For business owners or marketers, rewinding time on a selected website is very useful to understand how a company managed to figure its way out.

There are a lot of web services to dig into the past. I mostly use webarchives.org and archive.ph. So today, I’d like to show Shopify’s website from its early days to today.

This was Shopify's first teasing on the founder’s blog. They emphasize on what is wrong with the market and how they plan to fix it. It’s pretty straightforward manifesto.

Then, they bought the shopify.com domain and put their first “coming soon” page online. Yes, design feels outdated but I like their tone of voice “without needing a geek in the family”, “we are all hard at work and drinking lots of coffee and coca-cola so we can get Shopify out asap”.

They launched 6 months later. The website remained damn simple. I assume based on what they see people like and how much they understand the market, they focused on the 3 benefits. To grow awareness, they started blogging. They basically shared updates of all sorts (thoughts, product updates, market updates, team pictures) and showcased e-commerce websites built with their platform.

According to Builtwith, they were a few dozens active Shopify websites 2 years later. They did the first redesign on their website. Structure got more complex and they switched their focus to ease of use and site ownership. “A business for life”, “your very own e-commerce store”.

You can feel they’ve worked their way around a lot to figure out an effective website. I reported lately on Basecamp changing their homepage 2 times in 3 day. This version of the website was released after the 6-month contest they organized to grow awareness for Shopify (more on this on their blog).

See how they constantly changed their homepage. New colors, new structure, new healdines, new ways of showing benefits. If we extrapolate numbers a bit, this was a damn straightforward homepage for a $24 million revenue company.

With new positioning on not only selling online but also physically, Shopify got a major iteration on their website. Yes, sometimes a big feature is worth reworking your whole narrative. They hit $205 million in revenue that year.

Only after 12 years in business and 1 billion in revenue did they decide not to show the product anymore in their hero. Maybe they can afford to be more inspirational. Until you haven’t made yourself a strong reputation, should you show tangible things about what you’re working on? Perhaps.

Why? Because of our own bias:

• we often think using our products is straightforward enough

• or that if you need to educate people then maybe they’re the wrong people

That’s all wrong.

Education doesn’t only mean giving people the required tips & tricks to use your product. Education is making people get better in their field, master your product, and be fully aware of why you made their life for the better.

I see education as a 3-fold bonus for your brand:

1. Education helps your customers and prospects get the most out of what you sell.

That means making them more loyal.

We all rather solve things by ourselves. It gives a sense of accomplishment, it’s rewarding. So companies build wikis or FAQs to “make their customers better users”. But that doesn’t work this way. Documentation systems are often framed by a “problem-solution” troubleshooting angle. For ex:

• “I can’t log in, how should I do?”.

• “How can I assign several contacts to a company?”.

That’s really the minimum viable information you should provide.

But what will help your customers is to teach them how they can get better at doing their job, thanks to you.

For instance, Ahrefs is an SEO tool. So it basically talks to marketers. But maybe 30% of what they write on is specifically about SEO. They know their customers are marketers, so they write on marketing in general. And when their tool has a unique edge on a specific marketing topic, they put it in context and show how it solves the opportunity. Easy promotion.

2. Education broadens your potential market

Circling back to what I said first.

If you need to educate people then maybe they’re the wrong people.

Educating means sharing, teaching, and explaining how and why your approach to a problem is different. You may have different features or concepts people need to understand before they buy.

A non-software example I like to tell about is Patagonia. When they introduced synthetic clothes. Patagonia explained why and how to remove cotton, wool and down. So by putting together extensive guides on the benefits of more layers and new materials, they got people aware and turned them eventually into customers.

Those people were mountain climbers, not random people. They were the right users, but unaware of the new take of Patagonia on clothing for mountain climbing. That move changed everything for them.

Yes, helping people out is a great, non-arrogant way to build word of mouth.

3. Leadership & expertise

I believe it’s here that most companies do wrong. They don’t zoom out. Educating prospects doesn’t mean spamming your features when competitors can basically do the same. Instead, talk about the unique system and approach you have to a known problem. Whether it’s dealing with customers, designing great products, or better organizing your time — by teaching how you solve that in an interesting way, you have the opportunity to become the expert.

Just look at Basecamp's Shape-up methodology, that's a fantastic marketing move. Freely sharing your knowledge will strengthen your relationship with existing customers as well as attract new ones.

Oh and yes, one way to do is Open Source, I wrote a piece on that.

Thanks for listening, I hope you found something interesting today.

Until next time!

When he decided to launch his new gig, the founder was selling hand-made pittons and climbing hardware for the already 10 years. He was driving its van across California to supply other mountain enthusiasts. But it was small and the margins were slim. And he felt the products he was selling were unreliable, fragile, and needed to be replaced often.

