Episode #142 - Launching a Product with James Rose - a podcast by WordPress business specialist Troy Dean featuring Seth Godin, Michael Gerber, Guy Kawasaki, Joe Pulizzi, Andrew Warner, James Schramko, Brian Clark, Ed Dale, Dan Norris and many more.
from 2017-10-19T01:59
Watch the video of this podcast here.
How Did Content Snare Start?
James and Mark started out as Software Engineers but they decided to start their own company, Aktura Technology, in 2010 and worked mostly on creating websites and SaaS (Software as a Service) apps.
They stumbled onto a very annoying problem when working in web development – it is difficult getting information from clients to create web content! (Sound familiar anyone?) They decided to do some research and spoke with many other web developers who all shared the same frustration. James and Mark knew that there could be a software tool to overcome this problem. So, they created Content Snare which is helping web developers drastically save time and the hassle of having to chase up clients for content. Go guys!
Education Marketing
Ok, so they had the awesome product idea and knew there was a demand for it, so how did they start building an audience even before the launch? James explained that throughout the development process, they used education based marketing to build their audience. Helping people for free and educating them in your area of expertise is how you start building your audience.
Getting Inspired!
James says that his inspiration comes from a lot of different things. He goes to live events as much as possible not just to listen to speakers but to network and be around people on the same page who are going through the same struggles. He doesn’t like to hero worship, but he does think that there are people out there who are real and humble such as James Schramko and Dan Norris. These are two examples of people who have built solid communities and are good at what they do. He also likes to listen to Tim Ferris podcasts, and guess who he has been a follower of for quite a while? That’s right peeps - WP Elevation!
Experimenting with Different Marketing Tools
Cath asks if he uses any technology to help with their social media marketing and James says that they trialled Thunderclap but they didn’t get too much leverage from that. He found Facebook ads to be quite successful though and will be getting those up and running again. He wants to continue to experiment and next, they will be trying Reddit ads.
It was interesting to hear James talk about his stand out marketing experiment which was the share competition that they ran on Facebook. The competition was that you could unlock two months of access to Content Snare for free if you shared the post with enough people. By running this competition, they doubled their email list in two days. Read the blog here: https://contentsnare.com/giveaway-helped-double-email-list-2-days/
James talks about the stress he feels of running his company and that it is hard not to dwell on things. They have had times where they’ve made some mistakes along the way and even lost money on getting external developers at one stage. He says that it is inevitable that you will make small mistakes along the way, but you just keep going and doing everything you can to get more leads.
James talks about the stress he feels of running his company and that it is hard not to dwell on things. They have had times where they’ve made some mistakes along the way and even lost money on getting external developers at one stage. He says that it is inevitable that you will make small mistakes along the way, but you just keep going and doing everything you can to get more leads.
Where to for Content Snare?
They will continue to develop Content Snare with WordPress integration being the highest priority on the list. What a challenge!
All this and more in our chat with James Rose.
Have you launched a product? What worked for you and what didn’t? Share your thoughts, comments or questions for James below.
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