My 4th marketing week in review

Hi. I'm enjoying following your journey of marketing experiments – thanks for sharing. In terms of feedback, a couple of things jumped out about your front page:

1. TARGET AUDIENCE

"The simple invoicing app for freelancers"

So you're targeting freelancers, huh? That's a huuuuuge audience and I assume most other invoicing apps are targeting the same people. It might help to differentiate yourself for a few reasons:

• Less competition.
• Easier for you to identify potential customers and go where they hang out.
• Higher likelihood of people thinking your offering is relevant to them.

On the last point, a similar example might be somebody producing mugs with dog pictures on. They could advertise as "Love animals? You'll love our mugs." (too broad, easy to overlook), or "Love dogs? You'll love our mugs." (better but still bland) or "Love poodles and coffee? You'll love our mugs." The most specific one is more likely to get a "yes that's me!" reaction from a few people who'll want to keep reading. I think it's better to aim for a strong reaction from a small audience than a weak reaction from a large audience.

Is there a particular type of freelancer that you've seen the best reaction from so far? That could be a starting point. Once you have your target audience you can then tweak your headline, also removing unnecessary words to make it snappier, e.g.:

"Simple invoicing for photographers"

2. PRODUCT BENEFITS

Your top bullet points say "create", "write", "create" which implies work and may put people off. A quick fix is to just drop these verbs, e.g.

• Beautiful invoices in seconds
• Proposals that win deals

For the third point, "Create your own invoice designs with HTML & CSS", this implies a lot of work! The freelancers I know are usually busy with client work and don't want to spend time creating something if it's not making money, but they do like being in control. Here are some other possible phrasings (change to US spelling if necessary):

• Fully customisable with HTML & CSS
• Elegant designs, fully customisable
• Multiple customisable templates

I'd argue that "For Windows and macOS" is a feature, not a benefit, and doesn't deserve that prime position. In any case, when I clicked "Download now" it automatically gave me the macOS file, so I don't need to know which platforms are supported.

Speaking of "Download now", you could experiment with "Try it now", which implies less work and commitment.

3. PAIN POINT

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I'd make sure you fully understand the pain point of your target audience and highlight that you can solve their problem. Go to where your target audience hang out and look for terms like "I wish", "frustrating", etc. to see what annoys them. Then use that insight to craft your messaging.

Within those target communities, you might get better engagement and feedback if you ask questions rather than just tell people about your app, such as: How are they currently dealing with the problem? What workarounds do they have? Has it always been that bad? What would the ideal solution look like?

If you're lucky, you could get one or two people who can help you one-to-one by explaining their problem, testing your app as you tweak it, and then providing a testimonial or sharing it in their network.

Sorry that's a bit long but I hope it helps! Oh, and one more thing… personally I'd drop the "I hope I'm contacting you at the right email address." line from your cold email. Shorter is better. :-)

Great post-series, I enjoy reading about marketing struggles that all of us have.

Anyways I wanted to tell you/ask you about the most critical feature that an invoicing app needs. Tax-related exports for government bodies! This is usually the reason why some local invoicing apps thrive, because global products don't care about country specifics... I saw that you are from Germany, does that mean you don't need anything like that? How easy it is to submit VAT-related reports every month/quarter to the government?

Is it your assumption that people use a separate app for creating invoices, while having another application to deal with taxes?

I just wanted to let you know, because I use a Czech invoicing app specifically for this reason, so I can export and sent my reports with one click.

Here are some steps you can take to review your 4th marketing week:

Review key metrics: Look at metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, lead generation, and customer acquisition to assess the success of your marketing efforts.

Analyze the results: Evaluate what worked well and what didn't, and make data-driven decisions to adjust your strategy accordingly.

Identify areas for improvement: Identify any areas where you can make changes to improve your marketing performance, such as optimizing your website, refining your messaging, or reaching out to a new target audience.

Collaborate with team members: Work with your marketing team to share insights and ideas, and to develop new strategies.

Set new goals: Based on your review, set new goals for the next week or month and develop a plan to achieve them.

Stay up to date: Keep learning about new marketing trends and best practices, and apply them to your strategy where relevant.

Really impressive review @macks

Great update - I wonder how the shorts & reels & tiktok game will play out over the long run. Do you think you'll focus in on one over the other?

Love the changes to the LP! I think you made a great decision with the new copy. The word "simple" is really eye catching and smart here.

I admire the hustle. Leaving no rock unturned. No excuses.

What tool are you using for the screenshots? The rounded borders, blurred background and drop shadow have a nice effect. I'd love to use that for my product screenshots.

lets goo

Title ideas:

• Beautiful Freelancer Invoices - Instantly!

• The Instant Invoice for Freelancers

• Freelancer Invoices That Convert more Buyers!

• Freelancer Invoices That Sell!

• Freelancer Invoices That Turn One-Off Customers into Regulars

• Turn Your Freelancer Invoices into Lead Generation Magnets!

• Lead Generation Invoices for Freelancers

It's good to see how you do week in and week out. Look forward to seeing how things continue in the coming weeks!

I think in the long term you should make this into something like spp.co or manyrequests.com than just a simple invoice designing tool. That would be very useful for freelancers and agencies.

Hi, do you have insights about what works well or not for shorts? I think they match my use case well, but so far I haven't gotten much traction.

Echoing what everyone else is saying — these updates are really great, keep it up!

Out of curiosity, where did you get your email pipeline CRM? I do a lot of outreach myself and something like that would be super helpful.

I had been patiently waiting for you to post week 4's marketing update 😹

Congratulations on your first sale!

Quick question, what was your process of finding leads of bloggers to contact and how you found their email addresses?

It's great to see how you're doing this week by week. Looking forward to seeing how things continue to grow in the coming weeks!

Great write-up Macks and keep going!! Did you reach out to the person who purchased? It would be really useful for you to find out why they purchased, who they are etc as it might give an indication of where you need to focus. One person is not enough to make any firm decisions of course, but I would definitely interview your early sales as they can help. You would do it under the guise of helping them to get set up and make the most of Cakedesk.

Man!! Shall I tell you something? You rock! I am learning a lot from your marketing week review posts. Thank you so much.

Suggestions : Have you tried cold emailing Freelancers? Maybe ask them to give it a try and give you a feedback on what they feel about your app. Ask them a few questions like what app they currently use and what features they miss in it, the facebook groups they participate in and so on. Hope this helps :)