So he started this new company started with a simple mission:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Imagine at the time how forward-thinking this was. And so it went. Slowly but great. And alongside developing new products and getting more sales, Yvon and his team started thinking how they could make their initial mission statement a more believable and real one.

So they launched initiatives toward that mission:

• They started by calling themselves “environmentally conscious designers of technical apparel”. Nobody really cared. They were small.

So they kept doing:

• They were the first company to write educational articles on how to buy fewer clothes but arrange them better to create layers and keep you warm

• They used real nature pictures of their customers for their product catalog, not fake ones

• They wrote the book “let my people go surfing” which sold hundreds of thousands of copies

• They gave 1% of their sales to small and impactful organizations to defend the planet

• When you’d land on their website, you’d see information about wildlife protection and activism. Not products. Quite counterintuitive for the e-commerce conversion gurus

• To start a global movement on giving back to the environmental cause, they founded 1% for the Planet in 2002 with another company

• They got the B-Corp label (I worked on it at a previous company, believe me, it’s a lot of work)

• They produced dozens of video documentaries showcasing wildlife and its protection

• They launched the Worn Wear program, a series of videos and actions around repairing clothes instead of buying new ones

• They run an ad in the NYT called “Don’t buy this jacket” during Black Friday

• They sued the president over the reduction of the Bears Ears National Monument

• and even add a “Vote the assholes out” clothing tag on their products to support the movement

• They partnered with climate and social activists (such as Naomi Klein, Clare Gallagher, or Ian Walsh), rather than influencers and affiliates

• They announced they’d refuse to sell corporate Logo Vests to Ecologically Damaging Companies

• They turned their headline to “We’re in business to save our home planet”

And many many more… Until last week’s move

I’m sure you read about it. Yvon Chouinard and its family decided to sell 100% Patagonia non-voting stocks to a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature.

Yvon wrote a letter called “Earth is now our only shareholder”.

Whether you’re sensitive to social and environmental issues or are looking to grow as big as Patagonia or not, there are 2 interesting lessons from this short story:

1. It’s not because you claimed something once that people are going to believe you. Patagonia is about 40 years of commitment, repetition, and dedication until they created a brand that feels responsible, sustainable, and doing good for the planet.

2. Building around your unique hedge, opinion, and conviction, is the best fuel for your roadmap, marketing, and else. Start with that as you’re figuring out your positioning, and you’ll know what you have to do to make it real.

In case you’re interested, I’ve written a post on making your claims more believable by the way, you’ll find it on the blog.

Once again, shout out to the Chouinards!

Have a great end of your day!

So whatever you’re telling to people, you should keep that in mind.

And what do most people do? They claim things. One thing is if we don’t believe what you claim, we’re less likely to use what you have to offer. Now, there’s a wide array of “social proofs” that are used today, but they’re so seen everywhere that they may lose their persuasion power. Let’s dig into it.

Superlatives and statements

What’s the common denominator between:

• The best Twitter content scheduler

• The world’s #1 task manager and to-do list app

• The world’s easiest all-in-one marketing platform

• Built for the new way of working

Arrogance and vagueness.

Number 1 of what? What does easy even mean? For who is it best? What’s the new way of working? We are all biased by our work and tend to lose empathy with website visitors. When describing or teasing your business, I’ll always recommend being as specific and honest as you can. That’s what people trust.

For example:

• A Twitter scheduler 50,302 people use every single day

• Task manager and to-do list for people who procrastinate too much

• All-in-one Marketing platform even your grandma could use

I believe this is how you make a better first impression, and get people to read past the exposition step.

Customer testimonials

Heard 100x in my career:

• “We need more social proof”

• “Have you checked the playbook on building the best converting landing pages?”

• “Let’s add a few testimonials to support our narrative”

To be honest with you, most customer testimonials and quotes feel more like paid endorsements than honest and trustful words. Yes, customer testimonials are excellent opportunities for showing that your business understands customer needs but you should at least make sure whoever reads them can believe what they say.

How?

You may embed actual tweets or reviews (Calmfund does it) so people can see they’re real. Or you may compile all positive reviews on Twitter (Slack did it). The last idea may be to create an extensive page with dozens of customer good words, to show A LOT of people love the product (we did it at Slite).

People may not read them all, but they’ll understand you’re not only using the “perfect feedback” from your best friend. And believe what you have to say.

Own competitor comparison

Yes, it happens people compare your stuff with the competition — so you might want to take the lead and eventually get some organic traffic from it. While the “how do you compare with X” is a fair question, people know you can’t answer entirely without bias. So rather than creating tedious and subjective side-by-side comparisons, think of how you can make your content more objective, valuable and believable.

