My 4th marketing week in review
by MacksHello everyone, I'm checking in again with another marketing week update for my invoicing app Cakedesk!
Previous updates:
Had my first sale since launch
Last weekend, somebody bought a license for Cakedesk which is my first sale since my launch!
This user downloaded the app and bought it on the same day as far as I can tell, without even having reached the limits of the free version yet, which is interesting.
Posted a short to TikTok, YouTube and Instagram every day
This week I pre-recorded some shorts on the weekend and posted one every day.
Curated beautiful invoice designs
I created a page on the Cakedesk website to showcase some great-looking invoice designs: Invoice design inspiration
I promoted this collection on the graphic design subreddit which gave me some traffic, although none of these visitors converted into downloads as far as I can tell.
I also submitted it to muz.li. Not sure how long the wait times are there but I'm hoping it will get picked up at some point.
Created Twitter account for Cakedesk
Since TikTok is going OK for promoting Cakedesk, I created a dedicated Twitter account for Cakedesk: @cakedeskapp
It will definitely take a while for this account to become a relevant traffic source but why not start early!
Started outreach to bloggers
I created a press kit for Cakedesk and started reaching out to bloggers who might consider covering Cakedesk.
I'm using Streak CRM (this is a referral link that gives us both extra free quota) to create a pipeline of people to reach out to.
My cold email:
My pipeline:
Adjusted landing page wording
Hoping to show off more benefits on my landing page, I changed the wording a little bit.
Left is before, right is after:
Week in review
Getting a first sale was really nice!
I'm also starting to feel more and more how crowded this market is that I'm in.
Also: every day I didn't market the app, I didn't have very many visitors on my site, so I definitely need to keep active.
Moving forward, I want to keep posting shorts regularly and try to get bloggers to write about Cakedesk (or write guest articles myself).
I'm also thinking about maybe trying a Product Hunt launch. Even though I don't think my target audience is there, the attention from PH could be helpful in getting some press.
If you have any marketing tips for me, I would love to hear from you!
Hope you all have a great weekend! :)
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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:
- 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"
- 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.
- 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. :-)
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Hi @tagawa! Wow, thanks so much for the detailed feedback. You providing examples specifically for my page is super helpful and you have a lot of very good points!
## 1. Target Audience
You're right, the "freelancer" niche is probably too broad. Originally I was targeting the "freelance craftsman" because of the ability to customize using HTML/CSS. As far as I can tell, all my customers so far have been buying the app for this ability.
I've been having a hard time finding more of these types of users, which is why I broadened the messaging a bit. Maybe I need to rethink this.
In general, I'm thinking of the following differentiating features that my app has compared to others:
- Highly customizable due to HTML&CSS features (speaks to the technical craftsmen, who care a lot about the presentation of their brand, even on invoices)
- Less risky to adopt for beginners (free to start and no monthly fees)
- Desktop software that is fast and works offline (could speak to people who value good usability and performance)
- Ability to create very detailed proposals and invoices because you can nest invoice items and add rich text descriptions (not sure who specifically this speaks to but some users have mentioned this in their onboardings)
- All data is stored privately on your own device (speaks to super privacy-aware people, some users mentioned this as well)
## 2. Product Benefits
Now that you say it, it seems so obvious. I can shorten a bunch of wordings on the site and make them sound more effortless.
"Try it now!" does sound a lot better than "Download now"!
Also you're right about Windows/macOS. I put it there because I didn't know where else to put it but I can find a better place!
Thanks so much for this!
## 3. Pain Point
I think this is the part where I'm having the hardest time. My early users who I onboarded personally (and ended up buying the app) all were excited about the HTML/CSS templating features.
They found me through Twitter and apparently the app was shared around a bit in a community of Kirby CMS users.
Since then, I've had a hard time finding more of these types of users. When marketing the app on Reddit and TikTok, I get the feeling that most people there don't care about the customizability. But they seem to like the proposal features that make it easy to break down a project into small pieces.
Part of my thinking is also: every freelancer needs to write invoices. So if I can get freelancers who are just getting started, I think my app could be attractive because it doesn't have monthly fees or anything like that.
So I'm a bit wishy-washy at the moment because I'm not so sure who I'm targeting and who to go after:
- Is it the craftsmen?
- Is it people who like the proposal functionality?
- Is it beginner freelancers?
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Thanks again for the super-specific suggestions. I'll definitely be re-reading your comment several times and making adjustments and thinking more about all the things you said!
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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.
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Hi Petr,
thanks a lot for the thoughts and feedback! We definitely have some German applications that create invoices and also do the accounting. This is something that's in the back of my head but it's a huge set of features to take on.
My current users either have a separate tool just for accounting (with those tools I could also interface via APIs / file exports) or have their tax lawyers do the accounting for them.
But yeah, it might come to the point where people are telling me that they need certain accounting features in order for Cakedesk to be interesting to them.
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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.
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Thanks Eric!
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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?
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Thanks! I don't think I'll focus on one over the other since I just record the video once and then post it everywhere
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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.
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Thanks Tom!
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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.
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Thanks Ryan! I'm using CleanShot X and its built-in background tool: https://cleanshot.com/
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Awesome. Bought it and used it, thanks!
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lets goo
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Title ideas:
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Beautiful Freelancer Invoices - Instantly!
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The Instant Invoice for Freelancers
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Freelancer Invoices That Convert more Buyers!
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Freelancer Invoices That Sell!
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Freelancer Invoices That Turn One-Off Customers into Regulars
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Turn Your Freelancer Invoices into Lead Generation Magnets!
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Lead Generation Invoices for Freelancers
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It's good to see how you do week in and week out. Look forward to seeing how things continue in the coming weeks!
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Thanks Jamie, glad you're enjoying the posts!
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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.
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Those look like very cool products! They target bigger agencies though. Right now, my product is more focused on the individual freelancer.
Maybe if my own freelancing business evolves into something bigger, I will build something like the above products 😋
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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.
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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.
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Thanks @AverageJoeDeveloper!
This CRM I'm using here is Streak CRM for GMail. It has a free plan which is why I chose it :)
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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?
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Thanks @Mundia! :)
I mostly just searched "invoicing tool for freelancers" or something like that on Google and all these listicle articles came up. On most of those pages, the author is linked with a way to contact them. In other cases, the site itself has a "Contact us" section somewhere.
So I just manually went through all those articles and noted down the authors.
So far, I got two responses from sites and they're telling me that I can buy a review or mention from them.
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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!
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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.
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Hi @adeinov! Thanks!!
Actually the customer reached out to me because he had a support request. From that, I kind of learned why he purchased (ability to customize using HTML/CSS). Unfortunately, a conversation did not develop with him, so maybe I should reach out directly again to get some more info.
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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 :)
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Haha thanks so much Harish! Thanks for the encouragement and I'm glad you're getting some value from these posts :)
I have tried "cold-tweeting" freelancers a little bit. When I was doing this, I wasn't very specific in my targeting but I think if I can go more narrow, the cold outreach could be more effective. Thanks for the suggestion :)
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