long-form. It's already my second time hearing about this concept today. I must say I'm intrigued, it's sounds like a different class of content marketing. Thinking how to apply it in my case. Do you reckon engineering-as-marketing would work if it's in the form of open source SDKs around your core product? As a developer, I think I would be much happier reaching out to a technical audience.
I definitely think the "free product" could be more on the technical side, and it probably should be if the ideal customer for your main product is a technical audience.
In terms of building SDKs for your core product as "engineering-as-marketing", I found this quote from Failory's post on Side Project marketing helpful:
So if you want test this marketing approach, you'll probably have the best chance of getting the results you want with a technical tool/product that targets bringing in new customers.
What are your thoughts?
This makes a lot of sense to me. Ultimately you want to be increasing paying customers.
Huh, never heard of this "engineering-as-marketing" approach before. Interesting. Unfortunately, their original marketing definition is again just focused on paid media.
BTW, this axiom is true for every owned media and not just for this specific approach:
I think the biggest problem with this approach is that it is a new and separate tool that would need its own marketing. No, really. If you create something like this and unleash it unto the world it is again the same with the "build it and they will come" mentality -- which we all know doesn't really work.
This might work when the resources are more abundant, like when you are a VC-backed company or an existing market leader with revenue or similar. When your resources are scarce, this probably would just steal from where your efforts should go.
I'd like to open a sidebar here and provide an unsolicited opinion: your ideal customer definition (if it is exactly what you provided in this post) is a bit intangible. I am not sure how it would help you create messaging, targeting opportunities, use cases, unique selling proposition/customer value propositions, etc. It just feels like a technical requirement rather than an ideal customer definition.
Regarding your sidebar, you're right -- this is a pretty broad definition of our ideal customer. And we use the full persona we've created internally when thinking about the actual ways to communicate with our prospective customers.
But for determining what free product to build, I found even this broad definition useful.
Google Workspace Users
GQueues is only for Google Workspace users (you MUST sign in with a Google account, and it integrates exclusively with Google products), so while this might seem like just a technical requirement, it's actually pretty important in scoping our audience. So, for example, when considering what free product to build, I ruled out building a Zoom Addon, even though it's a more popular meeting platform, because it caters to everyone, instead of just Workspace users.
Teams
In the beginning GQueues focused on individual task management, but in our efforts to increase LTV, the last several years have been focused on building for, supporting and marketing to teams. So this was also an important criteria for this new product. I didn't want to build something that was just used by individuals. We want teams as customers, so the free product also needed to be for teams.
Does that make more sense?
Yes, you keyed in on what @printscreen and @briancldo already mentioned in their comments about needing to market the new product.
It's such a great question though I think it's worth re-iterating my response to Brian and what I hope to learn with this approach:
This is such a cool approach with Hijinx, Cameron. How did the "build and they will come" approach work out for you with GQueues? Where did the customers come from?
Great question, Goutham!
The “build and they will come” strategy only worked during the first few years of the business. Keep in mind this was 2009, when the internet was much smaller, and specifically the task management space was very small. Basically the only online task managers at the time were Remember the Milk and Basecamp. Google Tasks had just launched but was even more bare bones than it is today. “Things” was desktop only. Todoist, Asana, Clickup, monday.com, Trello, TickTick, Any.do all DID NOT EXIST!
So when I launched GQueues, there weren’t a lot of competitors. Google App Engine had just recently launched (which GQueues is built on), so I posted on their “Built with App Engine” page and got traffic that way. I posted on some other directories too (back when people actually went to directories). Random productivity bloggers came across GQueues and would write about it completely unsolicited. I woke up one day with 300 new users all from a blog that a teacher wrote in the UK about tools for educators. A bigger tech blog wrote about GQueues and I got 8,000 new users within a matter of hours. Things like this kept happening - which was great because I got to focus entirely on building the product.
In 2010 Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace (now Google Workspace Marketplace) and I listed GQueues there which drove a ton of on-going traffic, and it’s still my best marketing channel. The person who ran the marketplace at Google noticed GQueues was getting traction and invited me to give a talk at Google I/O in 2011, which in turn drove more traffic.
Everything was easy at the time, but over the years more competitors kept appearing (some with lots of money), and the space became very crowded, and getting new users became much harder for GQueues. So I had to start focusing on marketing.
