Understanding Your Target Audience
Ever wondered whoâs actually out there waiting for your brand new platform. I think most people sort of have a general sense, but many donât look much deeper than age, gender, and where the person lives. And thatâs not surprising - a lot of the data out there stops at demographics. But an audience is probably more than just a bunch of numbers.
Sort of. I find theyâre flesh-and-blood people with interests, quirks, passions, and even pet peeves that go way beyond their age and sex. And while you canât possibly get to know every one of them personally, you can build a fairly nuanced profile with enough research.
Have a bit of a dig around (and social media stalking). Youâll learn what makes your audience tick and what makes them want to completely switch off. Knowing your crowd will help you create messaging that really hits home. The way I see it, it also gives you clues about what kinds of content your audience is likely to engage with, as well as products and services they might find useful.
Plus, it helps you become more relatable - people can sniff out inauthenticity (sometimes even desperation) from miles away these days. Sort of. I think it pays to look closely at other brands in the space too.
Not in an envious sort of way, but in the interest of keeping things real. This might be by lurking on their socials, reading product reviews online, or even running an informal focus group where you ask people who are in your target demographic about their thoughts on competing brands and if they have any constructive feedback about yours. Taking this approach also shows that you have respect for your audience and what they really want (even if it isnât always what you want).
Crafting a Compelling Value Proposition
Why should people care about your platform - whatâs the point. What do you offer that no one else can. It seems like or is it more about expressing what you do, rather than selling a dream you canât deliver.
First thing to remember - this is not the place to say what you do. This is the place to convince people of why you matter in their lives. If your platform is about being able to buy ice cream with a click, then your value proposition is how people can get affordable, high-quality ice cream without fuss, delivered to their doorstep. Thatâs the story you tell.
It appears obvious at first - just state what makes you special. But it does require knowing yourself better than most founders think they do. So many entrepreneurs are focused on selling a product or service that they forget why anyone needs to buy anything from them at all.
The best way to get started on figuring out your value proposition is to talk to people about their pain points and aspirations (a little therapy for the business soul). Then, align your features with these, and see if it solves any of those problems or goals. If it does, then you have something valuable to say.
Communicate it with a few words for each idea - pain or goal on one side, solution on the other side. Paint a picture with your words and use evidence from personal experience or customer testimonials to show how your value proposition has helped someone in real life (yours included).
Building a Robust Marketing Strategy
Building a Robust Marketing Strategy What is often it about marketing that makes people so anxious. Maybe itâs the jargon - or the endless âtips and tricksâ that promise to make your brand go viral. Itâs almost as if people expect an idea, a plan and boom â theyâre famous now.
If only. It seems like marketing is not a monolith. You canât âjust wing itâ and build effective, sustainable outreach at the same time.
So what works. A great place to start is with your basics. Build a plan that communicates your unique value to the right people, through places that they are most likely to hear you, in a consistent way.
Think about platforms, tone of voice, visual cues, what you want people to remember when they hear your name â and keep refining this till youâre happy with what you see. The way I see it, another big piece in this puzzle is understanding who your audience is and where theyâre seeing you (or not). Different groups respond differently based on their needs or values.
For example, someone looking for super organic items will probably not be interested in fast fashion â or if you have a product or service tailored for a certain age group, finding and speaking to their interests can really help your brand stand out from the crowd. If I had to sum this up â marketing should be rooted in transparency and more importantly, values. Your products neednât appeal to everyone (in fact, it would be odd if they did). But understand who loves them and reach out directly â ask them how their experience was and build channels for feedback into your wider strategy so youâre always learning about who uses your platform.
Ensuring Technical Readiness
Ever wondered why some platforms crash on launch day, while others donât miss a beat. I think the real answer isnât always sexy marketing or even great content. Itâs technical preparedness - having all the tools, tech, and backup plans in place to handle the unexpected. It goes beyond an Insta-worthy product teaser campaign.
As shallow as this sounds, style without substance can occasionally trip you up here. If you donât have robust infrastructure and backend capabilities to support growth, your fancy platformâs going nowhere - fast.
To avoid ending up in another long thread of âstartup launch gone wrongâ stories, invest in load testing, security audits, updates, and all other unsexy but necessary tech tasks beforehand. Iâd say over-prepare for every disaster scenario you can imagine because itâs better to be safe than sorry. All that jazz about scalability and agility from CTOs, data engineers, and technical architects - itâs good stuff. It helps to have experts who can future-proof your platforms with solid frameworks that can accommodate customer data protection protocols and integrations with other platforms (like Shopify) - should you need them in the future.
The right team helps ensure that your systems are ready to adapt in weeks (not months or years) when needs change suddenly. I think it also pays off to have people on standby for round-the-clock support during launch week and for a while after. Even if there are no glitches, seeing your server logs fill up with login attempts may trigger anxiety. Thereâs nothing like a living, breathing person on the line who knows what theyâre doing with tech issues on standby when nerves get the better of you on launch day.
Engaging Early Adopters
Which one would you rather be - the first person to discover a hidden gem, or the one who discovers it through word of mouth. If you're in the former camp, chances are, you identify as an early adopter. Early adopters are those who gravitate towards new ideas, technologies and platforms, and share what they've discovered with friends and communities. This type of user is important for a new platform because they're also usually the first to provide feedback.
More or less. The kind that can help shape a product to meet customer needs even more effectively.
These users bring with them a sense of credibility and authenticity to your new platform - especially within their own social circles. A successful launch depends on connecting with these types of users in order to create a loyal fanbase from the beginning. It may appear like quite an easy task but cultivating relationships with early adopters isn't always so straightforward. In my opinion, engaging them requires a strong value proposition that aligns with their preferences or areas of interest.
They have to find something unique about your platform or offering that compels them to return for more. Most importantly though, it's fairly necessary to listen closely to what they have to say about their experiences so far. It seems like there is kind of great potential for improvement through their feedback - they are after all some of your first customers. And there is also tremendous value in rewarding them for being early supporters.
It seems like a little goes a long way - whether it is probably beta access before the rest of your audience or exclusive access to events, content or features.
Measuring Success and Gathering Feedback
I Think what happens after the partyâs over. Thereâs the clean-up, of course, and then you sit down with those you planned it with to ask â did everyone enjoy themselves, do we need to order more samosas next time, and how do we get rid of the tomato sauce stains on the carpet. Launching a platform can feel a bit like this.
Thereâs all this excitement leading up to it, the event itself, and when itâs over â thereâs a lot to assess. Many new platforms focus on immediate results â how many users were gained, what conversion rates look like in the first week, or if everything went off without any hiccups at all. While these are good metrics to keep track of, Iâd say that success is slightly a much longer journey than those first few days or weeks. A successful launch is one that sets up the platform for continued growth in terms of new features, customer retention rates, brand loyalty and social media engagement.
And a necessary part of setting yourself up for that kind of success is focusing on something teams often forget about because theyâre so caught up in the day-to-day. And that is feedback. No matter how perfect your platform appears to be (to you), there will be flaws â or at least areas that could benefit from improvement.
Consider conducting user surveys, sending out personalised emails to early adopters asking them for their honest opinions or even putting out a post or two on your website or social media with an open call for feedback. This allows your users to feel like their concerns are being heard but also gives them insight into how committed you are to making this experience better for them. When gathering feedback â whether itâs negative or positive â itâs important that you respond quickly (and consistently).
Acknowledge issues as soon as they come up so your customers know their experience matters to you but also establish clear guidelines so internal teams know how it should be handled.