I wanted to share my startup journey, which has been an eye-opener, especially for someone who’s more at home with code than with marketing strategies. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:
1. Quick Reality Check: Before I wrote a single line of code, I thought I had a groundbreaking idea. Turns out, what’s groundbreaking for a developer isn’t always what the market needs. I learned the hard way that talking to potential users and getting feedback is non-negotiable.
2. Social Media – Who Knew?: I initially overlooked platforms like IndieHackers or even Twitter to share my development journey. Building a community interested in your product’s progress is a game-changer – I learned this post-launch, unfortunately.
3. The Hat Trick: Being a solo founder meant I had to swap my developer hat for a marketer one more often than I liked. I wish I had known about tools like Google Analytics for website insights or even Boost App Social for automating some social media tasks, making life a tad easier.
4. Marketing’s a Whole New World: I love coding; it’s structured, logical. Marketing? It’s like learning a new language, full of nuances and unpredictability. Tools like Hootsuite for scheduling posts or Canva for designing graphics helped, but there’s a steep learning curve.
5. Juggling Act: Balancing a day job, coding, and marketing is a juggling act. I had to be disciplined about allocating specific hours for each task, using tools like Trello for project management to keep track of everything.
6. School’s Never Out: Every day is a lesson in marketing strategies, user engagement, and product refinement. Podcasts, webinars, and communities like this one have been invaluable.
If I could rewind, I’d tell myself to get on the marketing train right from the start. But that’s the beauty of startups, isn’t it? You live, you learn.
Keen to hear if you’ve had similar escapades or any ninja tips you might have!
You must log in or register to comment.
Definitely can relate to this. All these while us coders just implement & implement, and results were not a part of our scope. As I transition to solo founder & spent 3-digit paid ads monthly without conversions, I then only realised to pay attention on digital marketing techniques properly, especially SEO & social media content marketing. A year of solo founding now, still no decent conversions yet but SEO is driving traffic without ad spend. hope to finally turn them into conversions soon!
2-cent tip: Don’t not just post on social media pages, post on community groups too. Avoiding spamming in groups and focus on helping others by reading their problems and suggest them solutions in comment replies.
Interesting read, but I’m a bit skeptical about relying so much on social media for marketing.
Have you considered other channels like direct outreach or content marketing?
Thanks for your insight!
Absolutely, social media isn’t the be-all and end-all. I did dabble a bit in direct outreach, especially reaching out to influencers and existing networks.
Content marketing, though, is something I’m still wrapping my head around. It seems promising, but I’m curious about your take on it.
Could you share more about the influencer reach outs? Effective or not? When is a good time to try, etc?
Absolutely relatable!
Personally, one aspect I find particularly challenging is the constant context switching. There is so much to do that I have not gathered the courage to begin looking into marketing.
I’m curious, did you handle everything from ideation to deployment on your own, or did you seek outside help at any point in your startup journey?
It’s interesting that you mention this, as I’m actually moving in the opposite direction—from marketing to learning programming (because of my need to automate certain marketing tasks).
How have you made this transition? Was it a complete shift, or did you develop a T-shaped skill set, combining deep knowledge in one area with a broad range of skills in others?But did u use project management software before marketing? Very nice post btw!
This post may as well be written by me. After graduation, I started making Android apps (way back in 2015). I had ideas that I thought were cool, but often a bit more than what I could chew. Regardless, I made a few, released and did almost nothing to promote it as I didn’t know anything about it. Nor how important it was. After 3 years (had to learn coding and design on my own), I finally admitted to myself that just making a good app is nowhere near enough for success.
Trouble with learning marketing is that it’s best to learn on someone else’s dime, as it takes a lot of dime to experiment enough to learn. Plus you learn from colleagues too. So I did MBA to shift and now work as a marketer exclusively at early stage startups. During weekends, I code, and now I have a much better understanding of how a business is actually built. Not to mention the network and mentors. No doubt I have more to learn, but good enough to put my resources into it.
It seems like a fantastic journey and congratulations that you have done it very well.
Do you still recommend twitter? The posts are not indexed by google.
100% relatable. I love coding but I have 0 idea in marketing. I guess that’s another language we need to learn.
Going through this right now. Marketing quickly went from 50% of my day to about 90%, and it’s probably still not enough. I feel you on the learning curve, it’s like being an intern again. But you can’t avoid it and you can’t outsource it. I’m convinced now that marketing is the biggest determiner of a startup’s success.
How do you come up with your marketing ideas?
It’s crazy how marketing can take over, right?
TBH, a lot of it is trial and error, mixed with a healthy dose of eavesdropping on what’s buzzing in the community. Sometimes, I get sparks of inspiration from the most random places – a chat with a friend, a podcast, or even a meme. It’s all about keeping the antennas up, you know?
Great post! I’m trying the same thing and can empathize with most of the points and especially no. 4.
Nice shoutout to Boost App Social, been using it too! It’s always great to see others benefiting from the same tools that helped me out.
Glad to hear it’s working out for you as well. It has been a major help.
Totally understandable it’s a tough task. Being an engineer, I did intern at a marketing agency so the initial phase is tough but then you adapt.
I can really relate to this - the transition to marketing has been tough. Before I jumped into launching my own products, (perhaps a bit naive of me but) I didn’t realise how marketing is a huge part of “the grind”. I’m literally grinding my teeth through posting on social media.
I would love to hear a more detailed breakdown of your marketing strategies and its impacts, especially if you’re going to try content marketing as well.
+1
As someone who works in marketing I can imagine the frustration that you went from learning documentation and logical structures to a complete mess of information and miss information that is the current marketing landscape.
Especially more abstract and creative concepts can be really hard for people to grasp.
OP if you have any questions or things you don’t understand well feel free to ask.