Giters

lury / side-project-marketing

A checklist of tactics for marketing your side projects.

Home Page:https://karllhughes.github.io/side-project-marketing/

Geek Repo:Geek Repo

Github PK Tool:Github PK Tool

Side Project Marketing

A checklist of tactics for marketing your side projects.

Why?

I've been building little software side projects for years, but I've always been terrible at marketing them. I come up with some ideas, forget those ideas, do some random stuff, then lose interest. The goal of this repository is to fix that.

In this repo, I keep a list of the side project marketing tactics and ideas I've picked up from reading sites like Indie Hackers, Hacker News, and Reddit as well as random books and blog posts. For each of my side projects, I fork this repository and keep a list of what I have done and still need to do. This keeps my marketing efforts more focused, and if anyone else finds it useful, they can make their own fork with their own ideas.

How to use

  1. Fork this repository.

  2. Add, remove, or modify the tactics as you see fit based on your project and customers.

  3. Get to work! The checklist format allows you to keep up with which things you've tried and which you haven't.

  4. Profit? I mean, that's the goal, right?

Organization

This list is meant to be as comprehensive as possible. Your job is to narrow down what works and what doesn't for your project. This list also does not attempt to teach you how to do most of these things - that's something you'll have to research on your own - but the list stays focused on simple descriptions of tasks you can do to market your side project or startup.

Finally, the list is ordered in chronological order. Things you will do before your product launch are typically at the top of the list and things you will do later show up at the bottom.

If you have ideas that I haven't included or you think you could improve the list, please see the Contributing section below. I'm not a marketing professional so I welcome any and all feedback!

Index

Pre-Launch

Market Research

If we knew what were doing it wouldn’t be called research. - Albert Einstein

Competitive Landscape

  • Make a list of competitive/alternative services.

    Finding competitors
    Competitor data to collect
    • Link to their website.
    • "One-liners" and taglines competitors use.
    • Pricing and business model.
    • Blog/RSS link.
    • Social media links.
    • Key employees on social media.

  • Subscribe to RSS feeds of your competitors' blogs.

  • Follow your competitors and their key employees on social media.

  • Set up Google News alerts for competitors.

  • Set up Site Alerts for competitors.

  • Subscribe to industry newsletters, magazines, trade journals etc.

Customer Research

  • Find people in your contact list who might be future customers. Get their feedback on your idea.

  • Attend meetups or conferences for your target market.

  • Meet another entrepreneur who has a similar or competitive product.

  • Make a list of your competitors' customers:

    Finding competitors' customers
    • Check their Twitter followers, mentions.
    • Look through their Facebook fans.
    • Find people who follow them on Linkedin.
    • Check their website. Some companies list customer stories on their websites.

  • Reach out to your competitors' customers, find out what they like/don't like.

  • Create an "early access" list for potential future customers.

PR Preparations

  • Create list of tech, startup, and industry blogs.
  • Create list of local small business journals (eg: Crain's Chicago).
  • Create list of local bloggers and journalists in your industry.
  • Create a "Media Kit" page (check out this example).

Content

Content Marketing is all the marketing that’s left. - Seth Godin

Landing Page

  • Come up with a name and domain name.

  • Write a site tagline and elevator pitch.

  • Create a logo.

  • Set up a landing page.

    Landing page tools

  • Create "About" and "Contact" pages.

  • Create pricing page:

    Pricing ideas
    • Create a free or trial tier for your paid product.
    • Offer a 100% satisfaction/money-back guarantee.
    • Make product invite-only to start.
    • Offer free/discounted access for early adopters/beta testers.

  • Set up email list and signup form.

  • Add social media follow links to landing page.

  • Create transactional emails for when users sign up/purchase.

  • Set up analytics to learn about who signs up, bounces, etc.

    Analytics platforms

Blog Setup

Social Media Setup

  • Choose the social media accounts you'll use:

    Social media platforms
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Linkedin
    • Pinterest
    • Instagram
    • Snapchat
    • YouTube

  • Standardize profile image, background photo, links and call to action across social channels.

Post-Launch

Customer Outreach

You should be talking to a small number of users who are seriously interested in what you’re making, not a broad audience who are on the whole indifferent. - Jessica Livingston, Founding Partner at Y Combinator

  • Send a coupon code to close friends and family members to let them try your product.

  • Send early access notification to customers identified in research.

