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Customer Acquisition When Broke

14 points by cogency ↗ HN
When starting the project eight months ago I did not think that the hardest part of the starting a business would be the customer acquisition. I thought it would be technical challenges, design of the app, testing, etc... imagining that once launched the customers would pour in. Boy was I wrong!

So, the app ( https://cogency.io ) is launched! Now what? How do you let the world know that you had created a .. in your mind.. "kick-ass" service? Here are the attempts

Google Ads - Failed w/ a few signups but none converted into paying customers

Mass mail - Sent approx. 100K emails that unfortunately b/c of the shady email service we used ( not mentioning their name not to give them more publicity ) that prob was already blacklisted...so from 100K, 30+K bounced and the other 60+K emails most likely ended in peoples' spam folders and thus were never opened. I am deducing this from the fact that I received ZERO signups.

Tried email some business folks directly ( as a personal email ) asking them to check out my app and possible give some feedback ( preferably critical ) ... nothing either.

Started posting on twitter, but I just try to be positive about what I post. I did come across some successful strategies where the folks just keep "bitching" about how hard it is with their startups .. but I do not want pity.. I think I have a good enough product that would benefit a lot of people!

So, the question is.. how do you get the world to get to know you w/out sinking huge amounts of cash into advertising?

Seems like a herculean task!

28 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 71.0 ms ] thread
gus_massa
Clicky: https://cogency.io

I'm not sure what it is. It is a Trello clone? What features does it have that Trello is lacking?

Is the lifetime plan a good idea?

What's the difference between "licenses" and "max participants"?

rozenmd
Yeah I don't understand the landing page, seems like a screenshot from Trello?
gus_massa
I think it's not exactly like Trello, but it's very similar. Trello is free [for a small number of users?], so to convince people to signup to an paid alternative it's important to explain the advantages.
cogency
We embrace a kanban style task management. Not sure how you deduced that we look like trello. Besides we offer so many more services such as Sketch (whiteboard), Chat, Video Conferencing
jonathanbentz
Love that you are engaging with the commenters. Maybe it's worth taking some of this feedback and applying it to your homepage, or maybe create some click tracks from your homepage to some of these other feature pages to take people on a the buyer journey and try to convert them into leads?
cogency
Thank you! This is a truly genuine product that made my life much easier and so all I wanna do is share it with the world and make everybody else’s life a little bit easier as well
cogency
I am baffled that everyone is so focused on only noticing the kanban-style task management and forgetting all the other services we offer such as Sketch (whiteboard), Chat, Video Conferencing. In addition to standalone, all those services are available when in a video conference mode to achieve a true collaboration!
Minor49er
I'd guess that it's because Boards are the first screenshot on the page. It also appears to be the central hub for the workspace that's offered here. Sketch, Video, and Chat would be used for communication, but everything would be coordinated and managed through Boards. This would be my experience working with platforms like Trello, Jira, and Basecamp in the past, personally.

That said, working with those other platforms, it has been difficult in the past to work with various integrated tools like the ones that you offer out of the box here. I remember previous jobs I had where only UX designers got access to mockup and flowchart tools that plugged into Jira, so the rest of us had to figure out how to draw and import charts and diagrams of our own.

cogency
Exactly why we offer the services we do to make sure that everyone has access to the tools needed to get the job done
cogency
You are making a really good point! It is not so much about the individual products or what they can do individually but this is rather how they can be used together at the same time, while being on the same call with everyone else on the team
drawqrtz
I feel like the field you are getting into (workspace productivity/office collab) us extremely competitive and there are many huge players. Most people don't use this stuff outside of work and there it is usually mandated by forces outside of our control. That being said if you can stay alive long enough and listen to users it could work, I have tried it but looks neat.
Minor49er
If you haven't done so already, you should write up a couple of versions of a press release and submit them to various news sites (like this one) where your target audience is likely to hang out. A few words about what you offer and how you differ from your competitors can go a long way.

Also, persistence. Getting people to bite can be a long process, and it can be really frustrating to put effort into promotion that results in a small return. If you're not getting any feedback in your promotions, chalk it up to the wrong place, wrong time, or wrong approach. Change one of those variables and try again. But if you see even a small amount of users start coming in, that's good. There's a potential that they will start telling people about your service and the word will spread.

dataminded
[Huge grain of salt here, your data should trump my opinion.]

The header text on your page is: Office Essentials

Compare that to your competitors:

@Trello: Trello helps teams move work forward. @Slack: Slack is where the future works @lucidcharts: Where teams come together to see and build the future @zoom: In this together. Keeping you securely connected wherever you are. @zoho: Your Life's Work, Powered By Our Life's Work

I don't think you've positioned your product to be understood or inspiring.

I would do the following:

1. Really dig into my web analytics and work on optimizing the site 2. Raise prices to get AOV high enough that selling made sense 3. Dial/email for dollars and get a couple of deals under your belt 4. Write content 5. Make a sales hire

ashkmr
Try influencer marketing like Tiktok and Linkedin direct reach .This should help at early stage.
cogency
We try to be more b2b, so not sure how tiktok would help in this regard
jonathanbentz
What's your appetite for discussing your competitors on your site? An SEO/content strategy targeting terms like "alternatives to [Competitor]" should work well in your space. This is also incredibly common in the SaaS space, so you won't be doing anything that these companies aren't already doing to each other.
cogency
Thank you! We will definitely be adding some type of comparison in the next couple of days
jonathanbentz
Sorry I know I am late getting back to you, but good luck. Would love to get connected with you on LinkedIn or something. Feel free to reach out to me anytime.
roberto-digital
I actually just added a comparison page to our website comparing our software to other SEO tools
jonathanbentz
About a week in - how's that working out for you? Indexed yet, ranking for anything noteworthy?
eaenki
the landing page is bad. copy is bad. pics are bad. design is bad. looks like a screenshot from trello. fix it.

this wont fix your CA problem. but it's mandatory. your CA with $100< budget can only be solved by finding a hack. like airbnb's cofounder programmed a bot to spam craiglist in the early days of airbnb, with airbnb's listings obviously. stuff like that. good luck.

dnh44
> the landing page is bad. copy is bad. pics are bad. design is bad. looks like a screenshot from trello. fix it.

I’m open to the possibility that a small team can produce a great product but have bad marketing, but there doesn’t appear to be a free trial to test it out. It’s not so much about the $5 but more about the friction of the sign up process. Even a live demo page would be good enough. Just something that serves as quick test drive.

cogency
The reason we do not have a free plan is b/c we are about to be listed on appSummo and they do not allow a free plan. However, we do have a coupon FREEMONTH that will set the first month completely free!!
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
cogency
Anyone who would like to try the app for free can use the FREEMONTH coupon and get the first month completely free!!!!
Chyzwar
I think you need a free tier of your product. This gives options for people to try your product without committing to license. Maybe even try to get some companies on free trial or special early adopter license.

Secondly, you should try to target smaller, less techie companies using your personal connections. Once you have a free tier, you could create YouTube channel and try very small FB campaigns.

I think your product have a lot of features, but it is not obvious what type of workflows it can support well and how this would integrate with existing tools like email. Your website blog is empty and there are no links to documentation or your social media channels.

You should find someone in enterprise sales and get paid consultation. HN is possibly not the best place to ask this.

cogency
Hi thank you for the good ideas! Here is a coupon FREEMONTH for a any plan to be used for free!