How hard is marketing at $1k MRR
What are the marketing challenges you face at $1k MRR:
- What feels super hard as a founder?
- What feels really important?
- What do you put off every day / week / month?
I've been curious for a while about how it feels for new founders to work on marketing. I.e. before you can afford a marketing hire.
There seems to be 000s of tools, and 000s of platforms, but every single one requires time investment. I think about:
- Mailchimp... "You need to start a newsletter"
- Facebook Ads... "You need to split-test"
- Ghost... "You need to blog every week"
I assume this why companies like bannerbear are amongst the most successful on IH? Because they actually fix the issue.
Job completed > a tool to help you complete it.
So... Do you face marketing challenges at $1k MRR?
For me there is a lot of noise in marketing, what I would do is talk to my existing customers and ask them
Before me where were you looking for answers?
Who were you listening/following for those answers?
This will tell me the platform the majority hang out on and who they were listening too.
I'd then focus on just that one channel.
I'd also look at how I acquired those customers? Then how can I have those conversations at scale?
Example:
10 sales came from one on one emailing and building the relationship and these people hung out on facebook. Following X person and have XYZ interest
I would create an ad on Facebook with a freebie in exchange for email (targetting the people your customers tell you they follow) then look at the emails you had with the 10 and create a sequence that mirrors the conversations.
I say conversations because you want to have conversations with these leads ;)
Does this help?
Thanks Ryan, really great to get your thoughts.
So this sounds like some solid advice, but is this what you'd be looking for marketing help with as a founder? Or something you'd advise doing yourself?
This would mirror @volkandkaya's comment around channel discovery, which I think is really interesting.
If it's something you'd be looking for help with – why? E.g. too busy, not experienced... etc.
Hmmm I would say that the biggest challenge is that this takes work and its tedious at times.
I am not a founder at that level, but I work with a lot and it's tedious.
Would I pay somebody to do the initial research for me 100%!
Depends on the market. At 1k you're still most likely looking for a channel.
You would need a generalist marketer to come in and test channels for you.
Interesting @volkandkaya, thanks for the insight.
In your opinion, would that be something -
Asking for a friend 😉
Not sure i get the question.
Sure, I'll rephrase. What is your primary motivation is to get that "generalist marketer to come in"?
Why not try testing channels yourself?
Is it lack of time? experience? etc.
I have no plans to do that.
I think the founder should find that first channel as they know the market the best (or they should).
I'm at around that sales mark. And it does constantly make me wonder if more time should be spent on marketing vs product improvement.
From looking at successful indie hackers who make $10k+ mark, it seems the product just hits the market itself.
From the Bannerbear blog, before he's reached $6000MRR, he says
"😎 I didn't have a grand marketing strategy, but "here are cool things you can do with my API" would suffice for now"
I tried Google Facebook ads a little, but now I'm just doubling down on product improvement.
Now I have a dev bg so the answer may be different for marketing gurus.
It really depends on your market / product / pricing. If you're at $1K MRR selling B2B SaaS for $99/m vs a consumer app for $5/m.
For B2B SaaS you can still work with direct sales at $1K MRR. This also connects you with your users on a more personal level which is good for feedback etc. It's not fancy, but it really works.
For the consumer case I would try lot's of different channels and double down on the one that works best. The hard and important part here is finding that channel and strategy that works for you.
Nice writeup + examples @drikerf. Thanks for your insight.
Fascinating the marketing consideration is primarily around channels still, albeit more sales orientated on the higher value B2B side.
P.s. Wobaka looks v cool. Particularly enjoyed the reason you're building 'another CRM' "they focus on the wrong things [...] website builders and 97 other things you don't need." 😂 totally agree. Y'know Mailchimp launched ecom at the start of the year?
Thanks @Rufusdenne!
Yeah, positioning and finding a great channel is super important but also difficult.
Thanks for putting the question out there. This would be very helpful for a lot of founders < 1k MRR too (me!)
Awesome! Do you do any marketing currently? What holds you back as a founder?
I'm building a lead-generation platform for virtual/fractional CFOs - providing content to potential clients (with an 'independent' approach). The idea is to evolve it to a B2B marketplace, but I'm still in very early stages :) So the monetization would come from selling the leads.
My current focus is on my newsletter - https://openbooks.substack.com/ which takes so much of my time (I think I'm still learning how to build a process that is scalable...).
I think the biggest challenge is my job :) I'm the CFO of a fintech that is currently raising series B... Man, I don't even know how I managed to get the website and the newsletter off the ground.