What unique things do you have? What did you understand that others may not have? What are you solving and how that may catch people's attention and get them to trust you more? What’s your vision? How are you getting there?

I like for instance how Ahrefs used social data to compare with Moz and Semrush. Brilliant work.

Badges

G2, Capterra, Gartner, or Forrester are scams. Once you get a few reviews, they throw you a badge (you don’t even know the meaning) so that you want to get more out of their platform and pay. The middleman becomes the supplier too. And so companies use badges to prove they’re doing good business.

Let’s be honest, who cares if you’re “High Performer Spring 2022” or “Momentum Leader”? Not even your buyers.

The best badge you can show is your number of paying customers.

Product showcase

Showing your product is a great way to explain how it works and tease about its design. Nonetheless, this should be part of your story too. Acme and John Doe and Tesla and Steve Jobs aren’t relatable for most of the users. Would you read a book where the main character is John Doe working at Acme? If not, what can you do to make it more believable?

For instance, to explain what their product does and tout about it, Zapier tells a simple story that could happen to any kind of business. That’s straightforward, relatable, and believable. Please make your product screenshots real! Use copy that sounds like you and like a story that could happen to your readers/visitors in real life. Or make it funny.

Metrics

To support a narrative, it’s easy to tell about what you’ve achieved and inflate numbers or put them out of context. “ Trusted by millions of companies”, and “100K+ people signed up so far” look fantastic, but I always doubt when websites remain that vague.

The best way to reinforce your story with metrics? Use real (automatically refreshed?) figures and explain what they mean instead. Round and extrapolated and vague numbers are less likely to believed.

“Used every month by 1.2 million companies”, “103,021 people signed up in the last year”, and “30,405 tasks created every day”. One great way is to give full transparency on your metrics if you believe they’re great social proof for you.

Press logos and Sponsored articles

Just like the badges and reviews, press logos sound fake. “As seen on Mashable” or “Techcrunch” are the new “Seen on TV”.

What it means is there’s likely someone who paid for you to get featured there. What value does this bring to the user? That you raised money? That someone or some paper talked about you once?

If the paper is valuable, please link to it (like Hey does for instance). Make the whole content and context easy to understand for your readers. And instead of buying a Forbes article to get some street cred on Social Networks, consider reaching out to real reportersto get valuable content and proof. That’s real PR.

In all cases, giving proof should be something you focus on all the time. Each and every discussion you have with a customer should be an opportunity to grab feedback and ask permission to use it on your page.

We love stories, and we foremost love them when we can believe them. Please think of the readers!

• On why open source is a fantastic marketing tool

• How I'd do marketing for a bootstrapped CRM

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When it comes to acquisition campaigns, we should all broaden our perspectives. As you may already know, I'm not big on ads, sales, and so. Usually, peers or customers ask me:

"Then what do I do? Content? What kind of content?

"Acquisition" is a big word. It drives people crazy. They think "magnet", “pulling”, “selling”. They believe to acquire people, they need to tell them about what they do, tease them, and leave marketing brochures behind clickbait titles or e-mail forms.

And they hope people are going to love it.

The thing is, there are very few people who will be interested in what you have to sell at the moment you're going to put it in front of them. You're lucky to get in front of people, so please don’t make a bad first impression.

Marketing should be transparent. Odorless. Invisible. Marketing should be the consequence of how helpful or insightful you were to people. Here's what I want to talk about today.

So I picked 5 "side projects" for marketing I’ve enjoyed in the last few years, and explain why I believe they’re a great and elegant way to do marketing.

Drift response time

Drift is a sales and marketing tool that initially focused on chat. They built a chat widget and argued buyers were tired of waiting. They claimed each minute a prospect inquiry remains unanswered, the probability to turn them into customers drops significantly. So as an acquisition project, they offered to measure for free your sales reps response time.

You'd give in your website URL and your e-mail, so they'd reach out to your website as a "lead" enquiring for info. Then they'd tell you by e-mail how long did it take to get a response. In the end, they'd compile all information into a report.

I don't relate much to the problem they try to fix but their approach was creative. It was a "side project" that supported their positioning and would run well as a marketing project.

Remember good marketing is 1.Position > 2.Trust > 3.Distribution

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A (to my taste, wrong) belief in doing marketing is that acquisition means distribution. Growing a business is not as trivial as placing ads, writing optimized SEO content, or sending cold emails. Growing a business is the equation of how people find you (distribution, indeed) and how people understand what you build, and why it matters (positioning). Then of course, how people enjoy your product and want to recommend it. Let's focus on the 2 first parameters.

If we aren't able to understand why you're different, and why we should care about it, we'll kinda treat you as a commodity. You'll be a gallon of gas competing against another gallon of gas. So either we're running out of fuel and you've got a chance we choose your pump, or we'll look after the next cheapest gallon on our route. 

