Marketing: what shall i do next

Discussions
#1

Hi,

I am about to launch my project named Touchdown.

Before starting development I collected almost 50 emails (with coming soon page), some of the subscribers were very interested in the project.

I invited all of them for private beta launch - I wanted to get feedback: about 15 signed up - but none actively uses my project.

Please advice some techniques how to increase trafic or where I can find potential customers.

What I did wrong? Maybe you can point me what I did wrong, so I can avoid next time.

Thanks!

#2

I think your best bet right now is talking to your users. Ask them why they didnā€™t stick around. Maybe your onboarding process could be improved, maybe the app doesnā€™t solve a pain point well enough for them, maybe they were expecting something different.

1 Like
#3

Exactly what @intelligentcoder said - reach out to every one of the 50 who provided emails, and try to get them on the phone to find out what they need for this to be useful to them. Until you have a better idea of what your potential customers need, thereā€™s no point trying to find more ā€œpotential customersā€.

Good luck!

#4

@intelligentcoder @Steve_Metivier thanks, this totally makes sense: before looking for new leads find out why old left.

#5

You might not have collected enough emails. Ages back when I did a beta test and tracked my stats closely, I found that I needed to collect 10 times as many email addresses as the number of (high quality) testers I needed. So from 50 coming-soon signups, you can probably only expect 5 people giving you at least some feedback. Even those testers may not try it for very long.

This is the beta test postmortem I wrote up: How To Run A Beta Testā€¦ or not? Itā€™s from 2004, so much of it no longer applies, but I think the stats about how many people flake out & donā€™t participate despite signing up is still useful.

#6

You are absolutely right.

#7

Iā€™m in a similar position with a current project[1] Iā€™m working on, that I recently launched.

Every two weeks I send out a short note to the list of paying users and trial members with a bullet point list of new features / changes which Iā€™ve pushed live on the website. From that, I very often get feedback along the lines ā€œthis is almost what I need to ā€¦ā€, ā€œIt would be great if it also did Zā€, or ā€œdo you have any plants to do Yā€.

These emails are very short, written in first person from the founder and seem to have a very positive response so far. The current users know whatā€™s changed and the prospects see the constant updates and feel good about signing up, without feeling like they are getting constantly pressured by a sales pitch.

[1] Wizard-Industries - Amazon FBA Box Contents 2D Barcodes

#8

Just a heads up that your tour page scared me. I was hoping to learn how easy it isā€¦but thereā€™s 7 steps - thatā€™s way too much for me to handle. Sounds like Iā€™d be better off using another solution.

My suggestion is to try to make the setup / onboarding process much easier. Or perhaps seed it with default stuff so they donā€™t have to create everything from scratch. Get that tour page down to 3 steps.

Hope that helps!

#9

Thanks for valuable feedback!

If Iā€™ll replace ā€˜tourā€™ page with short video would it help, what do you think?
Wonā€™t it scary you anymore? :slight_smile:

#10

I donā€™t care whether itā€™s a video or article, it just needs to be succinct. I understand you want to give people step by step walkthroughs, but leave that for the help area after they signup. Before they signup, just show them how easy it is to get started, leaving out all the details.

#11

Thanks a lot! Very helpful.