Guide for Launching Your Next Big Idea

Table of Contents

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  Introduction

  00:00:00 - 00:15:30 View Transcript

  Paul Boag begins the course by describing his experience helping small, medium, and large clients with conversion optimization and marketing. He also explains the common reasons why Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps fail.

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  Review the Market

  00:15:31 - 00:27:29 View Transcript

  Paul discusses the importance of market research. The process includes broadly defining your niche in the market to determine your particular audience for the type of app or product you are creating. Targeting too broad of an audience requires a more substantial marketing effort and reduces the likelihood of success.
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  Finding Competitors

  00:27:30 - 00:36:16 View Transcript

  Paul explains why identifying competitors and testing competitor products is beneficial early in the process. Assessing features, usability, and customer support will give you a better understanding of what you are up against. Analyzing the reach of the competition also provides insight into the type of investment required to establish yourself in the market.
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  Analyzing Competitors

  00:36:17 - 00:45:12 View Transcript

  Paul digs deeper into the competitive analysis. Identifying the core offerings, unique features, and platform integrations helps better understand how much overlap exists between products and any key differentiators. Market position and strategy are other important data points in competitive analysis.
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  Company Health

  00:45:13 - 00:59:32 View Transcript

  Paul recommends establishing the health of competitors to help determine their longevity. Health factors include innovation, technology choices, reliability, and privacy. Spotting feature, experience, or audience gaps can also identify vulnerabilities in a company.
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  Product Differentiation & Pricing

  00:59:33 - 01:03:26 View Transcript

  Paul explains the different ways in which a product can differentiate itself from the competition. Solving an unaddressed problem or enhancing existing features are two key strategies. Pricing models are also introduced. Using subscriptions, one-offs, add-ons, or free pricing models will depend on the product/service offering and the business plan.
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  B2B, Community, & Branding

  01:03:27 - 01:15:41 View Transcript

  Paul spends some time discussing differentiation related to B2B and B2C audiences. B2B differentiation can happen across verticals, sizes, and regions. B2C differentiation may include a focus on interests, demographics, and regions. Building a community around a product and product branding is also discussed in this lesson.

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  Creating an Audience Shortlist

  01:15:42 - 01:29:42 View Transcript

  Paul walks through the initial steps for identifying an audience. The process starts with removing impractical or challenging audiences and prioritizing the remaining ones. Key factors include market size, growth potential, product fit, competitive landscape, buying power, and lifetime value.
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  Pick an Initial Target

  01:29:43 - 01:35:46 View Transcript

  Paul talks through the process of picking an initial target audience. While selecting a small niche audience may seem limiting, it's a critical step in allowing your product to have a bigger impact at a lower cost.
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  Understanding & Interviewing Your Audience

  01:35:47 - 01:43:56 View Transcript

  Paul recommends digging deeper into your audience to identify what questions they might have or what might cause them to abandon the experience. Understanding goals, tasks, and challenges provides insight, and using surveys to fill gaps helps maintain accurate audience personas.

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  The Purpose of an MVP

  01:43:57 - 01:51:01 View Transcript

  Paul explains the importance of producing a minimum viable product (MVP) because it defines the initial scope, reduces costs, and aids in marketing to your target audience. After brainstorming the possible tasks of an MVP, top task analysis can help identify the most crucial tasks users aim to achieve and streamline the design and development of the MVP.
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  Top Task Analysis & Prototyping

  01:51:02 - 02:04:38 View Transcript

  Paul dives deeper into the top task analysis process. Survey tools like PollUnit help quickly gather feedback for prioritizing tasks. Prototyping is also essential for ensuring the audience understands the product and its value.

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  Running a Test Campaign

  02:04:39 - 02:08:16 View Transcript

  Paul explains that test campaigns ensure a plan is in place for driving leads and give you sample conversion rates based on pricing.
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  Defining Success

  02:08:17 - 02:18:50 View Transcript

  Paul reviews a few test campaign scenarios. The scenarios include calls to action for staying informed, joining a waiting list, and taking pre-orders.
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  Set Your Price

  02:18:51 - 02:24:46 View Transcript

  Paul outlines the pricing options available and shares the benefits and challenges for each. The pricing models include freemium, subscription, usage-based, per-user, and feature-based.
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  Build Your Landing Page

  02:24:47 - 02:38:49 View Transcript

  Paul shares the process of creating a high-converting landing page for your product. The page should include no more than two calls to action. Designing content blocks to highlight features and addressing common objections can help answer questions for the potential audience. Paul also outlines an ideal page flow with a summary, call to action, social proof, and benefits.
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  Drive Traffic

  02:38:50 - 02:46:05 View Transcript

  Paul discusses ways to drive traffic to your landing page. Engaging with the community, guest blogging, podcasts, and social media are mediums where you can push out content. Paying for sponsored posts or advertising can also raise awareness and increase traffic.
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  Nurture Your Audience

  02:46:06 - 02:50:41 View Transcript

  Paul encourages creating a campaign to stay connected and nurture the relationship between you and your potential customers. Communicating regularly keeps the audience engaged and leads to a higher conversion rate as the product is released.

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  Wrapping Up

  02:50:42 - 02:55:39 View Transcript

  Paul wraps up the course by answering a few questions about building multiple landing pages, strategies for finding clients, and concerns over ideas being copied when they are presented during user testing.