Don't make your work a commodity. To get positioning right, you'll have to figure out the story and features that connect well together. Back to building trust now. How could you do it, while working on positioning?

• You open a direct window to show how things work, from the inside

• You show expertise in your field

• You pay things forward

Good thing is, open source is a fantastic way to combine all of the above — let me develop and illustrate it with a story.

When Plausible.io launched in early 2019, it was a basic web analytics tool. Its founder Uku had built a lightweight script to provide a more friendly and transparent alternative to Google Analytics. Unlike the #1 web analytics tool, Plausible wasn't free. Uku was not serving ads with customers' data, he was selling a product. Some early beta users got into the program, but it didn't really take off, yet. During the summer, Plausible had reached a bit over $150 in MRR. 

Then, something happened. In September Uku announced Plausible would now be fully open source and free to use for the self-hosted version. This – combined with great marketing content — got the traffic to grow. So did conversions.

By being open source, Plausible's positioning was made clearer. To go against Google Analytics, they needed to show how unique their approach was from a product and a marketing standpoint. And make it consistent. Users may didn't need it to move away from Google's services but the fact it was open source helped build trust.

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Bootstrapping Marketing FM is a my new podcast about doing marketing differently, for your small business. Every week or so, I publish thoughts, opinions, or case studies on how I'd do marketing for your projects. I promote a more ethical, honest, frugal, and sustainable way to do marketing. 

You may already read my newsletter, and this podcast will share the same root: promoting a calmer way to grow your business — from positioning to acquisition.

This pod format will be different too. It won’t be 45 min long 1:1 conversations from which one 10th is really interesting. I’ll try go the Italian espresso way: short, intense, and a spoon of bitterness. I’ll keep the format open to as I will listen to your feedback. Let’s see how it goes.

Important :

• Read and listen to this podcast at bootstrappingmarketing.substack.com or on your favorite podcast app

• A question or a feedback? Comment here or leave me a voice note on my Telegram

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• On why open source is a fantastic marketing tool

• Community Thread: marketing for a deodorant brand, growing a blog, positioning a CFA exam prep, and launching a book

• How I'd do marketing for a bootstrapped CRM

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39 days have gone since I launched this publication (formerly goodmarketingstuffs.com). I grew from 0 to 357 subscribers in that period, which is a decent yet not impressive pace.

Hell yes, you don't need sophisticated marketing tactics or any existing audience to grow! This gives me even more energy to keep doing things MY way, to keep promoting what I do, and to do what I promote: get more people in front of projects without any ads, hacks, or cold emails.

Today, I want to emphasize the reasons why I chose not to play the usual marketing tactics.

And why it matters.

A bit of context

I make a living from freelancing, but I spend most of my time on this project (roughly 80%). Each and every month, the equivalent to $3,420 go into home mortgage, daycare, car, insurance, food, etc... We have a 2-year old kid and he'll be a brother by the beginning of October. At the current pace, my personal savings will run out by the end of the year.

While this financial pressure should push me to try to grow faster and take shortcuts, I keep resisting the temptation.

Family and friends ask me why – the reasons are pretty straightforward.

1. Building trust, not fainting growth

I'm not working on this publication to make a "coup". I'm here for the long haul, I'm here to promote what I consider a better way to marketing — more frugal, calmer, more ethical, more sustainable. To encourage that change, I need you to trust me it’s possible. This is my preoccupation #1. To do so, I explain, show, and prove to you how it works. To do so, I need to explore and offer a different take on marketing.

If you like my stands on doing marketing and I show you it can work, then you'll more likely trust me. Only if you trust me, you'll pay me. Only if you trust me, you'll tell the good word. I'm focused on building this trust, one person at a time.

Obsessing on growing a subscriber count or exploding the number of likes would distract me. It would lead me to routes that go against what I want to promote. And I’d lose your trust, soon. I'm not selling tickets to the Fyre Festival. That's why I focus on recognition, not on engagement or buzz.

Also, growing slower means I can create closer relationships with readers. In fact, people reach out to me every single day – and I answer! We talk, I get feedback, and this helps me build a more solid foundation for this publication. If you trust me, there’s a higher chance you'll follow me in the longer run. We’ll do it together!

And there’s more than only trust.

2. It’s cheaper

This project is 100% bootstrapped, which means I can't spend more than I earn. Like many of you. I don’t have anything but my best work to invest into it. Like many of you. And most of the advertising or sophisticated marketing tactics are expensive. Like, really. See how cost per click has gone +90% in the last 2 years alone1.

