On Sep 12, 2012, @kylefox sent me a DM that changed my life forever.
It resulted in me changing my career, earning more money, meeting most of my current friends, growing an audience online, and (ultimately) building @TransistorFM.
Kyle asked if I wanted to start a podcast.
I should mention: Kyle and I had only hung out a few times in-person.
I'd recently moved away from Edmonton, and hadn't talked to him in a few months.
If he hadn't taken the initiative to reach out, my life might have turned out a lot different! 😜
Initially, we thought it'd be a podcast about Product Management (we were both PMs at the time).
But, it quickly became clear that we were both interested in building and launching our own products.
(This was the 🌱 of things to come)
We decided to call the podcast "Product People."
Kyle made the artwork, and we started planning our initial episodes.
(Check out our list of "celebs" we wanted to interview! 😜)
Neither of us started with a good microphone.
We recorded our first call on Skype using our Apple headphones.
When you’re in a strong market, and it’s a good fit for you as a founder, finding good distribution channels shouldn’t be a mystery.
If you know something about the market, you should have a pretty good idea on how you’ll reach people!
I get questions like this all the time: “What are the best marketing channels I can use to reach my market?”
How should I know!? It’s *your* market. You should be the expert! (That’s the point).
What works in my market likely won’t work for you.
If don’t have any ideas on how you’re going to reach people, that’s a bad sign. (You probably don’t belong in that market)
What kinds of tweets do they like?
What podcasts do they listen to?
What search terms do they use?
What newsletters do they read?
What events do they go to?
The biggest problem I see from SaaS who target SMBs is they’re not getting enough trials.
(You'll need more than you think).
Every product category is different, but let's say your plans are $39/month - $99/month, and you ask for a credit card upfront.
We'll assume trial-to-paid conversion is 40% - 60%.
You'll want at least 200-300 trials per month. (More if you have lower-priced plans).
I realize there are lots of other variables:
- # of founders and employees you have
- what you want out of the business
- cost to acquire a customer
- churn %, and LTV
But generally:
If you're bootstrapping SaaS, you're likely going to need hundreds of trials per month.
Increasingly, I'm skeptical of this copywriting advice: "Focus on benefits over features."
In practice, it makes the copy longer, more abstract, and harder to parse for potential customers.
When folks land on your website, they just want to know: "What does this company do?"
When people are looking for a solution, do they search:
"Easily manage your company's financial future on all your devices."
or do they type in:
"Accounting software?"
They're looking for ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE. Tell them what you do right away.
There are so many websites now that are so desperate *not* to talk about features, that you can read the whole thing and still not know what the company does!
"How many people want what you're selling?"
"How much are they willing to pay?"
"What does it cost to serve them?"
"Do they want to buy it from you?"
"How often will they show up?"
"How can you reach them?"
Your success in business will be determined by these questions.
Everyone thinks that marketing is the hardest part of the equation.
But in reality, it's "How many people want what you're selling?" It's finding a market that has strong demand.
The best markets have a healthy amount of word-of-mouth: people naturally talk about certain products/services because there's strong inherent demand.
The reason people will share *your* product/service is they like the way *you* do it.
Tired of these tired takes that say “inevitably, open standards like podcasting must one day be consolidated into a single platform controlled by a megacorp.”
Fuck that!
Millions of people read sites based on RSS every day. No one controls the CMS, monetization, or client.
In a closed ecosystem, the spoils almost always go to the reigning platform owner.
In an open ecosystem, the benefits are more evenly distributed.
Don’t think creators haven’t learned lessons from the record industry giving control to iTunes, or newspapers giving control to FB.
Initially, a closed-platform will entice creators with the promise of more exposure, more money, more targeting, more analytics.
But invariably, as soon as they have sufficient leverage, they’ll apply downward pressure on creators. They’ll squeeze the ecosystem for every drop.