Marketing for MVPs: What to Do When MVPs are Ready

Last Updated: 

September 12, 2024

Marketing an MVP is difficult, but it's not impossible. You just need to know what to do and when. The first thing to understand is that marketing for MVPs is different from marketing for finished products, so it may take some time and experimentation before you figure out what works best for your company. Here are some tips on how to get started with marketing your MVP:

Key Takeaways on Marketing for MVPs

  1. MVP Marketing Challenges: Marketing an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) comes with its own set of challenges, requiring specific strategies tailored to its stage of development.
  2. Feedback from Investors: Investors can provide valuable feedback on the usefulness of your MVP since they are potential buyers. Prepare a demo-ready MVP for investor presentations.
  3. Avoid Delaying Marketing: Start marketing your MVP as soon as possible to gather user feedback, understand its viability, and generate revenue.
  4. Pre-Launch Marketing: Plan pre-launch marketing activities targeting existing customers and potential customers interested in your product category.
  5. Create Buzz: Develop a landing page, explainer video, and written content explaining the problems your product solves, benefits, and its uniqueness.
  6. Revenue Generation: Generate revenue before launch through a well-optimised landing page, affiliate programs, and referral programs.
  7. Sales Channels: Make it easy for customers to buy your product by setting up online stores, landing pages, and lead generation forms.
  8. Influencer Marketing: Collaborate with industry influencers to promote your MVP to their large following and gain their valuable feedback.
  9. Landing Page Importance: Create a landing page that clearly conveys your MVP's value proposition, uses visuals, and encourages sign-ups or exploration.
  10. Feedback Collection: Collect feedback from users through tools like surveys, interviews, and social media to adapt your MVP based on insights.
  11. SEO Implementation: Use SEO techniques by incorporating relevant keywords, tags, and links to ensure your MVP is discoverable online.
  12. Varied Marketing Approaches: Choose marketing strategies based on your business goals, audience, and available resources, focusing on audience building or investor engagement.
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Use your investors to get feedback on MVPs

The best way to get feedback on your MVP is from investors. They are the people who will buy your product, so they can give you valuable feedback on whether your MVP is useful.

If you're going to be pitching an investor with an MVP, make sure that it's in a state where it can be demoed easily and clearly. For example: if there's no video of someone using your app yet (or even screenshots), then don't try and sell them on how great it looks! Instead, focus on explaining how well-designed the app is and why this makes sense as part of its functionality, and then ask if they have any questions about this aspect of things before moving onto anything else. 

If there's no video yet, then it might make sense to just show them screenshots, or even a mockup. If you're selling an app, then show them how easy it is to use on a phone so that they can see how intuitively designed it is.

Don't sit on the MVP and wait for more funding

Now that you have developed MVP, it's time to get out there and start marketing. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to get any traction with your product. You need to be able to test your product and get feedback on it as soon as possible so that you can make changes based on what users want or don't want.

You also need money! If you're not making any money from sales or advertising, then there's no way of knowing whether this is going anywhere or whether people actually like using it (or even understand how). The sooner that happens, though - the better chance we'll have at finding out if this is something worth pursuing further down the line when funding comes around again!

Get ready to market your MVP in advance of launch day

Once your MVP is ready, it's time to get ready to market it in advance of launch day. While you may be tempted to wait until the last minute and just push out an email blast or two when it's time for launch, this is not advisable if you want to create a buzz around your product. Instead, consider planning out some marketing activities before launch so that everything goes smoothly on launch day itself!

There are two main audiences that should be targeted with pre-launch marketing: existing customers and competitors' customers (or people who would be interested in this type of product).

For existing customers, you want to get them excited about your product and increase the amount of revenue you're bringing in from them. Send out an email blast announcing that there will be a new product soon (and include a link where they can sign up for early access), create some social media posts talking about what you're working on, post pictures of prototypes, etc. This will help keep your current customers engaged in what's happening with your company and remind them that they should still be purchasing from you even though they may not have something new to buy right now!

Build buzz around your product prior to release

When you're ready to launch your MVP, there are a few things you can do to build buzz around it.

First and foremost: create a landing page. This will be the place where people go when they want more information about your product and how they can buy it. Make sure that the page is well-designed, with clear calls-to-action (CTAs) so people know exactly what they need to do next when they land on your site, whether that's signing up for an email list or purchasing something immediately.

Second: create both an explainer video and written content explaining what problem(s) your product solves, why those problems exist in the first place, how users benefit from using it versus other solutions out there (and why), etc.! These will both help get potential customers excited about what could potentially be coming down the pipeline soon enough if these initial steps prove successful enough through traffic generated by ads on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter and influencers who might share their excitement over having discovered something new which aligns perfectly with their own interests/needs/etc.

Create multiple streams of revenue before launch day

There are several ways to generate revenue before your MVP is launched.