It means when you had to pay 5$ every time someone clicked your ad, you now pay 9.5$. When you don't have the resources and don't want to go the traditional marketing route, you need to be creative.

Money is a reason, but not the main.

3. Trends & hacks are pitfalls

As stated earlier, I'm here for the long haul – and I'm sure you are too on your projects. I build around the marketing things that won't change: sharp positioning, great teasing, leading with ideas, and being creative to raise awareness. On the opposite, trends are temporary. So are hacks. Would you bet on things that won’t last?

That’s why I don’t spend time on the latest tools, technologies, algorithms, and visibility hacks.

4. Trying to make the web a better place

I’m convinced fighting climate change starts at the individual level – why shouldn’t be making the web better? We spend a ridiculous amount of time there each day, and it's become dominated by awful patterns. Nowhere isn’t there an ad or a pop-up form. We get tons of cold emails and drip campaigns. They offer us the same "exclusive deals" every single day of the year. We leave our email address to read bullshit PDFs. Subscribing to a newsletter means you'll get 8 e-mails selling non-sense online courses. We have to click on the first comment to read the actual LinkedIn post.

Enough of that. Really. Enough.

Yes, these tactics work, and make businesses grow. Just like gas and oil move cars forward. Is it sustainable? Is it good? Your call. I choose to embrace change and be radical about it.

5. Having fun

You got it, I try to go against the marketing usual suspects. As much as I don't spend hours working my analytics around or editing my posts to comply with all SEO best practices.

I don't do that because it wouldn't yield impact, of course not. I don't do that because I think it's a damn boring job to do. Tweaking campaigns endlessly is boring. Spending half of my week on distribution is boring. Buying ads is boring. Reaching out to people who don't expect me is boring. Optimizing for SEO is boring. Why should I focus on boring stuff?

Having fun matters so much. Doing fun things will make you do them better, and you'll be happy to do them again. That's the most important to me, much more important than any result or number.

6. Doing my best to inspire you

Doing things a different way is MY way. There are so many examples of famous brands nailing marketing, so many incredible playbooks to ensure you'll "outperform competition", so many ultimate tools to "skyrocket your growth". You have access to them all. Why would you read me if you were convinced all you need is to follow recipes? Maybe it’ll inspire you. I hope I’ll give you at least fresh take on marketing.

I guess I'm ok to grow slower, but doing the things I feel are right. I've always said I show MY way, not THE way. Supporters and critics are welcome.

Thanks for reading.
- Clément

A trip to "increased productivity land" can soon turn into a vacation from hell. CRM is often complicated to use and time-consuming, as they're bloated with sales and marketing features. 

What if I'm not a salesperson?

Building the anti-CRM

Hubspot, Salesforce, Close, Mixmax, or Streak are CRMs designed for sales and marketing professionals. What if I’m not sending drip campaigns or making cold calls? What if I "only" want to organize my business a bit better?

There are alternatives like Notion and Airtable which are databases. But you’ll need to update them manually — that’s clunky. 

If I was to launch a CRM for small business owners, I’d build the anti-CRM. A CRM that’s not for salespeople, that doesn’t integrate with enrichment tools or marketing platforms. A CRM that doesn't track email opens and clicks. A CRM that does less, but right. I'd build A CRM that’s damn simple to use. 

You could keep track of your contacts, answer emails, manage your work pipeline, share files (proposals?), and get paid for your good work. You’d be able to back the lifelines of your business. Nothing more.

There'd be one pricing option, no per-user billing, no commitment, no migration cost, and full proprietary data. What about even offering self-hosting for free?

Teasing the market

A few months/weeks ahead of opening to the public, I’d launch a fun project to build up buzz and anticipation. The goal is to validate my product idea and get some early traffic and followers. 

Social media has made people big on sharing about them. So I’d launch a small website for visitors to submit their funniest / worst / most absurd entrepreneur stories. I'd try to make it entertaining. There'd be a contest with prizes to win. 

After that, I’d announce my new project on “helping small business owners deal with managing their chaos”. I’d show the main features and explain how they work. I hope this would get me the first 100 signups at least. 

The launch

I’d launch on ProductHunt. If you've read this post about how I start projects, you'd say it's surprising. But the setup here is different: I have a small audience, a few hundreds of followers, and an e-mail list. This can get me early traction. And if I offer a free self-hosted version, sharing it on Hacker News could help me climb the ProductHunt ladder.

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One of the most exciting things to do is starting a new project. You have this idea or saw this problem you wanted to solve for some time now, but you have no clue where to start. I won’t speak about business plans, revenue forecast or any spreadsheet work. Read on.

Marketing before code

First, I must say there are very few occasions when you need lines of code to sell or validate your ideas. At the earliest stages of any new project, it's good to get a sense if other people care about the things you care. Please don't run a 360° market study or get to Powerpoints design, just make sure if your idea excites other people than your mum or best friend.

