Brandesaurus
Thesaurus of the Internet's Brands
As a primer for this post the various validations mean:
Idea Validation - When you're able to explain your idea and someone random can understand what you're doing (or at least get interested). If you follow business model design this would also include making sure your idea is desirable to people, viable as a business, and feasible to build.
Market Validation - When you're able to explain your idea to someone who you know will be interested in the idea because you've determined qualities of a potential customer for your business. If you were to follow "best practices" this is when you'd want to show 3-4 screen mockups and charge if possible (if you know the value of your business you will be able to deliver the value without a "full" product built out).
Product Validation - When you're able to send someone who you know will be interested in the product a link to a demo/explanation of the product that provides enough value causing them to purchase your solution and switch from existing solutions if they used any.
When pursuing the concept of product market fit there are two major topics for you to focus on in your business: the product and the market.
Each of the validation steps below will be based on the concept of performing both product and market based activities.
Validating an Idea | ~2 Day
Idea Level Product Validation - Take some time to write out the idea and turn it into a Lean Business Canvas. After this you can create a traction roadmap to understand the profit viability of the idea. A roll out plan can also help plan out how you will take the idea and turn it into a product.
Idea Level Market Validation - Talk to friends, family, coworkers, and people online to see if they have the problem your looking to solve and what they think the solution is (you don't need to mention your idea, but try to get them talking about what they'd like in a solution).
By cross analyzing your product idea with the market's idea of what a product would be like will help you better align to potential customer's wants building higher perceived value for your product.
Validating a Market | ~2 Weeks
Market Level Product Validation - At this point you can start considering what your app will look like from a wireframe or Mockup perspective. Creating these wireframes then verifying them with people will help make sure your app will solve the problem in a usable manner for your potential customer.
Market Level Market Validation - You can make a few slides (6-10) to explain the transformation that happens through using your product plus the benefits (emotional) and return on investment (numbers) that users/customers can expect (if there's a difference between user and customer outcomes I recommend highlighting this). You can create a list of 100-250 people to reach out to on a platform of you choice (that your audience uses). You can then reach out to this list to see if they're interested in having their problems solved. If they say yes then run them through the slide show (and don't forget to ask for money at the end if your app will be paid).
Validating a Product | 2 Months (but use 2 week sprints for alternating between product-focused and market-focused work)
Product Level Product Validation - At this point you'll have an idea of what people are willing to pay for. Your goal will be to build it while staying focused on solving the problem for the people you've talked to. You can start with a coming soon page then scale into a 1 feature website/app and over time add new features (but should be done slowly and with verification from your customer audience)
Product Level Market Validation - As you finish the different stages of your MVP (coming, 1 feature, account tiers, etc) you'll want to consistently check that your MVP is able to be sold to your target market. Without market validation in terms of users, emails, or revenue it'll be hard to know if your programming time/energy will have the output you desire. Make sure to constantly market, sell, and support your buying audience so that you learn how to recover after dips in your charts (learning this can only happen by recurringly checking for dips in metrics and understanding/testing how to solve them.
Alternatively
You can build a new app every week or two until one of them resonates really well with the audience that you're trying to reach (the biggest flaw here would be potentially forgetting to talk to your target audience so you can understand what they want/need)
I've been using a combination of the above for the MVP I'm working on and it's help my team and I feel more aligned to the target audience we're trying to reach (we're also making sure to talk to them on a weekly basis through different channels like social, referral, and network marketing)
Any thoughts or questions on this strategy?
Over the past few weeks I've been hacking together a thesaurus of brands.
This all started because in January 2023 my team had trouble being consistent with a blog. The issue was that making good blog posts from scratch even with AI would take 4-10 hours (including research, writing, editing, posting, and SEO).
I was in a SAAS learning program and heard about the phrase:
Programmatic SEO
I had heard it a few times so I decided to begin researching.
It turns out A LOT of programmatic SEO websites are built using Webflow due to how Webflow allows CSV uploads to a database alongside building webpage templates for data in a database very similar to how Wordpress has page templates.
More info can be found on this article written by Webflow on how to create 300 landing pages in a week:
https://webflow.com/blog/programmatic-seo
After doing some more researching and planning my team helped me decide that building a thesaurus of brands would help teach my main startups customers what good branding is and why they need good branding.
As I started using Webflow I found it really really hard. After 2 hours of fiddling around in Webflow I decided to launch a quick and dirty coming soon page:
https://www.brandesaurus.com/old-home-2
Even though this coming soon page was whipped up really quickly (probably 30min in total) after doing some initial marketing we were able to get 40 emails from 400 website vsiitors. We also received really good feedback on platforms like Reddit and Polywork.
We decided at the start of March we want to launch an MVP.
My main startup took a lot of time from the week. So we ended up launching the website in its current state so that we could say we launched on time (which is what is most important to us):
After launching the new home page on the core domain we noticed A LOT of different things happen:
- People actually started exploring the website and we saw a rise in number of pages per visit
- We also saw an increase in time spent per visit
- Worst of all we saw a huge drop in email submissions.
