What is the biggest lesson you've learned marketing for a startup?
Richard Fang
78 replies
This could be your own or working under someone else's startup 😊
Mine is probably working on SEO early on when you're first working on your startup. SEO takes time to get going, and if your website is completely new, you can't expect results straight away.
Also, you don't need 'paid' tools to get going. I did my initial research with a free trial with SEMrush and then subsidized my results over time with Ubersuggest.
Replies
Rolf Mulder@rolfmulder
Here's a few.
Manage expectations.
SEO isn't "free traffic".
Choose your channels based on (1) your sales process: self service or handover to sales team (2) ARPU (3) Are you building in a new category with low active intent.
Branding is more important than you think (look at Fast).
Your plan should include what you WON'T do this coming quarter/year and why.
Make sure you know your numbers.
If your company is venture funded, connect with investors to manage their expectations.
Stay away from lengthy product onboarding exercises, hardly any impact.
Marketing automation in early stage b2b has poor ROI: expensive software, large impact on content creation, you need at least a dedicated marketing ops person.
TALK TO CUSTOMERS.
In B2B early stages: Google analytics won't help you: Build a state machine to direct your decision making.
Most of the time, start by working backwards from the transaction to the top of funnel. #1 position on SERP only has 20% CTR.
A/B testing is mostly useless in early stages, only do it top funnel: variations of ads.
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LLC Toolkit
All the marketing tools are surely important, but the biggest lesson I learned is to talk to people that have a need and could use your product to solve their problems. Being empathetic and going above and beyond when you do user research.
There's a story behind every person you talk to, and as you build out your product, this kind of research will help you narrow down whom do you want to market to.
LLC Toolkit
95Travel Kit
That your marketing should also scale up equally as the product does.
Biggest lesson is: you can probably start small and organic, no need to find a crazy viral strategy right away. Wether it's by being active in communities or growing a social audience, it's enough to get some regular sales. Great thing to have before trying more scalable channel.
95Travel Kit
@dagorenouf I think this is a good point - no need to find a super growth hack. Just build it slowly over-time
Zappi Ad Predictor
@dagorenouf Product Hunt is a really nice community to be part of - but other than PH, I've not had much luck with communities! A lot of them seem quite selfish, with lots of people just pushing their own stuff. Where have you found that's been rewarding?
@nik_hazell Indiehackers and r/saas are really good.
@dagorenouf We're going small too (after we hone our user personas) because we want to make sure we understand and have solutions built to reduce customer friction before we have a "Big Launch" . We're burning on a very tight budget, so have a lot of economic restraints to be able to respond to things which pop up in this early, early stage.
So, yeah, we want content to help our users understand so they don't just abandon.
@andrea_brice That sounds very reasonable Andrea. Good luck on your journey
Product Hunt Launch Checklist
SaaS who don't spend on content marketing struggles getting new customers
My biggest lesson was marketing is not a stand alone. For good marketing, I need good SEO, for SEO, I need long form content. For long form content, I need good copy writing. For good copy skills, I need excellent english skills. I must just go back to school for english lessons lol.
@gogloballakshmi you could always use Grammarly, I use it on a daily basis to cross check my grammar.
@wael_khattar1 Thanks Wael, I'm thinking of getting the paid version soon.
Baseline
@wael_khattar1 @gogloballakshmi I recommend it, I think it mainly helps me write faster since I can just type away and it complains when something doesn't make sense. It's not perfect though, but it helps.
@wael_khattar1 @gogloballakshmi @gillisig Yes absolutely, I have been using grammarly for over 2 years now. The best part is that it sums up all the mistakes together so you can just go through them at once when you are done writing. But as Gilli mentioned we have to be vigilant while implementing those suggestions.
FromNotion
Hey Richard, the biggest lesson I've learned marketing for startups is that one launch won't usually cut it. It's becoming increasingly common for startups to launch and relaunch their products multiple times. Startups have to relaunch like a pro: again and again.
95Travel Kit
@shashcoffe I think this is really true - which is why i think big features should always be launched like as if it's their own main product
@shashcoffe is that because it's a marketing tactic, or because you get to know the customer more and build something again that better suits that? My company that just launched on PH today deals with the latter. I'd be curious about any feedback you might have there.
FromNotion
@alexander_moen
Of course, it's because I get to know the customer more and build something again that better suits that. And I think you're doing well.
FromNotion
@richardfliu Got it. 🙌
The biggest lesson I learned was the importance of finding targeted traffic. Just because 1 in 100 people should statistically convert, doesn't mean your traffic will behave accordingly. It's perfectly possibly to send 300 people to your site who hate your product. Conversely, with good targeted ads and SEO, I've seen double digit conversion rates where there were just tumbleweeds before.
SEOJuice
I think the main insight that I've learned is - consistency is better than being a hit. You can get Reddit frontpage and it will drive X sales, but that's not repeatable, better build up your sales capital over time with community building, engaging, helping etc.
95Travel Kit
@vadim_kravcenko Yeah 100% You need to be able to drive a consistent funnel.
Nobody cares what you're building, everyone cares if you solve their problem. I kept talking about features instead of the end result for the user.