That's why I always start with marketing before getting my hands on building something.

Find your idea

A great way to find a market is to look at your own problem, and user profile. What's specific about you? What's harder to do or achieve because you are X? Because you know this audience very well, it'll make things easier for you at start.

Another way to find a market is to look at the free products, paid with privacy. A fast growing number of people are sick of those models and eager to pay. And support you making the web an healthier place. Take this opportunity, like many other founders did successfully (e-mails, web analytics, website builders, content, etc.).

Leak your opinions out

How to explain your idea to wider audiences now? To validate your guts you’ll need to confront it to the world. What it is, why it exists, why it matters. Don't knock the crowd out with technical specs or marketing jargon — make it clear and relatable.

We as humans understand things by comparing them to others, and we're stocked by conflict. To explain what you're going to do, dare taking stands against market leaders. Tell what you believe in, how it is different, and why we should care about it.

For example when I started Bootstrapping Marketing, I knew there were thousands of newsletters about Marketing, gathering millions of readers. So I decided to promote a “bootstrapped” angle instead — how to get more people in front of your project without spending big money, run ads, take sales calls or play hacks. Less than a month later, over 400 people were hitting my website every single day.

Leaking your opinions out is the easiest way to get your next followers, visitors, users, and customers – the ones who already believe in the same you do. They’re the foundation of what you’re building and will help you get the good word out.

Don’t play Monopoly

Everyone's pumped by your project but someone told you the competition is too fierce and it'll be impossible to scale to billions. Should you be afraid? Hell not. Marketing is not a board game. Taking a tiny 0.01% niche of a market worth 10's of millions of dollars still makes it a million-dollar gig. Unlike Monopoly, not only the biggest wins here.

Plus, it's easier to start as small and narrow as possible. For example, build for all the vegan restaurants based in France before eventually growing to other type of cuisines and countries. Focus the one thing that matters the most (and supports your marketing narrative) to the smallest possible niche. You’ll have enough time to expand after.

It’s hard to go without passion

But don't fall into the business appeal trap. Yes, some niches may seem juicy — but what if they’re boring? When you choose to commit on a new project, think twice. Does it excite you? Are you sure it’ll keep you enthusiastic enough for the longer haul? Fun sweats, and it'll be so much harder for you to get people excited if you are not.

Don't get me wrong, you don't have to be passionate about CRM to launch in the space. Figure out the little extra touch that will make it fun for you. Figure out the little touch that will make you pumped each and every day. What drives you? Are you a staunch advocate for open-source projects? Then you may consider building an open-source CRM.

The ProductHunt bet

Launching is a tricky part. Because you've been working hard for weeks or months, you've likely blurred the line between yourself and your project, and you hope so hard the launch will skyrocket. But there are thousands projects going live every day — so you'll need a lot of luck to get a tiny bit of attention. And it won't happen if you haven't built enthusiasm before hitting "publish".

An "easy" playbook to toss a new project is ProductHunt. Sorry to say, but you shouldn't think it will change the face of your launch. Yes, it can work out pretty well. Yes, it can be a nice early boost. But getting traction on ProductHunt requires people to follow you, momentum, timing, and a piece of good fortune. What will happen if your wildcard doesn't work out?

Launching on ProductHunt takes a lot of time, which you don't have in the early days. A lot of the users are curious tech enthusiasts, not buyers. There's maybe something better to do instead.

Now I'm curious, do you mind sharing your own story in the comments – from the initial idea to how you launched? I'd love to know more about how you tackled that.

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• On why open source is a fantastic marketing tool

• Community Thread: marketing for a deodorant brand, growing a blog, positioning a CFA exam prep, and launching a book

• How I'd do marketing for a bootstrapped CRM

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Let's break a myth about Marketing: nobody really learned it at school. Just like coding – you don't need a ton of money or an Ivy League degree to build a feature and make it available to the world. There’s no lecture class that will make the damn thing work for you. You're not behind, what you need is to do.

And by saying “do”, I really mean it. I often spot conversations on Social Media like “How should I name these UTMs? ", "Is this more Activation or Retention? " or " Is 85% a good bounce rate? ". Those are details and you should ignore them early on, because they’re not the ones that will make you nail or fail. Forget about definitions and frameworks, learn by getting things done!

Do = write the post on your unconventional opinion you’ve not prioritized for too long, record the scrappy video to introduce to what you’re building, answer questions on Reddit where you think your knowledge is relevant, design this page to show how your service is different.

And learning marketing should be a routine.

