Marketing your startup company can be tricky. You know just having a great product or service is enough, and you know that you need marketing to spread the word about what you offer. You also know that if your product isn’t amazing, no amount of marketing will hide this fact.
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Some startup strategies suggest you begin marketing your product when you have an MVP (minimum viable product). However, this doesn’t mean that you do everything you can and stop trying to scale. The opposite is true at this point.
To build a successful startup, you must have a great product. You must also find the right market fit for your product. Once you have done this, ongoing marketing is the lifeblood that will determine if your business sinks or swims. The key to all this, though, is ensuring you are starting with an amazing product.
Signs It Is Too Early to Market Your Product
Are you planning to offer a tool that helps customers find the best time to go to Disneyland? If so, you may be eager to release it right away and let people know about its existence. However, have you tested the tool? Is it bug-free? Are there still issues that need to be worked out?
These are a few of the things you must consider before introducing your product and marketing it as available for use.
It is also important to note that when discussing marketing, it doesn’t mean purchasing a stream of traffic to test your MVP. Also, it doesn’t mean purchasing a domain and creating a landing page that reads, “coming soon.” When discussing marketing, it means true, full-blown marketing campaigns. This occurs when you hire a marketing agency, engage in public relations, and begin scaling your marketing efforts to increase customer acquisition.
It is a generally accepted fact that if you have a product that is not ready for full-scale marketing, you need to keep it on the scale of validation. You should take time to gather proof from real customers and real users that your product will be appealing and purchased by the public. However, this is extremely different from pushing the product into the main spotlight.
If you market something too early, it can kill your entire business before you even get started. If a major news outlet finds out about your product, but it has poor user experience results or has many bugs and problems, the press will not hold back with their negative commentary.
The good news is, you don’t have to guess whether it is too early to market your product. Some signs you should wait for can be found below.
Generating Leads but Not Closing Sales
No longer is it enough just to generate leads. If you cannot close sales with your product, you don’t want to scale this issue. You should find out why your leads and potential customers are not closing. If you aren’t meeting their expectations, it may be time to retool your bigger message, and, in some cases, it will be necessary to pivot.
People Stall in Your Buying Process
Using analytics is a must during the early stages of your business and product. If there is something causing people to hesitate when engaged in the buying process, it should be fixed right away. You don’t want to have your business or product featured in a major publication if the buying process is not perfect. In some cases, the bug or issue may be so severe that people just give up.
Sometimes, it may be the process itself. You may have to revisit the buying process to make it easier for your buyers to complete. In either case, it is important to fix this before taking your company public and marketing it.
Potential Customers Don’t Engage
You may believe you have a great product, but if your target consumer does not care about it, you have a bigger issue than just marketing. If the people you have targeted are not interested in what you offer, you need to stop wasting your money on it. Abandon that idea or pivot and develop one that works. Conduct more research to find out what these people are interested in. Once you have this information, you can design a product around that before spending more capital on trying to push a product that no one is interested in.
Risks of Marketing Too Early
If you push your product to market too quickly, there are some potential issues you may face. Knowing what the risks are will help you see why taking your time is such a good idea.
Burn Through Your Capital Quickly
If you want to scale your product, you have to generate revenue while using capital. This is the only way to continue growing. However, if you are spending your capital without generating revenue, you will run out of money long before your product takes off.
Serious Damage to Your Brand
If you showcase a defective product, you are going to harm your brand. It is important to remember that eight out of 10 businesses will fail within 18 months of opening. If you want to beat the odds, make sure you have a quality product before anyone learns about it. If anyone has anything but a positive experience, stop and reevaluate what you are doing.
Finding the Right Time to Market Your Product
When you reach a point where you can learn, repeat, iterate, and measure the process easy with your product, you are at a point where marketing is a good idea. At this stage, your product will provide a smooth user experience and have gone through thorough testing. It will have passed your testing process and have a place in the market.
When you have proof that people will pay for what you offer and that you can deliver a quality experience consistently, you are ready to start marketing. Now is the time to find ways to generate interest and start selling.