Where should you start when learning about sales & marketing?
Hey everyone,
I recently started a marketing campaign (more detail below) , which I’ve never done before. I’m about 2 weeks in and now looking for sales and marketing resources. Could anyone provide any resources where to start? or any general direction?
Right now, I’m trying to develop a funnel and setup a sales process. Any feedback or resources would be great.
More detail on Marketing Campaign Here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/starting-my-marketing-campaign-on-reddit-11f39f8ea7
Could you share a little bit more about your product that you're trying to sell and the campaign that you've started? There's a massive range of topics and elements within sales and marketing, so the more information on what you sell and who it's for, the better for making a recommendation :)
Great point! Right now, we are helping people transition into bootcamps. We reach out to them via Reddit and move them through our funnel. We are focusing on STEM post grads who are unhappy with their career
So just to make sure I've not misunderstood, by bootcamps you mean a physical bootcamp in the traditional sense of the word? And then next question, why STEM post grads? Why are they unhappy with their career? Does your product change them so that they are happy with their career?
Well bootcamps in the sense of like where you were gain secondary education.
STEM post grads are interested in getting into Tech jobs. They are unhappy for a multitude of reasons, but main focus is that they don’t like the work they are working on
Yes the game plan is to make them happy by switching careers
Right, got ya. So I'd say first call, I think what you're doing on Reddit, from a marketing perspective is 100% the best place to start. It doesn't matter that it doesn't scale. You're getting close to prospects, learning more about what's important to them and what you're trying to solve for them. That's what many other SaaS or software companies in general do to start (e.g. AirBnB - https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5m-scaling-product-design-at-airbnb). Do the unscalable.
I think you want to get true clarity on the benefits to the user before you start looking to spend on marketing tactics that scale. So piecing together all of the Reddit questions you've been answering, the wording that they're using for the problem, the insight from the consulting. Then ensuring the way that you pitch your solution comes from the perspective of solving that problem. Then create copy that addresses those problems. (Harry Dry has amazing resource on copywriting - https://marketingexamples.com/inspiration).
This from Julian Shapiro is a great overview piece - https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro plus more great stuff from Julian and his team here -https://www.demandcurve.com/playbooks
If you get all that in place before you start hitting the scalable tactics (Facebook ads, remarketing, YouTube, etc.) you'll have done some valuable marketing work upfront to lay solid foundations before launching the tactics.
This is extremely helpful and validating. I will check out these resources and continue down the road I’ve started on. Any advice on tracking problems and how to categorize them? I’m going to build my own system, but wanted to see if you had any other tools.
I wouldn't say I have a structured system for it. It would depend on what the over-arching problem was. First objective is to validate that this is a problem my initial target audience would pay for (and has the budget to pay for). If that's the case, I would then review each problem that arises and determine whether these are sub-categories of my existing problem, and whether by building functionality to address these sub-categories, I improve the solution to address the primary problem. I really like the Jobs to be Done approach. Couple fo great books on this are this http://www.whencoffeeandkalecompete.com/ and this https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/jobs-to-be-done-book/ I then just just spreadsheets or word docs to track to be honest
Perfect! I will check that out
Great blogs to learn from - https://neilpatel.com/
Thank you!
Love this https://funnelytics.io/
Thank you!
Learned more here than anywhere (1) https://medium.com/@yegg/78-takeaways-from-traction-book-1b44d2a03dda (2) https://www.everyonehatesmarketers.com/podcast
Thank you!
If you want 1:1 guidance I can recommend growthmentor.com to you. It's a huge community and you get a shortcut to your questions.
Thank you!