If I were building a new product today, I would definitely build something for an existing app marketplace / ecosystem. As someone who doesn’t really enjoy marketing, it seems to be the easiest way to get new users. Of course there are risks that go along with this strategy, but that’s probably something for another post.
Really interesting. I've never heard of this approach before. I look forward to the results analysis! ;)
This strategy will be cool. Let's see how it will turn
I think someone on Reddit suggested to me relatively recently to use BotMeNot as a free tool that will, later on, lead people to purchase a bot protection solution.
I have not taken that step, but I am currently developing a recommendations feature within BotMeNot. It's sort of a middle-ground between two positions.
I think it's very difficult to create something that people will actually want, and fulfilling the criteria that you've mentioned can be harder than it sounds.
Anyway, thanks for sharing!
I was just reading about this idea, Misha, where the side project actually generates the need for the primary paid product. That's next level for sure!
I guess HubSpot does this with their Website Grader. People use the free tool to get their website graded, and then if certain areas are low, the tool recommends ways the person can use HubSpot to improve the website.
This is a great and possibly often overlooked channel of marketing. Thanks for bringing attention to this and giving us such a superb example. I'd be very curious to get an update on this in the future to see how well it has worked for you.
Also, congrats on the launch!
Thanks! I'll definitely post updates.
I checked out Fern -- looks like you're solving a cool problem around managing research studies!
Very cool. I've heard of this strategy being called 'side project marketing' but your version is more targeted so perhaps less apt a title.
I think you're totally right. I've seen both "side project marketing" and "engineering as marketing" used interchangeably.
I actually just came across this article which has some great examples of the different types of side projects/products that work well for promoting a paid primary product.
Side Project Marketing: What Is It & How to Do It, +10 Examples
If others are thinking about trying this approach, this may be a good starting resource.
Thanks for sharing, really love this strategy.
additional questions I curious:
I've been tempted to do something like this by building a game, although admittedly it's not exactly my target audience.
The question is, how do you market a thing whose purpose is to market something else? Doesn't seem like you can escape the need to market. Although, I can appreciate the "hack" of reaching out to an audience that might've not found your product otherwise.
It's a great question and point, Brian, and I think that's exactly what Drew (@printscreen) was getting at in his comment.
I think you're right - there's no way to completely escape marketing!
What I hope to discover with this experiment though is:
#1. Is it easier to market a free product with built-in virality?
and
#2. If so, can I take advantage of that to then market my paid product that doesn't have built-in virality?
If those questions prove true, I still won't be able to avoid marketing, but perhaps I can play on "easy mode" instead of "hard mode" :)
Does any of that resonate?
I checked out Bathtimer -- I love the idea of conserving water through a shorter shower routine! Are you thinking about building a game to market this app, or something else?
Hey @cameronh, after some pondering, I actually understand your point better and agree wholeheartedly with this approach.
It makes sense that some ideas are more susceptible to growth, so your goal is to create something that has higher growth potential than your main product, and leverage its growth to boost your main product's growth.
Thanks for the insight Cameron, I learned something :)
Thanks for sharing @cameronh! I'm curious to hear how it goes - can you give us an update in a few months??
For sure! I just set a reminder task to update this post with real metrics after the first month.
As a marketer, it always excites me to see people using different growth strategies. I must say, building a Chrome extension that is useful and somewhat relatable to your existing product was a great strategy :)
I would like to ask you two things:
Great questions!
#1. For Google Ads, I learned (the hard way) that the price-point of GQueues is too low to make paid advertising worth the expense. At $4/month, GQueues is on the cheap side. If I were charging $50+/month for a product, then paid ads might have worked (maybe).
The main challenge is the productivity landscape itself. ClickUp, monday.com, Asana, Trello, etc… are all willing to pay $13 PER CLICK on an ad - because they have tons of money and just want to take market share. So that was the bidding price I was dealing with. When only a small percentage of clickers start a free trial, and only a small percentage of those buy a subscription, all of a sudden I’m paying hundreds of dollars to acquire a single paid user.
I’m definitely not saying Google Ads won’t work for other products or markets, but I just couldn’t get them to work for GQueues (unfortunately).
#2. If I’m understanding product-led growth correctly, then yes, I think this could come into play with Hijinx. My hypothesis is definitely that a person will play Hijinx with her team, and then people on that team will like it enough to play it in their other meetings, and those people will share it with others, etc… I really focused a lot of effort on making the sharing/ installing experience SUPER SIMPLE.
