The Day I Realized Building Isn't the Hard Part
For years, I believed that if I could build a great product, people would just buy it. After all, I had heard some of my technology heroes claiming that "a good product markets itself".
So I did what I knew best: I built.
Approximately one month ago, I launched Animoo.ai, a platform to create your own illustrated stories in a few minutes.
I was convinced that it would be a hit product, since a few friends needed a gift for their partners/friends and they found out that by turning their memories into a physical illustrated book, they could easily create an unforgettable gift.
Surely, this indicated that I had a good product with a real market, and therefore it would market itself...
Evidently, it didn't go as planned.
The Launch Day
I launched the app with a clear premise: a good product markets itself. However, I wanted to get the ball rolling as soon as possible, so I had a simple marketing strategy:
Create 2/3 short format ads and spend $200 on Facebook Ads.
I thought those $200 would return more than $200, and then I would only have to keep investing until the business became profitable enough to allow me to live a quiet life in some sunny island in the south of Europe.
Unfortunately, it wasn't so simple.
The First Problem
Immediately after launching the first ad, I hit the first wall:
My ads were watched by thousands, but the CTR (Click-Through Rate) was low. In other words, most people ignored the ad.
Turns out that making an ad is not enough: you also need to make sure that it captures attention, communicates value and drives to an action.
I understood the problem, but I thought that if I wanted to get the best result, it would be best to outsource it to a professional, so I found a specialist and paid an extra $200 for a few AI-generated ads:
I went from < 1% CTR to an impressive ~7% (something around 1.5% is already good!). However...
The Traffic Went Through The Roof, But Sales Didn't
I spent hours looking at the stats of my platform. I had thousands of visits, and yet, not a single sale. I expected the pattern to change with time, but my Facebook Ads budget kept burning, and my sales stayed static at 0.
I realized that the ad was no longer the problem. I was getting traffic. I was getting clicks.
Either the website was not selling the idea correctly, or the audience was not interested.
So I started tracking everything that happened in the website, I added all sorts of new features, checked what was being clicked, what was being ignored, experimented with different prices and different coupons...
But nothing worked.
I later discovered that the problem was not the product, but the audience that I was targeting.
I spent thousands to build an app and try to convince people that didn't really want my product.
My Next Step
After a lot of research, I've come to realize that I have a good product, but I have been targeting the wrong audience all along.
I don't know yet who my ideal customer is, and the only way to find out is through experimentation. During the next few weeks, I'll run ads targeting people with different interests, create multiple landing pages optimized for different needs and discover who actually wants my product.
The Lessons I Learned
- In most cases, building the product is actually the easy part.
- For god's sake, validate your product before building it. Don't waste your time building something that nobody wants.
- Have a solid go-to-market plan. The first sale is the hardest sale.
- Do things that don't scale: ask different people, find out who actually wants your product. Most likely, the audience that you think is going to buy your product is not the audience that will actually buy your product.
- Create a few landing pages targeting different audiences, see what actually sticks.
I hope you find this article interesting and that it helps some of you on your journey to launching a successful SaaS. While I’m not an expert, building a startup has taught me valuable lessons that I hope can benefit others. Wishing you all success