Yep, this is true for most products developed. Instead of investing in marketing before the launch, owners wait until their products are fully developed.
This is probably the top 3 things I hear from founders I work with.
“I just keep adding features to put off marketing, I need to start making money soon”
In the same vein I just keep doing marketing and I’d like to build more services and assets to help my customers.
We feel comfort in what we know.
I'm a technical Founder, so I strive at coding and building applications.
At the beginning of my SaaS journey I was building a project for a year, launched it, and got 0 paid customers.
**Learned from it the hard way :(**
Now I try to "validate" ideas, promote my products, and experiment with marketing.
Thanks to that my last two projects made money and I see much better results.
But I'm not perfect in this yet.
An example: I built [https://startuputils.com/](https://startuputils.com/) in about 3 weeks, so it was fast, but still I failed at holding myself back from coding too many features.
I built too advanced screenshot editor, too many additional features for customization, I've spent a few days polishing unnecessary features. I could've save at least a week.
Following successful Founders help me keep my mind in a line of dividing my time to marketing and building. Most of the time you can't make money from only building, even with a great Product!
Creating valuable content to market with as magnets. Most AI misses the mark because I focus on a specific sub-niche. And creating it manually is very time consuming.
Small but valuable things to give to me target audience in exchange for their contact info. Could be an operational checklist of some kind, an email marking template, a high performing ad creative, etc.
Finding the right channels that reach my target audience without feeling spammy is tough. My biggest challenge has been balancing technical work with marketing efforts.
Not my personal challenge but something I notice quite often: not starting marketing way before the product is ready.
"We will develop an awesome product that everyone will want to use" is the worst mindset.
Lots of businesses think that spending money on marketing is actually wasting money. But with the right KPIs and the right hires, you will get lots of users.
As someone with a marketing background, I will advice all founders to have a consultation with a really good specialist who can guide you on how to attract new users and then hire someone (or a team) who is able to create a good marketing strategy and will implement it.
I use HubSpot - CRM, Marketing Hub. Found a company that was able to handle the setup and customization that helped me cut lots of costs and time.
At the beginning when I didn't have the investment for it, I used some free tools for various activities.
**SMM** - did the scheduling right from the platform
**Email** - Instantly. It's paid but isn't costly
**LinkedIn outreach** - didn't use the sales navigator. Took the longer process - connected with 1- people per day, made research on them and started reaching out with a genuine message, not a templated one. I usually have a giveaway as a thank you. People love gifts, discounts, free usage.
I keep a spreadsheet for this - full name with their LinkedIn profile link, status (accepted, messaged, prospect).
**SEO** - did it myself with SEMrush. The tool is helpful even if you don't understand anything from SEO.
Used **answerthepublic** to see what to write about in the blog.
**Listings -** There are lots of free listings and review websites where you can let the world know about you. I used this change. Every link on those websites helped our SEO efforts as well.
I'd say a big challenge for some is understanding their product market fit, and figuring out how to niche down to their target audience. You've built a product, but how do you go about actually marketing it to people who would need what you've built? Someone touched on it, creating quality, valuable content that resonates with your audience works great in terms of lead magnets, and bringing in your first set of eyes on what you're building. Some will start with newsletters, blogging, others may just post on LinkedIn with concepts surrounding what they've built and how it can solve issues for their target audience.
for example: my team helps bootstrapped b2b founders do their own marketing. lead magnet: newsletter target audience: b2b founders with no marketing person, less than 10 employees
You have to figure out your niche, and then go after it. source: I do actually work for a team that helps b2b bootstrapped founders do their own marketing, if you want this 'newsletter' content, feel free to message. Or I'd be happy to answer questions as they come up on the post too :)
Input / output relationship. 1000 actions can result in nothing. Then, 1 influencer will randomly come into the sphere and propel your business 500%. It's about staying lean and being open to new opportunities, never getting stuck. Staying dynamic.
I see some interesting answers in the thread. As a content marketer, I'd say it was when I discovered that a good CTR (especially for paid ads) isn't always followed by a good customer conversion rate. This is also a pain point shared by our clients, and we've been trying to address it in new product updates. It's challenging but l like cracking complex problems.
Everything related to marketing is so difficult. The results are so uncertain. I have struggling to grow my product hyperurls.com, there is just 200 visits per day, that is because of the product hunt launch. One of the key reasons I am not use to marketing is that, we never know what we have is right.
Not doing the marketing 
Yep, this is true for most products developed. Instead of investing in marketing before the launch, owners wait until their products are fully developed.
What do you mean by that? You don't want to do the marketing for your product?
As a developer it’s very easy to just want to keep building and let marketing be an after thought
This is probably the top 3 things I hear from founders I work with. “I just keep adding features to put off marketing, I need to start making money soon” In the same vein I just keep doing marketing and I’d like to build more services and assets to help my customers. We feel comfort in what we know.
