I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society.
Do this first, 100x
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It's time for another SaaS marketing tip. When you're about to launch something new, your first step shouldn't be buying ads, optimizing for SEO, or posting on social media. One of the highest-leverage marketing activities you can do is this: write a personal email to anybody in your network who might care. I'm advising a startup right now (I'll tell you more about them in the future). They want me to help them get more beta testers. My first step was to list people I know who might be interested in the product. As I added names, I started sending out emails/DMS that look like this: Hey [name of friend],
I just came across something new that I think you should check out.
I'm advising a new startup, and they built me a marketing dashboard that's blowing my mind.
(I think this could be helpful for your company too).
Basically, it tracks █████████ that you're getting from ████.
Here’s a screenshot from my dashboard:
[image]
I couldn't believe that it was showing ████ and ████. I'm already changing my marketing approach based on this data.
Would you be interested in being a part of the beta? They're looking for more testers, and I can put you in touch with them.
I wrote a similar series of emails when Jon and I started working on Transistor: And I reached out to this list again when we launched on Product Hunt: Sending personal emails like this is a classic "do things that don't scale" action. This is how we got our first ten customers for Transistor. If you can't think of anyone to send emails like this, that might be a red flag. Ideally, you've already been investing time in building relationships with the kinds of people who buy products like yours. If you can't do this, it might indicate that you don't know enough about your product category, industry, or community. Want to do this? I've made a "Prospect List" template in Google Sheets that you can copy. To get started, write out 4-5 names of people you know (who are in your market) and start writing emails. If you do this, reply to this email and tell me about it! Cheers, PS: Do you want to share this with a friend? I've published today's tip on my blog.
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I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society.
Here are a few things I've been contemplating lately: ------- ⛈️ What kills motivation? Aaron Francis wrote about this in his newsletter, and I can’t stop thinking about it: “Maybe, working hard doesn’t lead to burnout, but the lack of hope leads to burnout. If you're working really hard for something that you don't believe will pay off, it's easy to lose motivation. But if you believe that the thing you're working on will have a payoff, the amount of work almost doesn’t matter.” Working on...
Hey friends, This should be fun. Ian Landsman (founder of HelpSpot and "Business Dad" to founders everywhere) is going to hop on the call with Brian and Justin today. You can join us (live) at 12:15pm Pacific: On today's topic list: Can burnout be a lack of motivation? When the reward no longer feels worth pursuing, is that when you lose steam? "What if this doesn't work? What's the backup plan?" Come join us in the chat! Cheers,Justin Jackson – BlueskyBrian Casel – Bluesky | Twitter PS:...
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