Have you ever tried to run a marathon? Or to learn a new language from scratch? Or to get better at oil painting? There’s no intensive course that’ll help you get results within a week or two. Maybe you’ll step up your game, but how long will it last? The same goes for here: to get better at it, make learning and getting your hands on it, a habit.

Just look at all the mature technologies, app stores, social media, and online communities you can rely on to market your project. Without them, it'd be so much harder. Much harder to build, to distribute, and to monetize. Yes, it’s hard but it’s the greatest time of all time to start.

Enjoy the moment!

• On why open source is a fantastic marketing tool

• Community Thread: marketing for a deodorant brand, growing a blog, positioning a CFA exam prep, and launching a book

• How I'd do marketing for a bootstrapped CRM

Part 1: Positioning my project

I always start marketing by figuring out what my overall project will (or will not) be. In this case, I looked at the vendors like Zendesk, Help Scout, Intercom, or Hubspot. They all offer whizbang features such as live-chat, collaboration stuff, automations and workflows. They bill per number of contacts and add-ons.

It’s complex. So I’d emphasize a straightforward, no-fuss angle instead.

Who would use such a product? My first guess is small businesses. I’ve already felt the pressure of tens of live-chats notifications in a support shift. Owners can’t be online around the clock and they don’t need multi-users real-time workflows or granular permission systems. They want to provide great answers, build warm relationships, and pay a fair price. I’d double down on that.

I'd start my product with a simple forum to work as knowledge base and public roadmap. Pricing would be flat, to go against competitors’ models. Straightforward.

Part 2: Marketing, from launch to beyond

You don’t need to write a line of code to work on a launch.

I’ve made quite a few hypothesis based on my beliefs, now it’s time to validate them. First thing is to get a landing page out and instead of talking about features or anything, I’d tell a story. I’d figure out a message that can reasonate with what I want to build. I’d make it as personal as possible.

I'd share this page in communities to call for testers and hope for a bit of visibility: IndieHackers, Social media, Reddit, ProductHunt Community topics, etc. To make it more personal and give further explanations, I’d record myself in video and post it on my Twitter.

But most importantly, I’d start blogging on the topic and being more active. Where do people are talking about customer support? What questions do they ask? How can I help them with non-bullshit answers?

It'd now be open to public. Website would be ready – no fancy animations or mainstream copy. I want visitors to feal it’s no fluff, easy to use software. Readers should feel it’s something different. And I need to be able to iterate fast.

Getting more customers

When it comes to acquisition, there are 3 groups of people:

1. The ones who already know me, follow me, and like my work. I'm sure they supported me since the manifesto phase

2. The ones who don’t know me, but are looking for a customer service tool that’s not a live-chat

3. The ones who don’t know me, are hating their live-chats, but are not yet looking for anything in replacement

People looking for an asynchronous customer support tool

I'd list my project to the Software Directories (G2, Capterra) and social websites (Indiehackers, Betalist, Betapage). Even if this gets me 80 visitors per month, that'd be enough for my first signups. It’s free and it can work forever.

Second, I’d watch keywords on social media (e.g Twitter) and add saved searches for competitor and live chats related keywords. For example:

• alternative AND (zendesk OR intercom OR freshdesk OR helpscout) or

• (issue OR problem OR alternative) AND (bot OR support)

I’d reach out personally to just tell in a non-intrusive way about my project.

Leading with ideas

I’ve always believe that people who like what I have to say are more likely to like what I have to sell. So I'd blog about my journey growing this business: wins, mistakes, plans, updates. This would be an open window for anyone to see how I run Good Customer Service – from product to Marketing. I’d share convictions, celebrate milestones and show new features.

Building authority in the industry

As a Customer Support platform, I’d want to show expertise in providing great Customer Support myself. So I'd create a content series to promote better ways to do for my industry. It'd contain long-form posts featuring good practices, thoughts, essays and sharing great customer experiences I come accross. I'd edit the content into smaller chunks to share it.

I'm sure repeating that process would be enough to get me to an honest revenue level. What comes next depends on the trajectory, and I’m sure it’ll be clear for you. In time.

Some extra initiatives

I wouldn't consider them right now, since they need the business to run already:

• launch a referral program for my customer base. 3 months free if you refer a new paying customer

• optimize my knowledge bage content for SEO (rewrite questions, add more content to existing answers, create new questions based on search keywords, answer questions in my communities with links to my forum)

• bring together my best pieces of content into a book and promote it

Final words

There’s definitely room for a bootstrapped Customer Support SaaS! In fact, there are many markets to address: verticals (e.g e-commerce, creators), sizes (e.g solo business owners) or platforms (e.g Shopify). Maybe an open-source tool would make sense because customer service involves a lot of personal data.

