🗞 What's New: Don't overcomplicate your marketing

Are you making it harder than it has to be?

• Yeah, marketing is tough. But simpler is better. Also, if you're only focusing on user acquisition, you're leaving money on the table.
• Instead of prioritizing design and UX early on, try attracting superfans. They can help you determine your design roadmap going forward.
• Hitting ~5K signups in 3 months came down to shipping quickly for Shawn Cao. Adding an in-app feedback channel was a game changer, too.

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by Dan Kulkov

All marketing tasks fall into one of three categories:

1. User acquisition.
2. Conversion rate optimization.
3. Positioning.

Here's how to build your best strategy.

Start with the bottom

There's no point in attracting website visitors if you can’t convert them.

Start with your offer. Make it a no-brainer. Then, strategize how you will convert strangers into loyal customers. Next, find those strangers.

Chase conversions, not clicks.

Do your research

There are users, competitors, and trends. Learn from them.

Dedicate some time to user and competitor research. It will impact your business more than any marketing task. You're looking to discover:

• What product features do people need?
• What words do you need on your landing page?
• What pricing is competitive?
• How do your competitors market their products?

Learn from other people's mistakes, then sharpen your positioning.

Simplify your funnel

Conversion rate optimization is about designing a marketing funnel that rakes in new users, communicates your product’s value, and gets folks to pay you.

Your funnel should include:

• One main acquisition channel.
• One key activation moment.
• One key offer to sell.
• One high-ticket product to upsell.

The simpler, the better.

Nudge, nudge, nudge

Most users are not ready to buy on the spot. They need to be persuaded.

You can fix it by nudging them. Make your offer look more desirable with these nudge ideas:

• Create a lifetime deal for early customers.
• Add a 30 day money back guarantee.
• Describe a success case.
• Add a product video.
• Add scarcity that makes sense.
• Send a juicy discount for an annual price that expires in 48 hours.
• Let users preview and customize the product for free, then start using it after paying.

Prioritize direct user acquisition

Don’t do SEO before you get your first paying customer.

It will take you months to see any sustainable traffic. Don’t put much effort into the channel when you are not totally sure that your product idea won’t pivot.

Focus on:

• Launching on Product Hunt.
• Sending cold DMs or emails.
• Facebook or Google Ads.
• Sending emails to your subscribers.
• Tweeting about your product.

Finish the quick wins before going on to more challenging tasks.

One per week, all per month

Better positioning. Higher conversion. More users. Choose one focus per week.

Then, always cover all categories in one month. Improve your marketing holistically.

Want more? Download these free marketing resources!

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

⏱ Time-saving Facebook automated rules for you to try.

🙅‍♀️ Google wants to make ad blocking near impossible.

🖱 Zero click marketing for beginners.

🎙 Podcast ad spending updates.

💅 Is Barbie the new Star Wars?

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

by Drew Thomas

I always believed high-end UX was a necessity from day one, but my perspective changed during the last three years of building Bildr. I was forced to reassess the role of design and UX in the product to unlock our next phase of growth.

Threading the needle

Focusing on design and UX too early means neglecting other things that could move the product forward. Your product will grow and change a lot before it's stable enough to know what design and UX it needs.

A minimal level of design and UX is essential, of course, but remain flexible, and remember that time spent improving UX has opportunity cost.

When design is worth it

While design and UX are essential for any product with users, they are less important in the early stages of a SaaS startup. Instead, the focus should be on attracting superfans who see your vision, and are willing to overlook imperfections in your product.

These early superfans will tolerate a lot, including imperfect design and UX. In fact, they’re the ones who will ultimately show you what the perfect design and UX is.

As your product grows and attracts more "every day" users, however, the role of design and UX becomes more crucial. Every day users have no investment in you or loyalty to your product, and they’ll leave at the slightest challenge or roadblock. In this stage, design and UX plays a crucial role in building trust and retention.

Shifting the focus

Shift focus when your product's features are ready, and it's starting to feel complete. Before your product is ready, design and UX alone cannot carry it.

Here's another way to think about it: Products are never “complete.” But, at some point, a product is no longer missing features that most users need. This is the time where UX exponentially increases in importance.

Earning its worth

When poor design and UX decisions cause users to lose trust, people don’t want to give you money.

Look out for low conversion to paid accounts or upgrades. If users are happily using it for free, but reluctant to upgrade, ask them why to find out what to fix.

Ultimately, the role of design and UX is not a one-size-fits-all approach. De-emphasize design and UX early on, and focus on attracting true believers who are invested in your product. Then, shift focus!

Discuss this story.

from the Marketing Examples newsletter

How to approach lead magnets:

1. Make something customers want.
2. Make it easy to get.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

by Shawn Cao

We launched Fina in March 2023, and so far, we have landed:

• 450+ paid users.
• 1K+ free users.
• 4.5K+ total signups.
• $2K MRR.
• $10K total revenue.

Our first customers

Fina is an ecosystem that unites users, creators (advisors), and developers to enable all types of financial scenarios, so that anyone can find what they need by typing in a simple question.

Here's what worked for acquiring our initial users:

• Email list: We built out our waitlist before the product was ready, and as time went on, this list grew.
• Social influencers: We found influencers in finance to endorse us. Currently, we mainly talk to Twitter influencers.
• In-app feedback: Having an in-app feedback and communication channel is the best way to reach users for a zero friction feedback loop. You want to make sharing feedback as easy as possible for your users.

The growth

We onboarded 2K+ financial institutions in three months, with a team of two (more recently, three!). I am the only developer, but we're hoping to add more by the end of the year.

The product has no official design. We built an MVP with only the most essential features, kept it as simple as possible, and constantly listened to user criticism.

Having this many early users pay us to continue developing this financial data platform shows the trust that they have in us, which is truly an honor.

In the long run, we want Fina to be the go-to financial data platform for users to analyze their personal finances in just a few minutes. We sometimes call Fina "Notion for finance."

If you're interested, you can check out our demo here!

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Dan Kulkov, Darko, Drew Thomas, Harry Dry, and Shawn Cao for contributing posts. —Channing