Indie Marketing Plays

Second interview out of the gate and already one of my favourites. Today, we’re talking to Ryan Kulp of the digital fund Fork Equity about building a digital business portfolio.
Ryan has an interesting background spanning New York and Silicon Valley and both building and marketing, with success in this leading to his current portfolio of apps and businesses. This gives him a very well rounded view on the buy, grow or build question and very practical advice to share.
We cover:
Why ‘micro’?
Starters versus growers
How to source opportunities
How to vet opportunities
Ryan’s secrets to better deal-making
Advice on structuring deals and contracts
How to make multiple projects flourish
Advice on installing managers for digital businesses
For those looking to build their own portfolio, check out Ryan’s training here. Or learn more about Fork Equity.

Copywriting product pages is super hard (for me). Trying to find the balance between something that hooks readers, without being cringy, while still being effective. 😔

Thankfully I could ask Indiehacker copywriting favorite, Lana Rafaela for advice on how ordinary folk can write better pages.

This interview turned into a mini master class, where she shared:

The MVP and ideal landing page

How to develop interest in your product, handle objections, and use social proof effectively

Where to adapt your page to improve your conversion rates

How to get user feedback using existing information

Here are the details:

Important note: The following is a summary written by me based on the interview, not quotes. Please listen to the audio version for the exact wording.

The ideal landing page

While each page differs by industry, a starting point to aim for could include these sections:

Hero section. Focus on the main benefits in the hero section, above the fold. That's the initial thing that people are gonna land on and that has to be really convincing to make them keep scrolling. Then talk about different objections.

Benefits. For the purpose of skimming, you should have it as a specific section. It doesn't have to be titled benefits, but they have to be clear out there. For example, using a bigger font to save time savings or ease of use or better than XYZ competitor. And then obviously infuse the rest of your landing page copy with them.

Features or how it works. You can use a video to have this if it's very verbose.

Social proof. Ideally, testimonials that give some value instead of just being trust signaling.

[Optional] FAQ. I like to use this especially if the product is not quite intuitive or if it's a new product in the space.

CTA. Try to make your CTAs unified. So don't try to sign up in one CTA and then learn more in another. If you want them to convert, then it's sign-up.

Tips:

Differentiate to earn attention. People are exposed to so much content online that you really have to do something to earn that time that they're giving you.

Develop interest via consequences. Unless people feel like they're in real pain they're probably not gonna take action. More on this below.

Respond to objections on the page. You need to know what's making your leads start to think about and second guess whether they should be really in business with you. You have to respond to those objections whether through your copy or through an FAQ section, but you have to do that.

What are the essentials?

👉 Don't have all the material to create the page above? If you want to launch with just the essentials, include:

Value proposition

Explanation of what your product does

CTA

Crafting differentiation

You need to understand the frustrations that are making people seek you out. There are a few ways to do this.

Reddit. It is a great source of unfiltered feedback. You can do some brainstorming on there as well to work out why is this product necessary.

Competitor feedback. Try to find competitors on G2 and see how negative reviewers think about their products, and what words they use, and try to narrow down on a specific situation that's causing a lot of frustration. You can then replicate that and respond to that on your landing page.

Example:

Say you are building a project management tool that combines the features of Trello and Asana. From Reddit research, you discover that users are frustrated with the limited visibility of team members' tasks and progress updates which leads to a lack of accountability and confusion over who is responsible for what tasks. Following this, you decide to prioritize collaboration features and real-time updates in the tool, highlighting the benefits of increased transparency and accountability on the landing page.

How to make readers care

There are two parts to this.

The first thing is to focus on frustrations and the second is to explain how are those frustrations affecting a business. The first is the emotional stage, as we tend to make decisions with our emotions, and then we try to reason them away with logic.

👉 It is important to cover both because in B2B, you're not just convincing your immediate customers, (e.g. a sales rep), but you're also helping them convince their manager, VP etc, and that's where the second point has relevance.

Example.

If users have to waste a lot of time managing application integrations, that’s...

