If you can’t market it, don’t build it.
Great products and ideas seldom sell themselves.
A lot of starting entrepreneurs spend most of their resources on creation, treating distribution as an afterthought. In content marketing we call this ‘publish and pray‘: publishing an article and hoping people will read it.
However, if distribution is an afterthought, it’s likely creation was a wasted effort. Without distribution, there’s no audience. Without an audience, your creation might as well not exist.
The profit is in the distribution. Invest in it, at least to the same extent as you invest in creation.
When I am talking about distribution, in this case it means marketing. More specifically, ‘performance marketing’ (as opposed to ‘brand marketing’).
Unless you have some serious cash to burn, don’t waste money on ‘getting your name out there’ – you’re not Coca Cola. Spend your money in the places where $1 in ad spend can be turned into $3 in revenue or more.
Experiment, and measure your success. Popular performance marketing channels to start out with are Google Ads (get in front of the people who are already looking for you), Facebook Ads (get in front of a specific target audience based on demographics and interests), and E-mail marketing (build a mailing list, or pay someone who already has a mailing list). Any place where your target audience hangs out will do – digital or in the real world.
If you can make a definitive list of potential clients, make sales calls and set up meetings instead – don’t waste your money on reaching the masses if your potential client pool is small.
Whatever you do for distribution, aim for positive ROI (meaning, make sure your sales are higher than your spend).
