
It’s Not a Feature Problem–Avoiding Startup Tarpits - dtawfik1
https://hackernoon.com/its-not-a-feature-problem-avoiding-startup-tarpits-7d5ec4b8c81b?hnews-today
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rpkoven
It seems I am one of those in the tarpit. I think the problem for us
engineering types is that there is so much bullshit around marketing, that
it's offputting to us. That's the case for me at least. If I spend time/money
on a feature, I know how long it will take, how much it will cost and when it
will be ready. Compared to this, marketing seems like burning money with
voodoo rituals. It doesn't help that marketing efforts are only meaningfully
measurable on a larger scale. If you're bootstrapping something yourself, you
don't have 12k to spend on marketing this month. You have $300. It's easy to
burn that $300 on adwords or facebook ads and get zero signups, with no
meaningful data whatsoever. The usual advice goes: hire a marketing expert.
But how do I hire a marketing expert that a) isn't full of it, b) will even
listen to me if my current budgets are in the hundreds of dollars? I think the
article is right on point, but I wish it pointed me to a way to deal with the
marketing problem.

~~~
dtawfik1
If talking to your clients mostly gets you new feature requests, it either
means your product isn't adequate yet or you're not asking the right
questions. In a nutshell you want to get of feel of:

\- What was going on in your clients' heads before they found you. What
precise problem were they trying to solve. This'll give you insights on
whether or not your product is adequate, and on how to phrase your landing
page.

\- How they went about to look for you. What google search they did, whether
they checked out reviews and how, etc. this is to better focus your SEO and
adwords campaigns.

\- What their decision process looked like. Was it a single person making the
call, or were several people involved? What objections got raised? What were
their key decision criteria? Raise them in your sales copy or in drip emails.

\- Are they talking about your product? Would they? This is to help you spot
segments with viral potential. Don't forget to politely ask for referrals if
applicable.

\- And, of course, feedback on the product itself. But don't spend too much
time on this, and don't promise anything or build expectations.

~~~
rpkoven
The product is adequate, because people are paying for it. It could be better,
hence the feature requests. The most important thing I always want to know is
how they found me — unfortunately, for all of them it was via a search for a
specific phrase. That doesn't help me at all: I am prominently featured for
that search phrase. No viral potential, this is a niche B2B product.