Please don’t run too many market studies and build something instead. This something can be just a manifesto, a Twitter poll, a newsletter. All you need is to find the untapped market you'd like to serve and double-down on your differentiator.

That's all, thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun thinking about how I’d launch this. Do you know anyone who’d like to build an indie alternative for Customer Service SaaS? Or even better, who's currently working on one? I’m rooting for them!

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A calmer way to marketing

I embrace simple, honest, and sustainable marketing initiatives over intrusive tactics and never ending optimizations. And I believe it should matter a lot — for you, your project, and your customers:

1. Nobody likes to be marketed to – I show how to stand out without making your audience feel they're being manipulated.

2. You're here for the long haul so it matters to have fun doing marketing – running ads, sending cold-emails, over-optimizing campaigns is not.

3. It's easier to get profitable – spending less on marketing tricks means keeping more in the bank.

I don’t say what I promote is better, because it depends on what better means to you. If it's growing fast at all costs, it may not be indeed. In the end, I want to show there's an alternative way to do marketing, that can work for you.

You can trust me

Over the last 10 years, I've hold various Marketing positions at companies like Payfit, Shine, or Slite. One became a *unicorn*, one got acquired for over $300M, and the later one is doing well. Earlier this year, I decided it was time for me to take a bigger stand on making marketing more ethical, less bullshit, and support project owners.

A short story on how it started

When I quit my last job, I asked entrepreneurs on Reddit how I could help them with marketing. I got above 100 questions across all posts. People asked me about their positioning, launch, or acquisition. It was fun but impossible to follow up with everyone. I knew I could do something better.

I'm big on writing, so starting a publication was the ideal way to help entrepreneurs learn marketing. I wrote 2 posts and shared them to my indie hackers friends, the one who were often asking me some help on their projects. They told me the concept was great, and helped improve the format. A few days later, this site was live. More on the publication in the about page.

Everyone’s welcome

I hope you'll join me on this next phase. As a reader, as a subscriber, as a fan, or as a critic. Everyone's welcome. Comments are open to everyone and a great way to discuss — please help keep this place a safe and caring one.

Where to start

If you’re not a paid subscriber, I recommend starting with:

• My podcast’s first episode

• Why I go against the "sophisticated" marketing tactics

• How I start new projects

• How I'd do marketing for a bootstrapped Customer Support tool

• On why open source is a fantastic marketing tool

If you’re a paid subscriber, there’s also:

• How I'd do marketing for a bootstrapped CRM

• You don't have to run acquisition campaigns to get more customers

• Community Thread: marketing for a deodorant brand, growing a blog, positioning a CFA exam prep, and launching a book

• The opportunity to join my Telegram and discuss your challenges

• And a lot more to come!

Regarding subscriptions

A lot of what I publish here is free to read, share, comment upon, praise or trash. I answer each and every question or e-mails. This is so much fun to make, but it requires days of researching, writing, editing and designing. I am also an independent consultant with a newborn child and it can be challenging at times to guarantee financial security.

Luckily, Substack offers the option to add a premium membership. As of today I am enabling this, hoping you can spare something to support my work. Paying subscribers get:

• An email every month where I pick a business idea and write a detailed explainer on how I’d figure out its marketing (with design and copy samples)

• Access to Public Threads: we discuss your current challenges and the community tries to help you out

• 15 minutes each and every month to have a 1:1 chat

By choosing to pay you are showing that you appreciate what I do. By sharing this publication to friends or colleagues you are helping me toward making a living from it. I am thankful for all subscribers.

II’ve been having so much fun building and designing this website. I learned a lot about html, CSS, and JS. In a bit less than a month, ~1200 visitors got here and over 250 of them subscribed. I can’t be thankful enough to all of you for that. I couldn’t have dreamt a better start.

Now, I am also an independent consultant with a 2-year old kid and we’ll welcome a new baby in the next months. It can be challenging at times to guarantee financial security. Juggling between freelancing and this project doesn’t help get it better.

I need to focus on what I love.

It's writing to help developers and marketers bring more people in front of their projects, without having to play any ad, cold-email, or hack game. Because if they can market their projects well, they’ll be able to make a living from them.

This is what I want to achieve.

So it’s time to move to the next phase: bootstrappingmarketing.substack.com (yeah, I changed the name because it reflects better what I want to promote). I will commit more time so that I can: research more, edit more, design more, and make the overall experience way better.

Substack offers the option to add a premium membership. As of today I am enabling this, hoping you can spare something to support my work.

As an early subscriber, I got you the premium membership for free — you can upgrade it to Founding Member and get other exclusive benefits. Everyone’s view is welcome. Please keep sharing, commenting upon, praising or trashing what I publish.

By sharing this publication to friends or colleagues you are helping me toward making a living from it. I am thankful for all of you.

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