Super stoked for this interview. This month I got to chat with Greg Elfrink about his advice on buying and selling eCommerce businesses.
Greg is the head of marketing at Empire Flippers, the number one curated marketplace for online properties, so he has awesome insight into what works, things to look out for, and some great tips, too.
Read my article version of the interview.
In this interview we cover:
The buying and selling process
When you should sell your website
How to maximize your eCommerce site’s sale value
Things to look out for as a buyer, or seller
Key traits of good sellers and good buyers
What are the pros and cons of each type of eCommerce site
And as usual, a whole bunch more.
Key Resources:
Due diligence guide for eCommerce

This is it for season 2, on SaaS marketing. This season's great highlights include the episodes with Alex Berman, Fed at GummySearch, and the founder journey story with Jimmy Rose. Thank you to all the guests of this season. Next season will be focused on traditional marketing applied to smaller businesses, among tech and other non-traditional industries. I see there's a real need to explain how these theories and principles apply in practice, so I hope that these guests will help us better understand how to implement them. See you there, or connect with me on Twitter @benjaminboman_ or on my website here.

Recent data found that 79% of people say watching a video has convinced them to sign up for an app.

But too many of my favorite products don't even have one.

Hunting for best practices, I connected with Justin Halsall , who explained:

What exactly to put in the video

How (bootstrappers) can put one together

Annoying mistakes to avoid

And how to give your video the X factor

Here are the details:

Important note: The following is a summary written by me based on the interview, not quotes. Please listen to the audio version for the exact wording.

What to put in your video?

👉 Here are some tips want to put in the video itself:

Start with the main problem. There can be a temptation to add too many ideas to the same video. Stay focused on the main benefit or problem first.

Talk about sub-benefits after. After covering the main point, you will be able to detail the sub-benefits related to this problem. for example, your main problem may be dealing with too many emails, and your product solves this. After covering how you solve that, you can show the extra features that add usability or value.

Try to hook them in the first 15 seconds. More on how to do this below.

Aim for 30 seconds to 1min, 30 seconds. This is the optimal length. If not possible, aim to keep the video under 2 minutes long. You may be able to extend the time that people will pay attention by including a human face, but this will increase production of quality and inconsequence the budget required.

Avoid these common mistakes:

Giving product tours. This wastes valuable time from communicating your main benefit or how you solve the main problem. Skip the login screen. This is definitely TMI.

Not showing the product. Motion graphics can be interesting, but you need to show the product being used.

Burying the video. The video needs to be placed in a location where it can actually be seen by users and affect your conversion Rates, like your home page.

How to find your hook?

You will find your hook by talking to your customers and prospects.

You need to find the idea that really resonates with them. What big benefit do they get from solving a particular pain point? Focus on that.

👉 How you present that hook depends on your creativity.

You could go full infomercial, such as “Are you struggling with X?” which is less cool, but it works. 🤷

Framer has a good example of a creative hook. They present the idea as asking you to imagine a few different ideas combined. See below:

Video endings

Here are some tips on how to end your video:

One sentence recap. Especially if you have a hero video that's a bit long a one-sentence recap at the end allows you to end on a high note that people will remember.

Splash screens with a Try The Product Now button is a nice way to prompt people to engage more.

How to create your hero video

Here are the steps to creating your hero video:

Create the ‘script’. Not the script probably like like you have in your mind right now but one based on high-level ideas written on post-its to prompt you through the recording. This will be flexible enough to re-arrange as you go based on what you learn from the process.

Write down the problem that you're going to address, describe the main benefit, and then describe the sub-benefits that you'd like to like to like to touch on.

Work out what you're going to show in your UI. In your video, you're going to click through different stages, etc. You will also need some assets to show this, like a demo or account with data in it already. Etc. Jot this down on a notepad.

Practice. You can practice this first just by talking it through and looking at your notes. You want to check that it makes sense.

Record and edit. Note that you want to record your audio separately from your video because that will remove a lot of the retakes.

Tips:

Use the correct screen resolution. You want to record something that will also work on mobile when somebody is watching on mobile. So if you have a 30-inch screen, you're going to have to change the resolution so that it's more like a 720p display.

Turn on Do Not Disturb , turn off your notifications, and maybe start a new user profile that doesn't have a ton of extensions in Chrome.

Have the right sound environment. If you want, you can type out what you want to say, and then record that in a quiet environment....