Episode #3

Engineering as marketing: Winning your audience with useful tools


Last updated on: February 4, 2020
about 3 minutes

For today’s episode I picked a project that partially resonates with me since I am after a lookalike audience, however, the idea I am going to introduce can be applied to pretty much any product or service out there.

The Bootstrapped Founder

Arvid who previously bootstrapped FeedbackPanda to successful exit, currently runs The Bootstrapped Founder - a blog where he teaches others founders how to bootstrap successful SaaS company.

He recently released “Zero to Sold” which is an excellent guide he put a lot of time & effort to. He posted the link to it in few places like Indie Hackers and Hacker News but without much response.



I think it could be, because:

  • the guide in its current form is not very engaging: it’s too long to follow for an average reader
  • doesn’t solve a specific problem: it solves many problems (too broad)
  • doesn’t reward the reader straight away: there is no instant incentive reader gets

These are my assumptions. Perhaps it will be worth to test promoting it with something smaller and more specific that checks all these four positions?

The Idea

I always liked evergreen content. On top of that, being a software dev, I have an itch for engineering as marketing, so allow me to think along with this.

What’s the one, a most sacred resource for every bootstrapping founder, or in this case - IndieHacker?

Money.

Okay, we got a subject. What about the angle?

Those of us who are bootstrapping, like you, Arvid and I, like to compare which would be cheaper:

Stripe vs Gumroad, product X vs product Y.

Thousands of makers make those decisions every day on which products and services they should go for based on their budget and it will be great idea to ease this work for them, isn’t it?

Idea: Build a free calculator to help pick the right tool

I would try coming up with a simple calculator that compares two or more payment processors out there and calculates for the user which would save them more money taking into consideration fees / revenue / usage etc.

This is not just something that would resonate with the The Bootstrapped Founder audience but also provide instant value by speeding up the decision-making process on important matters - money & tools.

Applying it to your niche

The best part of it? This is something that can be used for many different niches, in many other ways and angles.

Pick something that:

  • resonates with your audience
  • it’s free and simple to use
  • it’s useful

Examples

  • travel startup: a tool that compares the price of a tourist passes in Paris

But hey, let’s not end at calculators:

  • if you have e-commerce store that sells lipsticks, come up with an app that let the user upload their photo to try your lipstick color directly on their lips
  • if you have a design-related project, you could come up with a free design tool that produces just one type of assets, eg. social media posts, just like Buffer did with the Pablo

The possibilities are endless and you can be really creative with this one.

If you still cannot think of something that would work for your project, tweet at me and I will be happy to help you brainstorm!

Onto the next, episode #4 next week! See ya!

P.S. It’s Chinese New Year, I am in Taiwan currently and thought it will be cool to do a fun giveaway with a local twist: a box of delicious local snacks and sweets. Your friends and co-workers at the office will love it.

I will send it to a randomly selected person who follows me and retweet this tweet. And because very few people will do, you have a very high chance to win :)

Hey, I am Sky (@unstoppable) and my goal is to help 1000 IndieHackers out there growing their products this year. If I help even one person, I consider it a win.
Fun fact: The initial website was made in less than 30min (including logo) and you can read about the process here. To stay in touch, make sure to subscribe to newsletter, join Telegram and say hello to me on Twitter.

Growth Examples · Copyright 2020 · Singapore 🌴
Privacy · ToS · Contact
Powered by DO & PixelTrue