Pivots: Marketing Focus & Free-Trial to Freemium

Since April I've taken a new look at marketing the product. Originally I thought I can just put it out there, people would sign up, at least to try the product, and then if they didnt like it, worst case is I'd get some feedback.

Its hard to get someone to pull their credit card out of their pocket.

It's more important for me to get people using the product than it is to widdle down from a $1K+ CPA, so I decided to launch the essential visitor management features as a completely free product. I have generous allowances for the free product. I want customers using it, and their visitors checking in. Plus the way we architected the platform, this isnt a relatively huge cost. Customers can look at upgrading to paid plans for features which require more tech, more support, or deeper access.

This strategy worked. Among more free signups, I was able to onboard 2 companies with 10k+ employees on the free product, both have been extremely communicative and help validate the functionality. Plus help massage the roadmap moving forward.

Originally I thought of Autonix as a tool for restaurants and real-estate brokerages but those ideas flopped. Tons of $ spent on marketing to those audiences (mostly via LinkedIn). I narrowed down our focus to businesses with employees, as that has the highest demand for my type of software and are 80% of the customers I see trying the platform.

I also realized why free-trial (CC required) would never work. Customers, for the most part, are people who need approval to buy things on behalf of their business. IT support. Developers. Etc. C-Suite is not my customer. Its the people tasked with solving the problem of contactless check-ins, contact tracing, people analytics.

More focus on carefully describing the product, adding more features it seemed like we were missing (discovered through on-site chat, linkedin conversations, etc.). Working with SEO Consultant. Figuring out buyer intent. Etc.

Also paid for a SourceForge premium listing which included some evergreen content:

https://sourceforge.net/articles/qa-with-autonix-visitor-management-and-contactless-check-in-solution-for-the-post-pandemic-world/