The biggest worry for us is the drop in email submissions. It's still been pretty easy to drive traffic as we've refined a core value proposition, however, it seems like without a good user experience people won't trust the application enough to provide their emails.
Additionally we tried using waitlist software for our upcoming ProdutHunt Launch but no one seemed interested.
So the our biggest takeaways from listening to potential users and analyzing the data are
- We need to improve the usability so that the MVP can become a Minimum Lovable Product.
- We need to hone in more on the value proposition for after people land on the website (what do we provide for people who spend more time on the website)
- We really really need to get the email conversions back up before the ProductHunt launch
As I felt really motivated after launch the current version I've been able to spend time learning how to use Webflow better and now we have an updated interation coming out soon that's available for preview here:
Based on internal testing people are really liking the updated web page so the goal is to try to finish it off today/tomorrow so that by Monday we can switch the DNS settings over and point the domain to the new website :)
Hope this helps anyone looking to get into Programmatic SEO!
On Feb 14th-ish we launched a coming soon page for our thesaurus of brands:
After short marketing campaigns via Reddit, Polywork, and IndieHackers we were able to attract over 400 visitors in about a week and had 30+ signups!
We decided to pursue a MVP-style launch at the start of March.
Little did we know Webflow has a learning curve.
Yesterday we launched the website even though it still has lorem ipsum on it! XD
However because we launched we've been able to learn new things about the idea that we would've just been pondering if we hadn't shared what we worked on.
--------MVP v2 Launch Stats:
You can view our web stats here: https://plausible.io/brandesaurus.com?period=year
We haven't had any new email sign ups (which is worrying us the most)
We've been hearing that people see the potential in the site however they want a much better UI / UX.
Thus we've invested in a Startup Webflow theme - https://webflow.com/templates/html/prometheus-saas-website-template
Our goal is implement the new theme on the site, optimize for email captures with the new site, implement better UTM tracking, and then perform a ProductHunt launch before the end of the month.
Lastly from a marketing lense, we're hoping to grow our Polywork and Reddit traffic more (Reddit more than Polywork due to the consistency of the Reddit traffic versus the spikeyness of the Polywork traffic).
A week ago I launched a coming soon page for https://brandesaurus.com/
The purpose of Brandesaurus is too accent my main branding startup (for us brandesaurus is a marketing tool but for our target audience it's a research tool)
IMMEDIATELY after launching the coming soon page I was happy to have gotten it up within a day however then I realized I needed to drive traffic to the page so it could begin collecting emails.
PS You can see brandesaurus's analytics here: https://plausible.io/brandesaurus.com/
------PAUSE RIGHT HERE--------
Many times when entrepreneurs want to start a new project they either go all in with development (which can cause problems later) or they try to get early validation signals that the project is worth continuing to work on.
My team decided to go with validation experiments so we could track at what point the idea wouldn't be worth continuing.
With a goal of 250 visitors and 5 emails we set out to start marketing (this is a low conversion rate but we didn't want to spend hours/days designing or use a template like we normally do)
------UNPAUSE RIGHT HERE--------
The channels that I'd heard have helped super new ideas to drive traffic are:
Reddit
Product Hunt
IndieHackers
Polywork
(I always try to add one new platform to my list so that I keep my marketing mindset flexible)
My team had determined our experiment would last 2 weeks which would be enough time for about 5-10 posts on each platform (depending upon community engagement).
The interesting part is that after 3 Reddit Posts, 1 Polywork post, and 4 IndieHacker posts we were able to overachieve on our core goal netting us over 20 emails compared to the 5 we were seeking.
Below are details on what I feel we did right and how I feel we'll continue using these platforms to help grow visitors to brandesaurus:
Please note everything below could be wrong these are guesses based on a small marketing experiment for a brand new idea.
------REDDIT
-Setup profile with a fun avatar, background, description, and included link to brandesaurus but put value proposition as the name for the link
-Made sure to build up an account with at least 50 commenting karma before posting
-First post didn't have any links and was focused on the community
-Second post included link and asked for community to roast landing page
-Replied to comments on my posts
Reddit posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/logodesign/comments/10zqhv3/any_and_all_feedback_appreciated_for_this_logo/
------INDIEHACKERS
-Created Brandesaurus coming soon post
-Created post asking how to find early adopters
-Commented and shared link as an example on various posts related to coming soon/traffic/visitors
-Added Brandesaurus as a product to my profile
-Created initial roast my landing page post
-Replied to comments on my posts
IndieHacker posts:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-internet-doesnt-have-a-brand-thesaurus-so-i-decided-to-make-one-5914c6763f
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-do-you-find-early-adopters-for-a-coming-soon-page-5b31979771
------POLYWORK
-Created account and explored platform
-Made an opportunity post looking for beta testers asking people to Roast
-Replied to comments on my post
Polywork Post:
https://www.polywork.com/opportunities/an13pmIy?autofocus=true#gig-comment-section
Brandesaurus was also shared to Twitter and Mastadon however I don't have any signals that show that these two channels have been driving any major traffix.
------OUTCOME------
By doing the above we were able to get 20+ emails and 250+ visitors.
