bearingfruitfortis
New member
In December 2021, I launched a Marketing Playbook for entrepreneurs and made about $1000 in sales in 24 hours. I want to share this story because people I talk to are very skeptical about talking to people before launching anything. But I did great only because I tried my bests to interact with the community. Here's how it went.
The failure
It all started with that failure. In August 2021 I launched a tutorial How to find a Tech Co-Founder. To basically no one. I did not plan the event properly. I did not interact with people. I just posted a product and announced that I did it. Build it and they’ll come. Hahaha.
I sold 3 copies. But then traffic stopped. That was when my friend Dagobert, started really killing it on social media with “marketing” memes. The most common plot was an entrepreneur who loves building features but gets no sales because they don't do marketing.
Customer Interviews
It gave me an idea that there are many entrepreneurs out there who have no idea how and when to do “the marketing”. In the next 2 weeks, I literary talked to 25 entrepreneurs and asked a simple question: how the business was going. I was upset to find out that most were…well, without any customers at all!
“Why are you so focused on X if you have no customers?” — I was blunt enough to ask. And every time I heard almost the same reply: “Huh, but we don’t know what else we can do to get those customers”. That was my second ping.
Then I posted that I was about to write a Marketing Playbook — and this post got the highest engagement in months plus brought me 40 new followers in a single day. That was a final stroke and I set out to build my info-product.
The content
I have my share of experience in marketing. I did quite well with an agency business (took it to one of the top-10 nationwide) and not so bad with retail + e-comm+ online school ( $3.8M annual revenue). But I know for certain that most "marketing cases" are based on big companies' stories. Why? because everyone knows that. And it takes more effort to track successful regular folks. But here's the catch: if you describe the tools, hacks, and strategies that work for companies like Apple, PayPal, Netflix, Google who have $65M to spend on initial customer acquisition (that was PayPal's budget according to Elon Musk) who can say for certain that it all will work if we have much less than $65M?
Basically, all marketing resources I’ve managed to find are focused on cases that are either outdated or irrelevant to the indie community. I decided I’d change the trend and feature all the amazing entrepreneurs I’ve been following on social media and come to admire.
Here are the bare facts:
Timing
— I spent 3 full weeks putting together the product
— 1 week — reaching out to founders featured in the Playbook and asking for their feedback.
— 3 days to set up (more on it later)
Altogether — 5 weeks
Final check (the set up)
— I put together a Gumroad page
— set up email automation with ConvertKit (sends out thank you email and an email requesting to rate the product, sent in 10 days after the first one)
— went over my info-product launch checklist
Launch Day
— I offered a big discount for everyone who shares the launch announcement
— I gave away 98 codes
— I got 41 sales within the first 24 hours ($898)
The takeaway
Overall, I believe I proved that it's very much possible to start selling your product from day 1 when you create it based on real conversations with real people. It doesn't matter if you don't make it to $20K or $10K. But even several sales at the launch day that will happen due to the community support will inspire you to keep at it and pave your way to further achievements.
The failure
It all started with that failure. In August 2021 I launched a tutorial How to find a Tech Co-Founder. To basically no one. I did not plan the event properly. I did not interact with people. I just posted a product and announced that I did it. Build it and they’ll come. Hahaha.
I sold 3 copies. But then traffic stopped. That was when my friend Dagobert, started really killing it on social media with “marketing” memes. The most common plot was an entrepreneur who loves building features but gets no sales because they don't do marketing.
Customer Interviews
It gave me an idea that there are many entrepreneurs out there who have no idea how and when to do “the marketing”. In the next 2 weeks, I literary talked to 25 entrepreneurs and asked a simple question: how the business was going. I was upset to find out that most were…well, without any customers at all!
“Why are you so focused on X if you have no customers?” — I was blunt enough to ask. And every time I heard almost the same reply: “Huh, but we don’t know what else we can do to get those customers”. That was my second ping.
Then I posted that I was about to write a Marketing Playbook — and this post got the highest engagement in months plus brought me 40 new followers in a single day. That was a final stroke and I set out to build my info-product.
The content
I have my share of experience in marketing. I did quite well with an agency business (took it to one of the top-10 nationwide) and not so bad with retail + e-comm+ online school ( $3.8M annual revenue). But I know for certain that most "marketing cases" are based on big companies' stories. Why? because everyone knows that. And it takes more effort to track successful regular folks. But here's the catch: if you describe the tools, hacks, and strategies that work for companies like Apple, PayPal, Netflix, Google who have $65M to spend on initial customer acquisition (that was PayPal's budget according to Elon Musk) who can say for certain that it all will work if we have much less than $65M?
Basically, all marketing resources I’ve managed to find are focused on cases that are either outdated or irrelevant to the indie community. I decided I’d change the trend and feature all the amazing entrepreneurs I’ve been following on social media and come to admire.
Here are the bare facts:
Timing
— I spent 3 full weeks putting together the product
— 1 week — reaching out to founders featured in the Playbook and asking for their feedback.
— 3 days to set up (more on it later)
Altogether — 5 weeks
Final check (the set up)
— I put together a Gumroad page
— set up email automation with ConvertKit (sends out thank you email and an email requesting to rate the product, sent in 10 days after the first one)
— went over my info-product launch checklist
Launch Day
— I offered a big discount for everyone who shares the launch announcement
— I gave away 98 codes
— I got 41 sales within the first 24 hours ($898)
The takeaway
Overall, I believe I proved that it's very much possible to start selling your product from day 1 when you create it based on real conversations with real people. It doesn't matter if you don't make it to $20K or $10K. But even several sales at the launch day that will happen due to the community support will inspire you to keep at it and pave your way to further achievements.