Well, I don't usually listen to podcasts, but I'm really glad I took some time to listen to yours.
As everything else, a lot of this common marketing BS are very seductive when you're in need. They're usually advertised as a way to get higher sign-up and conversion rates and, when you fear that you might be going out of business, an exit popup with an autoplaying video doesn't even look as bad as it really is.
I'm looking forward to listening to your next episodes. ;-)
I have a degree in CS and a lot of experience building web apps. I'm freelancing in order to be able to self-fund my own product, which helps people doing speech therapy to have better results.
As a technical founder myself, I can help you with a lot of aspects of building a product:
- Building complex webapps [AWS, Rails, Sinatra, Node.jS, Redis, Sidekiq, React, Redux, ...];
- Developing Android apps;
- Creating growth strategies and social media presence.
I've already used a messaging app for couples with my girlfriend. I do remember they had some nice features, like sending kisses and hugs, but we eventually stopped using it. Mainly because we had a lot of messages not being sent.
Currently I'm also bootstrapping my own product and I can see that you might have some problems (like I've):
1. It's always nice to have an app for each mobile platform... but it costs a lot of energy to keep them running! I'd start supporting only one. Use all the spare time for marketing (it's incredibly hard to sell things...).
2. We had access to nice features using the app I mentioned, but the chat experience wasn't fluid enough. Sometimes, when we try to do a lot of things, we forget the basics.
3. The heart beating feature sounds nice... but is it something important to your public? We've added tons of features we loved to our product. It's very disappointing to see that they aren't using them.
In my experience, we're able to create a lot more engagement using Facebook, but you have to consider that we're a niche startup in Brazil (where CPC seems to be cheaper).
On the other hand, most of the users we got from Facebook were a kind of "freebie hunters". As soon as they saw it would be necessary to pay a monthly fee to use our services (It's an app! Am I really supposed to pay for this?), most of them disappeared.
In the end, as someone has already mentioned here, Facebook seems to be a really good place to advertise free stuff or products that can naturally trigger some emotional response (Look at this lovely products made by this grandma)... and maybe just them.
It definitely helps, traskjd! You really got me thinking by mentioning the effort necessary to provide support. Initially I thought that the whole service is kind of self-explanatory but we're receiving a flood of questions about the product without even have launched it yet. Imagine when they all start using it.
I'm only afraid to scare them by pricing it too far from their expectations, but you really have a good point!
Your help was very important. Thank you very, very much! :-D
Now I'm not sure whether I'm being too pessimistic or just if we're really very poor in here. hahaha
Actually, doctors usually make a lot of money (at least US$70k/year) here in Brazil if compared to other careers but, unfortunately, it doesn't seems to be the same for speech therapists (most of them won't make more than US$15k/year).
I really like your price anchoring and completely agree with you but, at the same time, I'm also afraid to scare my audience. hahahah
As soon as I have any results about this thing, I'm gonna blog about it and share here!
Thank you very, very much for you help and attention, saluki!
Yeah, unfortunately I have the same perception as you have about how they (although I'm a brazilian myself) value apps and online services here.
The income of my target audience seems to be around US$10100/year (or R$32500). That's fairly low to make me consider if, even if providing a lot of value, they'd be wiling to pay a premium fee for the service.
On the other hand, I have a niche audience (not more than 10k people in Brazil) so, pricing it too low could make the product unsustainable.
I really appreciate your help and be sure that I'm gonna share the results of all this thing.
Although it's somehow complicated to define what is the real minimum, as Joe demonstrated, I'd only like to recommend another concept that I've read about and from which I hope you could take good things out of it: The Minimum Lovable Product.
As everything else, a lot of this common marketing BS are very seductive when you're in need. They're usually advertised as a way to get higher sign-up and conversion rates and, when you fear that you might be going out of business, an exit popup with an autoplaying video doesn't even look as bad as it really is.
I'm looking forward to listening to your next episodes. ;-)