  • Reach out to your social media followers, ask them to try your product.

  • Cold call ~20 people who might be good customers.

  • Connect with potential customers on Linkedin, reach out when they accept.

  • Watch a first time user use your product.

  • Ask your customers for feedback directly (individual outreach).

  • Run an early-stage cold email campaign.

    An early-stage cold email campaign
    • Make a list of 30 prospective early customers' email addresses.
    • Send three cold emails per day for ten days. Experiment with messaging, take note of what works.
    • Send three follow up emails per day for ten days. Experiment with messaging, take note of what works.
    • Scale it up. Find more prospects, set up an automated drip campaign, rinse and repeat every month.

Free Promotional Channels

I don't care how much money you have, free stuff is always a good thing. - Queen Latifah

  • Post your product on directories and review sites (Matt McCaffrey has compiled a great list on Github).

  • Write and distribute a Press Release.

  • Write and distribute an eBook, exchange it for email signup.

  • Write and distribute a white paper, exchange it for email signup.

  • Give free access to influential bloggers in the industry.

  • Build a "best of" page with your best blog posts that you wrote or contributed to other sites (ProBlogger calls this a "Sneeze Page").

  • Make sure all blog posts have high quality images.

    Places to get free stock images

Paid Promotional Channels

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Recurring

Blogging

  • Build/update publishing calendar for your blog.

  • Regularly post blog posts on your blog(s).

  • Solicit guest posts from early customers and fans of your product.

  • Promote your blog content regularly:

    Blog promotion techniques
    • Send post to your email list.
    • Promote on your social media.
    • Email friends and relatives, ask them to share if relevant.
    • Send to other bloggers for feedback, ask to share if they like it.
    • Add your latest blog post or landing page to your email signature.
    • Create and distribute a Slideshare or Prezi of your blog posts.

Email

  • Send a regular email newsletter with blog posts, use cases, customer stories, etc.
  • Promote email list on social media.

Social Media

  • Set up automated regular social media posts.

    Social media automation tools

  • Join Facebook and Linkedin groups where your product might be beneficial.

  • Join Twitter chats related to your industry/product.

  • Show what happening "behind the scenes" at your project on social media (eg: pictures of your workspace, in-development features, etc.).

  • Build/update publishing calendar for social media.

Public Relations

  • Ask bloggers with list articles to add your site to their content.

  • Reach out to small business journals, reporters, bloggers. Inform and ask for coverage.

  • Find professors and students with .edu sites to link to your content (good for SEO).

  • Find reviews or lists of similar products. Ask to be added or leave a comment about your product.

  • Guest post on other blogs.

    Guest posting
    • Build a list of blogs that are a good fit for your product and accept guest posts. Save their contact form/information.
    • Write a few posts on your own blog first (to use as a demonstration).
    • Create a list of "pitches," blog post ideas with a title and one paragraph summary that might grab bloggers.
    • Pitch the blogs one idea each. See what they respond to.
    • Help promote your posts via social media, email lists, etc.
    • Reach back out in a month and try another pitch. Try to become a "regular"

  • Leave non-spammy comments on blog posts related to your industry or product.

  • Join and participate in forums related to your product or industry.

External Sites

  • Answer relevant questions on Q&A community sites (check back regularly)

    Q&A Communities

Optimize

  • Run a customer poll (can also generate content for your blog or social media channels).
  • Create another side project to promote your product (read more).
  • A/B test your landing/payment pages (check out Optimizely).
  • A/B test email newsletters and promotions.
  • Implement Twitter cards on your blog posts.
  • Implement rich snippets in Google search results.
  • Collect and show testimonials from your happy users.
  • Analyze user signup flow (check out the teardowns here).
  • Test your website on multiple platforms, make sure speed is good.
  • Use Website Grader to pinpoint website improvements.
  • Create and track weekly traffic and growth goals.

Contributing

As with any open source project, I welcome contributors. Submit an issue or pull request with your improvements or suggestions. All contributors will be fully credited.

Contributors

Submit a PR to get your name and link listed here.

Credits

Below are just a few of the blog posts and resources I've found helpful in compiling this list. I'm no marketer, so be sure to check these people out:

License

This documentation is offered under the MIT License:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2017 Karl L. Hughes

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

About

A checklist of tactics for marketing your side projects.

https://karllhughes.github.io/side-project-marketing/