Neuton AutoML
The lesson we learnt from our startup is that you don't need huge investments right away to test your hypotheses. You should start small and scale when you find your market fit. Don't go deep into developing various features you think are important unless you hear your PAYING customers asking for them. Also, don't be afraid to try new things that can seem crazy or irrelevant. And don't wait with PR for too long until you think your product is perfect. Release immediately when it's good enough.
keypup.io
I totally agree with you about SEO. SaaS market is a specific one, keywords search takes a lot of time because you have to put yourself in the user's head, how will they find your product? My biggest lesson is that the way I used to do marketing for NGOs and associations completely differs from SaaS marketing. I had to learn a whole new marketing! So flexibility is key.
Zappi Ad Predictor
@cica_laure_mbappe 100% - it's ridiculous how much your approach needs to change based on the specific use-case, I'm not surprised that NGOs and SaaS are very different!
(Also, "Plant lover" is a great bio 😊🌴🌳)
95Travel Kit
@cica_laure_mbappe Oh that's interesting! So what elements were different marketing a NGO if you don't mind me asking 😊
keypup.io
@richardfliu Building an audience. I think the way to reach people is totally different. Biggest fear for the NGOs beneficiaries was the anxiety of being alone. For SaaS users, it's data security. So I was more "human" in my strategies, whereas now I'm more data-centered.
keypup.io
@nik_hazell yup, but it's great to learn new stuff ;) Haha thanks!
I would say talking to the potential and existing clients (if you already have any) and more importantly - listening to what they are actually saying.
Hi, the SEO thing is super difficult for me. How are you doing it? Are you writing blog articles? Or do you follow a different approach?
95Travel Kit
@timz_flowers I did a lot of keyword research and then tailored my blogs around it. I am not going to lie, I spent a month doing this when I first launched Yought's website and haven't really touched it since.
However some of my articles are on the first / second page of Google for certain keywords and regularly brings traffic to my website even though I've ventured into other things. Just from a month's work (doing key word research + creating the blogs), I get around 1 to 2k views a month just from the blogs alone.
The goal is to find long-tail keywords (let's say 3+ keywords) with a low / medium competition. Also the traffic should have at least a minimum per a month (like 1k +). Obviously you can't go for really competitive + keywords that have millions of views so you have to go from the low-end first and make your way up.
I definitely should do more SEO but with so many other things to do now, it's harder to spend time to work on this but this is how I initially built it up. Definitely a lot of time to do it when you first launch so I'd defnitely set up a foundation initiailly but you can always start whenever.
Results take a while so you're playing a long game
Zappi Ad Predictor
@timz_flowers @richardfliu Hey Richard! Where do you share your blogs? Do you think the location/host makes a big difference, or is it really just the content that's important?
95Travel Kit
@timz_flowers @nik_hazell Just on my startup's website - i think it's mainly the content since our website's DA is pretty low still.
@timz_flowers @richardfliu Plz tell me some high DA Website where i share my blog
@timz_flowers you have to do keyword research and write a unique content, keep an eye on your competitors.
Plezi
Hi Richard,
Totally agree with you!
Overmore, I would say "talk to people". Talk to your people : your colleagues from sales team and customer team, but also directly to your leads and clients.
This is how I do: every 1st of the month (except if the first of the month is a Saturday or Sunday 😂), I ask one person from the customer team and one person from the sales team to invite me to a call (or several).
Quite easy, no need so much time, really efficient! It allows to avoid having one's nose to the grindstone (is this expression only French or does it make sense in English? 🤔)
Have a beautiful day,
Lisa
There's often so much noise, that we often feel compelled to adopt certain methods, styles and voices of communication. Instead, we need to build a strategy ground up; starting with what your brand is, what it tries to evoke and then going micro about the nitty gritties of the platforms, communications pegs.
@andrea_brice honestly sounds like the right way to go about it! patience gets difficult - i completely get it.
on another note, i'd really like to learn about what approach you are taking to creating "how to" gifs and videos. it's something i think i need to do for my product too!
@tanya_desai Actually, to your point right here, my creative leads are making sure I "rein" myself in until she's finished working with the 3 profiles of our users. It's so hard to wait. I want to just jump in there, throw some key words out, go! Go! GO!
I've taken up still live photography to try to keep myself in check. I'm also focusing on creating "how to" .gifs & videos since I've learned my usability testers aren't reading instructions.
So, 100% what you said.
A good marketing does not feel like marketing. It's a subconscious process of building relationships, creating quality content and A/B testing everything you come across with a non-intrusive approach.
Project management OS
If you are a product company. The best marketing strategy would be to build product around your customer.
If you are into service sector get letter of intent (interest) from early believers - mostly big players. It will help on quick traction.
Build fast, involve all, share result and fail early.
Your customers will be integral part of your product strategy and will be supportive throught initial push and ups and downs. As a result you won't end up with a product your customer don't give a shit.
All other marketing and sales efforts will follow early traction and will help build successful business on top of it.
teQatlas
Draw portraits of your future clients and be very honest!
95Travel Kit
@tasha_dziatkovskaya Haha I love this!
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@anupamapanchal IME, it was vanity for seed round, meaningful for VCs. The trick is to do both ;)