Two Learnings About Marketing

Week 97 of Founding Typogram

Hi friends, I hope you had a great week. This week I am focused on building and modularizing Typogram’s brand personality feature. My co-founder and I are also thinking about ways to grow the app. My co-founder Hua is currently working on revamping our Brand Personality Workshop Kit website. 

Our Brand Personality Workshop Kit is a free tool we developed to jumpstart their branding. Our kit allows founders to narrow down visual directions and enable them to start their branding and logo design process. 

Don’t Shout to Sell

An important lesson clicked for me recently: It’s called a marketing/sales funnel for a reason. When I first learned about marketing, I thought marketing/sales was similar to standing at the town square’s center, shouting at the top of your lungs.

Boy, was I wrong– in fact, shouting at the top of your lungs doesn’t work. You have to nurture relationships with your potential customers. Of course, occasionally, you come across a hardcore fan, but usually, a potential user/ customer who usually needs persuasion to buy the product.

As an introverted designer/developer/Redditor type, this realization made me feel better - like a sailboat cruising into the deck, it’s about quiet approaches.

Once I got into this train of thought, it became easier to do marketing. Not everything has to scream – “buy my product!” Share mini products, information, and things that could help others. Do this continuously –– people will want to stay in touch and check out what you are building.

Build Something You Can Spend A Lot of Time Talking About

Many people say: you should build for a market that has a desperate need for your solution. I advocate: you should create for a problem/audience you are passionate about.

As a startup founder, I often have to advocate for the product you build. For Typogram, my co-founder and I both write and share about what and how we are making our tool. 

We spent significant time writing about our product and thinking about how to create helpful design learning materials for non-designers from different angles. This is all because we are passionate about the problem we are solving - making design tools easier, more creative, and more accessible for beginners/non-professionals.

Hear from You

Do you have any thoughts on the lessons I learned, or have any valuable lessons you learned from a business or project you created in the past? I would love to hear about it.

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See you next week! If you have friends interested in founding startups, please share my newsletter with them!