Startup is not just coding (do some marketing)

Here you are sitting in your room thinking of your brand new startup or maybe you already started working on it. Before starting to code or even thinking of your idea ask yourself one question: How am I going to promote my product?

Believe me that’s one of the most important factors of your startup. Selling your idea is the key to your success (of course having great looking and great working product is a big plus) but I’m talking about MVP, the very beginning.

Can you think like Apple?

I know you’re not Apple, but for me Apple is the best example of how marketing can sell anything. Let me be clear here, Apple has great products but as time goes Apple stays behind its competitors. How, you may ask?

Well let’s take for example brand new iPhone X with edge to edge screen… Do you remember this guy?

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

Apple knows how to sell, how to promote their products ladies and gentlemen and they can sell anything they want and people will buy it. The point of this is not to be like Apple but to think like Apple, take them as your role model.

Back to startups

You can’t be Apple but you have to think about how you are going to sell your product. You need to do your homework, do some research, get to know your customers. Just start from the bottom.

Sometimes you think you know who your customers are, but stop and think once again.

• Who are they?
• Why do they need my product?
• Are they really going to use that?
• How am I going to present my product to the world? There are so many apps out there…
• How much money do I need for the promotion?

How do I start?

Don’t get me wrong, you need a product or an app to actually show it to the world. As I said in my previous article: “You can’t rely on anyone these days, gotta do to everything yourself, don’t we”? If you can find someone to work with and if that person is passionate as you are, even better, you’ll do more work in less time.

Spend a month or max 2 months building it. Create MVP, very very simple MVP with the most important features.

Doesn’t matter if we talk about B2B or B2C or whatever it is the same rules apply.

Online research

Go online, use Google and search, search, search. Search for your competitors, see how they solved the problem, see what they did, learn on their mistakes.

Don’t be scared to ask people what they think. You can even try to do “fake it ‘till you make it” method. Try to watch Wolf Of Wall Street, it might inspire you do to some things.

Get out

The most important thing is:

It’s hard and scary to go out there and present your product. You’ll get a lot of good feedback and some bad feedback, but that’s normal. You need to learn to filter feedback and to not let to get you down.

Get out and talk to your customers, businesses, students, teens, show them what you’re working on. Be focused on your customers, spend more time with them then on startup competitions. You may get the money there but it doesn’t increases your chances of getting customers. It’s more likely to get customers by actually focusing on them.

The best marketing is word of mouth, so if you engage with them and shape your product based on their feedback they will certainly come back and share your product around.

Other ideas that might help you to be seen

• Publish your product/app on ProductHunt. Here are some top hunters that can help you to be seen on ProductHunt
• Join various Facebook groups so you can specifically target people you want to like people who like cars, women, man…
• Create funny (maybe even stupid video) you know how those things go viral
• Contact some semi-famous YouTubers or Instagramers and offer them something to promote your app/product
• Contact your local influencers (I spent days looking for L.A. and Houston influencers)

Learn on my mistakes

Go out, just go out. You won’t make any progress by sitting at home and just programming.

Let me give you a short review of mistakes I made regarding promotion of my startup:

• I spent months programming — Yep, I spent hours, days, weeks even months at home just programming super big, complex, bug-free product based on one man’s suggestion. Once I finished I found myself in “a prison”. I didn’t know what to do next. Once I start presenting my product to the customers it was waaay too complex to them and they weren’t interested.
  Start small guys, don’t try to build the whole empire in one day.
• I spent only few months programming — I learned on my own mistake. I spent only few months programming and while doing that I was doing some research. I was researching my customers.
  I was certain I knew who they are and once I published my app I realized that I don’t know.
  First I thought my customers were LGBT community, then I realized they are not, then I thought my customers were college students then after talking to them I realized I made a mistake.
• A startup I worked for spend huge amount of money. They didn’t even bother to get to know their market. They said: “Our customers are everyone who read business and financial news”. Yeah, but you still need to learn about their habits and what exactly they love to read and where they live and so on.

I spent a lot of time and 3 of my startups failed just because I didn’t prepare well enough. Next time I’m going to be much smarter.