What would you focus on?
Over the next 3 months there are two paths I can take. One is building our content marketing efforts, the other is onboarding and working with 3 pilot customers. I get to pick one, focus 120% on it and ensure it's properly done. Which one would you choose?
OK, this is vague, time for some context! We've been building a new app for companies to publish internal podcasts. Besides hosting and distributing the audio in a secure way, we also provide a very powerful and easy to use audio editor. Great stuff so far. (it's called dive.fm - pls signup & make some devs cheer loudly)
While my team is busy improving the beta, and the experience, I am getting ready to launch and generate some interest around it. and in our short-term go-to-market plan we've outlines two tactics.
The first is a Podcast Academy. Not another general podcasting course, but one focused on how you create professional podcasts (about your career, your work, your industry). To accompany this cohort-based programme where there's a mix of theory and practice, together with experienced podcasters and communications experts, we will generate a lot of content which we can pack in guides (drip campaigns) and other resources. We hope that by educating and giving back to the community in this way, we can have a few early supporters which will tell their organization about WHY they should try out internal podcasts. Meanwhile, btw, we keep our referral program in place, users signup due to the usual PR campaigns that we can do. But we don't onboard organizations just yet, just build a overly excited userbase.
The second option is to actually keep quiet and start reaching out to leads to onboard 3 pilot customers. Besides onboarding them to the platform and training them to use the tool, we would work to provide services which can pinpoint where in the organization there might be some insights worth sharing. Who could be internal influencers, how should the editorial and approval process be etc. The result of this would be of course a few paying customers, but also a good case study about how we made internal podcasts a success at these scaleups (oh yeah, we target scaleups because they're the perfect storm - I can explain that if needed). We still keep signups open, and do light PR work to create brand awareness and let others know that we exist. And we focus on content later...
Now, the first option is something we have 100% control over. It's easy, it provides a good organic growth, and it gives us time to really fix the user experience.
The second option has more variables that can go wrong. We might pick the wrong customers, it could take much longer to onboard them, there are so many moving parts which can impact the implementation of podcasts internally. But, there's probably more learning in it...
If we would pick one to focus on, which one would you pick? Why?
Just my 2 cents from an outsider :) :
I would go with learning from the 3 customers.
At the moment you probably have many assumptions about your product's value which you have yet to validate with real customers. Onboarding those 3 customers would help you quickly validate them.
The learnings will probably also help you with your content marketing.
Additionally, you can also include quotes and testimonials from those customers in your marketing communication.
And finally, and if your customers agree to it, you could write about your learnings while you're onboarding it. So you're still producing content that will compound over time.
Hope that helps.
Hey Vladimir - I like both directions. I also like that you looking to commit to just one. But do you have to commit just yet? Seems you have two problems that could be attacked simultaneously to see if one is clearly an easier path or leads to better results.
Is there any reason not try to to find candidates for each and then go with whichever pans out quicker or seem like it will lead to best results. Getting three really famous brands for a pilot may be more interesting from a marketing perspective than a bunch of not-too-famous podcast class participants.
Also is internal podcasting a thing? Or is is it something you are trying to make a thing? Seems like it could be the next step in the podcasting wave and companies spend money so it seems like a good place to be.