With 2-3 weeks left before the website's soft launch our team now has time and flexibility to optimize what's been working but also to try a few experiments on new channels.
------WHAT'S NEXT------
Our next goal is hitting 400 visitors and 15 emails within 3 weeks of launching the main site (aiming for launching in the first week of March).
To perform this experiment we'll need to finish the core site, maintain pre-launch marketing, and then launch plus market the v0 version of the site.
We've been gathering a lot of brand data while also listening to feedback from potential users. It seems that people like the base idea enough to engage with our very early brand, however, the site doesn't build enough trust with the viewer to get emails at a good conversion rate.
To grow on site engagement we'll need to:
-Update the Coming Soon Page
-Refine our own branding
-Amp up our Brand analysis with unique content
-Create a launch marketing strategy
This'll most likely translate into:
-Updating the coming soon page's front end every 2-3 days
-Talking to my main startup's design/art team to see about the branding
-Researching more about unique brand breakdown content we can offer users
-Documenting then executing on the launch strategy (combination of coda and airtable)
---Continuing to share on Reddit, IndieHackers, and Polywork every 2-3 days
-----Reddit: 1 post every 2-3 days + 5-10 comments per day
-----IndieHackers: 1 post every 2-3 days (switching between general and product oriented) + 3 comments per day
-----Polywork: 1 post per week + (need to figure out commenting)
---Expanding to Discord, Facebook Groups, and LinkedIn Groups (while we have flexibility in the marketing team from hitting our goals)
Thanks for reading!
Core links so you don't have to scroll:
https://brandesaurus.com/
https://plausible.io/brandesaurus.com/
-
1
Great reading!
Speaking of Reddit I really recommend setting up Surfkey.io by @JohanCutych to always find relevant subreddits, threads and comments.
-
2
Thank you for reading!
We totally use Surfkey for research! It's a little hard to get started with but as we refine our Reddit marketing we're sure our pipeline will lean more on Surfkey.
Do you have any tips or tricks for Surfkey?
-
1
Once you set up your keywords and see the first batch of results it's usually clear if you did it right or not. Then it's just about tinkering the keywords and scoping down to specific subreddits.
There's supposed to be some AI support soon to help with relevancy though which should be good.
I'd recommend getting in touch with the founder Johan (johan@surfkey.io), he's happy to help with the setup via email or even live on a quick call.
-
1
Thank you for the advice!
-
-
-
Earlier this week I had an idea for a micro-tool/resource that would accent my main startup:
Creating the Internet's First Thesaurus of Brands aka - https://brandesaurus.com/
PS if you want to skip the reading and just see the analytics they're publicly available thanks to plausible being awesome: https://plausible.io/brandesaurus.com/
My team liked the idea so much that after a few hours of talking with people in my main startup I decided to get started and not look back!
Day 1: 0 Visitors
-Validated idea internally by asking founders, managers, and interns in my main startup
-Researched the "best" platform to get started on and decided to use Webflow
-Signed up for Webflow's free trial and started messing around
-Researched how to structure a programmatic SEO website/product
Day 2: 31 Visitors
-Launched coming soon page
-Began sharing idea with coming soon page link on IndieHackers, Reddit, Twitter, and Mastadon
-Got first email submission which made me want to push harder
-Started documenting how to organize marketing
Day 3: 8 Visitors
-Primary startup had a major client event that needed my full attention
-Was able to squeeze in an interview with a potential user (they were excited but wanted more visuals)
Day 4: 31 Visitors
-Asked for feedback on IndieHackers and Reddit
-Signed up for polywork and created an account plus added a post
Day 5: 28 Visitors
-Shared link where relevant on IndieHackers and Reddit
-Made posts on Twitter and Mastadon with appropriate hashtags
Day 6 (Today): 8 Visitors
-Checked analytics
-Started writing this post XD
Plans going into this week:
-Right now the goal is to get 250 visitors and 5 emails before soft launching the site
-Based on the traffic analytics sharing in IndieHacker, Reddit, and Polywork communities is working so we'll continue with this
-Since communities are working will probably also try Discord and larger forum-like platforms
-With 100 visitors but only 2 emails this could mean the base idea interests people but the page itself needs to build more trust and value to grow the conversion rate
Goals for Next Week:
-150+ Visitors
-3 emails
-Update coming soon page's design
Links so you don't have to scroll back up :)
Main site: https://brandesaurus.com/
Analytics: https://plausible.io/brandesaurus.com/
The other day my co-founder and I noticed the internet doesn't have a database of branding information that goes deeper than logos:
The site will be developed for designers, marketers, and entrepreneurs who need to do research!
For designers - they'll be able to breakdown brand colors, typography, and graphic design to help rapidly enhance branding for projects their working on
For marketers - they'll be able to see competitor channels plus content the competitors have used to gain traction in the market
For entrepreneurs - they'll be able to see different levels of brands to help align their branding tactics to where their business app!
Appreciate any and all feedback on the coming soon page!
PS Project was started 2 days and I just learned how to use the IndieHacker Product Page Features XD
Comment