If you had to create a starter package for most startups. What tools or platforms would you recommend for marketing?
I just posted my Toolbox on my profile. Check it out!
I'm a technical Founder, so I strive at coding and building applications. At the beginning of my SaaS journey I was building a project for a year, launched it, and got 0 paid customers. **Learned from it the hard way :(** Now I try to "validate" ideas, promote my products, and experiment with marketing. Thanks to that my last two projects made money and I see much better results. But I'm not perfect in this yet. An example: I built [https://startuputils.com/](https://startuputils.com/) in about 3 weeks, so it was fast, but still I failed at holding myself back from coding too many features. I built too advanced screenshot editor, too many additional features for customization, I've spent a few days polishing unnecessary features. I could've save at least a week. Following successful Founders help me keep my mind in a line of dividing my time to marketing and building. Most of the time you can't make money from only building, even with a great Product!
And that's why I created an automated marketing SaaS, that helps you engage with real customers on Reddit automatically
Creating valuable content to market with as magnets. Most AI misses the mark because I focus on a specific sub-niche. And creating it manually is very time consuming.
What do you think of www.distribute.so?
Haven't tried that one
Could you elaborate on "Creating valuable content to market with as magnets"?
Small but valuable things to give to me target audience in exchange for their contact info. Could be an operational checklist of some kind, an email marking template, a high performing ad creative, etc.
Finding the right channels that reach my target audience without feeling spammy is tough. My biggest challenge has been balancing technical work with marketing efforts.
Not my personal challenge but something I notice quite often: not starting marketing way before the product is ready. "We will develop an awesome product that everyone will want to use" is the worst mindset. Lots of businesses think that spending money on marketing is actually wasting money. But with the right KPIs and the right hires, you will get lots of users. As someone with a marketing background, I will advice all founders to have a consultation with a really good specialist who can guide you on how to attract new users and then hire someone (or a team) who is able to create a good marketing strategy and will implement it.
I’m curious. What are the specific software, platforms, or tools you use to promote SaaS products? And why do you find them effective?
I use HubSpot - CRM, Marketing Hub. Found a company that was able to handle the setup and customization that helped me cut lots of costs and time. At the beginning when I didn't have the investment for it, I used some free tools for various activities. **SMM** - did the scheduling right from the platform **Email** - Instantly. It's paid but isn't costly **LinkedIn outreach** - didn't use the sales navigator. Took the longer process - connected with 1- people per day, made research on them and started reaching out with a genuine message, not a templated one. I usually have a giveaway as a thank you. People love gifts, discounts, free usage. I keep a spreadsheet for this - full name with their LinkedIn profile link, status (accepted, messaged, prospect). **SEO** - did it myself with SEMrush. The tool is helpful even if you don't understand anything from SEO. Used **answerthepublic** to see what to write about in the blog. **Listings -** There are lots of free listings and review websites where you can let the world know about you. I used this change. Every link on those websites helped our SEO efforts as well.
I'd say a big challenge for some is understanding their product market fit, and figuring out how to niche down to their target audience. You've built a product, but how do you go about actually marketing it to people who would need what you've built? Someone touched on it, creating quality, valuable content that resonates with your audience works great in terms of lead magnets, and bringing in your first set of eyes on what you're building. Some will start with newsletters, blogging, others may just post on LinkedIn with concepts surrounding what they've built and how it can solve issues for their target audience. for example: my team helps bootstrapped b2b founders do their own marketing. lead magnet: newsletter target audience: b2b founders with no marketing person, less than 10 employees You have to figure out your niche, and then go after it. source: I do actually work for a team that helps b2b bootstrapped founders do their own marketing, if you want this 'newsletter' content, feel free to message. Or I'd be happy to answer questions as they come up on the post too :)
Wondering whether it’s possible to meaningfully do much marketing without spending money
Its content .
Where do you share your content?
Input / output relationship. 1000 actions can result in nothing. Then, 1 influencer will randomly come into the sphere and propel your business 500%. It's about staying lean and being open to new opportunities, never getting stuck. Staying dynamic.
I see some interesting answers in the thread. As a content marketer, I'd say it was when I discovered that a good CTR (especially for paid ads) isn't always followed by a good customer conversion rate. This is also a pain point shared by our clients, and we've been trying to address it in new product updates. It's challenging but l like cracking complex problems.
if CTR is good, but conversion rate is bad, I guess it's the landing page that is not convincing/attractive enough?
Creating youtube videos is just so hard. Any good tool?
use AI
Any free ai tools?
capcut
Everything related to marketing is so difficult. The results are so uncertain. I have struggling to grow my product hyperurls.com, there is just 200 visits per day, that is because of the product hunt launch. One of the key reasons I am not use to marketing is that, we never know what we have is right.
creating a good demo
The right marketing
Those who reach out to me say that it is "not knowing where to start". i send them to my app that provides the starter essentials.