Stop Promoting Your Startup. Do This Instead.

Very few people care about your new product.

There a hundreds of new apps, products, and solutions introduced to the market every single day.

As someone who has been on both sides of the table (as a buyer and a seller) for nearly 20 years, I can tell you from experience that the biggest priorities of your prospective customers right now are NOT the features and benefits of your solution.

Their biggest priorities are their large overall goals.

Think about it from your perspective as an indiehacker.

Is your most pressing concern on a day-to-day basis the latest features of some new app that has come out, or is it more "how do I get more customers?", "how do I reduce churn", "what is the best framework to use?", "how do I be more productive" etc. etc.

Of course, your priority is those questions (and others like them).

If someone wants to get your attention, what's their best approach? To slap their new product in front of you or to approach you with something new and helpful related to those pressing problems in your working life?

The answer is obvious when you're on the buyer's side of the equation.

But, when you're the seller, you seemingly forget this knowledge and spend your time promoting your product instead of focusing on helping your target audience with the problems and issues that they have.

Of course this is totally natural because you're concerned that, if you don't promote your product, nobody will know that you sell one and therefore you won't get any paying customers.

The solution to this is to help your target audience with their problems in a way that leads back to your solution (and yours only).

We can look at bootstrapped startups like You Need A Budget (YNAB) for example. Instead of pitching its target audience the personal finance solution it sold, it instead sold them a new (and completely free to implement) approach to managing their personal finances.

This new approach to personal finance was unique to YNAB - it was their unique methodology/philosophy and their product reflected that - if those that adopted the YNAB approach to personal budgeting wanted to buy a product to help them implement it (totally optional - they could implement this approach without buying a product), they could only choose YNAB's solution.

As a result, YNAB was able to approach its target audience in a way that both appealed to their biggest priorities AND indirectly sold them their product. Essentially giving the company the best of both worlds.

But that's not the best part.

The best part about taking this approach is that it turns believers in the methodology/philosophy/belief system the company sells into fervent evangelists that talk about it to those around them - even if they aren't customers.

Meaning that the company can generate word-of-mouth growth from non-customers as well as customers.

This is fantastic for bootstrapped startups and solo founders because they often have few customers to begin with.

And this is exactly how YNAB grew into successful the company it is today - passionate believers spreading the YNAB philosophy (and therefore indirectly its products) to those around them.

We can see the same dynamic in other bootstrapped startups like Bullet journal and yes even CrossFit (which is today a billion dollar business thanks entirely to word-of-mouth growth from non-customers and customers).

Want to learn more about this approach?

Drop a comment below with your questions and I'll be happy to answer.