Lots of startups get stuck
before they get to Product-Market-Fit.

What would be the reasons?

Here are some, I see on a daily basis. They are related to issues with founders or market (in no particular order):

@_shahedk @buzz_chronicles save as startups

@buzz_chronicles @buzz_chronicles save as startups

If you’re a SaaS entrepreneur, you need to study Hubspot

Here are the inbound strategies they used to grow from 0-100M+ users📈

A thread: 👇👇

1) Hubspot introduced/created the term inbound marketing.

Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah grew their inbound marketing software business (founded in 2006) to an IPO in 2014 at $25/share (now around $450).

They are the 2nd fastest SMB SasS company to IPO

2) They noticed a shift in the way people shop/buy. Consumers weren’t tolerating interruptive ads and were ignoring them.

Part of this shift was due to the internet/Google. People now had the power to do their own research to find products that could help solve their problem

3)Theme: Inbound Marketing
They learned conversion rates from inbound/organic leads compared to outbound/paid were more than double. It was cheaper to acquire traffic and resulted in higher quality leads. 75% of their lead gen was inbound, focusing on blogs, webinars, free tools

4) Strategy 1: Blog
They share resources/tips/steps to improve your inbound marketing. They drew people to their posts, provided value, and added a unique CTA related to the topic at the end to capture the lead.

The blog resulted in 20% of their organic leads and 3x their leads

My interview with @Mixergy is live. Check it out here: https://t.co/fvxio9FArN

It's great. We cover 15 years of business.

I like getting tactical on podcasts. I know Andrew likes it too. I missed some spots. So here are 5 tips I wish I shared during the interview.

🧵👇

1) During recessions, get close to the money.

I talk a bit about what business was like in 2008. Besides some personal struggles, 2008 was also a time when individuals and businesses were clamping down on spending. So what can you do if you are freelancing through that?

Get close to the money. People will be cutting spending on things that seem superfluous, but any tools, service, or consulting that ties directly to the company's bottom line will be the last to go.

This was part of what encouraged us to focus on membership sites.

I remember some clients we built websites for, even friendly clients (maybe family members ;), saying to me "The website is nice, but it didn't really bring us business."

!!!

We weren't tracking it. The membership sites we helped launched had reporting built in showing $$$.

2) When going up against established competition, don't compete with them head on. Focus your marketing efforts on features and in spaces they aren't addressing.

There were already a couple established membership plugins for WP when PMPro launched.

You can't pull the market towards your solution.

Markets move towards desired solutions naturally.

(Like folks lining up for ice cream on a hot summer's day).

Our ability to influence the market is much lower than you think.

It's better to build your product to conform to the direction the market is moving.

Before folks start mentioning Steve Jobs and the iPhone ("Steve built a product we didn't even know we needed!")

Nope.

Steve recognized the market's existing momentum and saw an opportunity.

"Everyone has a cell phone." (momentum)
"But nobody likes it." (opportunity)

Markets move towards solutions on their own; founders can't pull markets over to their solution.

If you're struggling to gain traction, you likely have a problem in your:

- market
- product
- channels

(or all three)