When the host of the meeting opens Hijinx, they just click a button and the link to install the extension is sent to everyone else in the meeting via the Google Meet chat window.
With just two clicks, everyone else in the meeting now has the extension installed.
Are there other aspects of product-led growth that you think might be relevant?
Thanks for answering my questions! I think you are already on the right path for product-led growth. You have already taken care of a frictionless entry point for Hijinx which is the most crucial step for product-led growth.
Apart from that, you can work a bit more on the UX side as well.
I tried playing a game with my team but couldn't because it kept saying "Waiting for the host to join game room" and being the host I couldn't figure out where is the gaming room.
Maybe some error from my side or bug :(
Thanks for trying Hijinx -- and that's definitely a bug you encountered!
I think I saw this once before in testing with friends. The extension code looks for the "host" button at the bottom of Google Meet to identify which user is the meeting host. But every once in a while there is a delay with Google Meet adding the "host" button to the page, so the extension thinks no one is hosting the game, because it doesn't initially find the button.
I think it happens pretty rarely, so I'm guessing if you just tried Hijinx in your next meeting everything will work.
But I'm realizing now, even if this situation is very infrequent, the code should definitely handle this situation - otherwise the game doesn't work at all for that meeting! I'll work on getting a fix and update out ASAP!
Thanks for mentioning it :)
@Deep98 This bug has been fixed and the extension updated. If you try it again as the host of the meeting you should now see a prompt to choose a game. Thanks again for reporting this issue!
Love your approach, and the way you niched down your target in order to get some lift. I work oversee growth & marketing and I have all the same challenges with "traditional" digital marketing. It is SO saturated, you're really just trying to cut through the noise.
Engineering-as-marketing has given us a way to generate meaningful traffic with a more tactile approach. We don't want to tell you about it, we want you to try it!
Yeah, it's kind of like a "portfolio" site in a way -- give the prospect a sample of what you can do, and if they're impressed and find it useful, they will check out your other offerings.
Hubspot does this well
Great write up - I've been thinking along similar lines for my own product recently, I'd be curious to hear how this goes!
Thanks, @GriffinJohnston. I'll definitely post some actual stats after this first week.
I checked out https://behold.so -- it looks like you've built a pretty slick way to embed Instagram feeds!
Is your target audience people who host on WordPress, or is it more general or specific? Do you already have an idea of what you might build as a mini-product for marketing purposes?
Please do! I'd love to see a follow up.
Thanks for checking out Behold. Truthfully WordPress has some decent encumbent plugins that do this already, so I'm primarily targeting:
A. Developers who want to build their own UI and just need access to JSON. Behold is unusual in providing this, most solutions just have a widget and that's it.
B. People who want an easy drop-in widget and aren't being served by a good plugin/solution for their platform, or just like the aesthetics of the Behold widget better than alternatives.
I'm currently working on a free developer resource to act as a funnel to Behold. Think Toptal's html symbol reference (https://www.toptal.com/designers/htmlarrows/). So something between what you're doing and more traditional content marketing. I love the idea of a small app/product though. You've got my gears turning. :)
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@aaronnock I agree that would be a great additional angle on this (vs bringing new customers). I would be curious what people have tried for low priced products.
@cameronh mentioned in another comment that Google Ads didn't work out partially due to the low subscription cost of $4/month. I have a similar priced product with BuzzMeIn and can't figure out a loyalty "program" that's worth it for my existing customers. Get a month free and save $4?!
Or does it all come down to "you need to charge more"?
I do think there is a correlation between the Lifetime Value (LTV) of customers and the number of marketing strategies available to get new customers.
This makes sense intuitively - if you make more money from each customer (either by charging more, keeping them around for many years, upselling them, or increasing the number of seats/users per customer), then you can afford to spend more money acquiring those customers (through ads, referral programs, hiring a great content marketer, etc...)
Over the years I have worked on increasing LTV for GQueues customers (by raising prices, reducing churn, and focusing on features that serve teams) and it's helped to some degree. I've also tried to make peace with the idea that some marketing strategies are just not viable options for this product. And that also forces me to be more creative -- which is how I landed on this latest experiment with Hijinx.
💯 that makes sense, hope this works out for you... already have my head spinning if I can pull off a small (costs) free "product" to drive customers to my main product.
Definitely looking forward to seeing you numbers over the coming weeks and months!
Thanks again for sharing