  • Create a landing page for your MVP and optimise it for SEO. You can do this using WordPress (the most popular content management system) or any other platform that allows you to create a website quickly and easily.
  • Establish an affiliate program with trusted partners who are interested in promoting your product or service, as well as providing value-added services around the purchase process (e.g., payment processing). This will help you grow brand awareness while also building trust among potential buyers, who may be sceptical about purchasing from new companies without having tried their products yet!
  • Set up a referral program so that existing customers refer others who might be interested in buying from you too! For example: You could offer them 10% commission if they refer someone who purchases something from us - or even better yet; give away free stuff like T-shirts!!

Set up sales channels

The next step is to set up sales channels. You need to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy your product, so you should consider the following options:

  • Create an online store that can accept payment through credit cards and other methods.
  • Set up a landing page on your website with a lead generation form where people can enter their email address in exchange for access to a preview version of your product (if there is one). If you have an existing user base or community, consider using them as part of this process by sending out invitations via email or social media posts.

If you don’t have an existing user base, consider organising a launch party to generate interest in your product. This is a great way to get people talking about what you do and provide them with an opportunity for social sharing.

Market your MVP to influencers

When you have an MVP that is ready to market, it's time to reach out to influencers. These are people in your industry who have a large following and relevant expertise. You can define them by their number of followers or the number of times they've been featured on prominent websites or publications. They're also often referred to as thought leaders because they share their opinions with the world on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and sometimes even blog posts!

When reaching out to these types of individuals:

  • Offer them a free trial version of your product (if one exists). This will give them an opportunity to try out what you're offering before committing any money into it themselves; if they like what they see, then there's no reason not too, since there won't be any risk involved when trying out something new.
  • Ask them for feedback about what works well within this product/service, as well as suggestions on how improvements could be made.
  • Ask if they would mind helping promote this offering through sharing links across social media platforms, where others might learn more about it too!

Create a landing page for your MVP

A landing page is a web page that serves as an entry point to your website or mobile app. It can be used for many different purposes, but most commonly it's used to collect emails, create urgency and drive traffic towards other parts of the business (e.g., sales pages).

According to R2 certified IT equipment recycler bigdatasupplyinc.com, a good MVP landing page should be focused on one thing: getting people excited about what you're doing and getting them to sign up, so they can learn more about it later on. The best way to do this is through clear messaging that explains what your product does in simple terms; don't be afraid to use visuals if they help convey the value proposition even better!

If you're building a landing page for your MVP, there are two main things you should focus on: 

  1. Make it easy for people to understand how the product works and what value it provides 
  2. Use compelling visuals (e.g., videos or images) to help explain this even further

The key here is to make your landing page as simple as possible. Don't include any information that isn't directly related to your product; if you want people to sign up, they need to know what they're signing up for! Remember: the goal of an MVP landing page is not necessarily to get people signed up for your app, but rather get them excited about what it does and drive traffic towards other parts of your business (e.g., sales pages).

Collect feedback and adapt the product accordingly

The next thing to do is collect feedback from your users. You can ask them for their opinions directly, or you can use a landing page to collect their opinions anonymously.

There are many tools that help you do this: SurveyMonkey, Typeform and Google Forms are just some examples of services that make it easy for anyone who knows how to type out an email address or phone number (which means anyone) can create a survey in minutes and start collecting feedback right away!

Social media is another great place where you can get immediate insights into how people feel about your product. If someone posts something negative about it on Twitter or Facebook, then chances are they'll also leave a comment below the post as well, so check out social media every day if possible!

Asking users' feedback is a good way to get insights into how people feel about the product, what they like and don't like, etc. You can do this through surveys or interviews.

Use SEO to market your MVP

When your MVP is ready to be marketed, the first thing you should do is use SEO (search engine optimisation) to make sure that people can find it. To do this, include keywords in the title and description of your MVP, as well as tags that are relevant to your product or service.

You'll also want to link back to your website from within the footer of each page on your site so that visitors who click through will be taken directly there by default instead of having them search around for where they landed after clicking on something else first!

In addition, consider adding links from other websites where appropriate when talking about similar topics or industries - such as blogs/forums to related topics/industries etc.

There are many ways to market your MVP, choose the best one for you!

As you can see, there are many ways to market your MVP. The choice of a marketing option depends on your business goals and resources.

If you want to increase the number of users and get some feedback from them, then focus on building an audience first. Promote your product through social media channels like Facebook or Twitter and try to get some media coverage (if possible). You can also organise an event where people will be able to meet the founders face-to-face - this way they'll feel more comfortable sharing their opinion with you.

If you're looking for funding or investors, it's better not only because they don't need much time but also because they usually expect results right away, so don't hesitate! Most importantly, though: remember that no matter what happens during this stage, always keep calm!

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to market your MVP. The best way to choose is by considering your product, audience and budget, but also looking at what other companies have done in similar situations.

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