That feeling when you're about to ship a product

Ahh yeah...sit back, relax and let the customers roll in right after you hit publish. It's always good to reflect on your product. You're likely to have learned and have grown since you began building it however long ago.

After I've slowed on development of a web application I usually like to take a look at it from multiple different points of view. While nothing is ever 100% finished in the scheme of things when it's a functioning and working product, you can and should ship early. I'll be iterating on the product right up to and through the actual launch of my local service.

The particular web application I've been building has taken me about four months to build, test, and stand up in a production environment. This has come at the expense of giving up alot of my free time. I would work on it after hours and on weekends (after hours being when I had time outside of my day job). The market we'll be hitting is in the home services industry.

Not so fast! We must now start the process of marketing and getting traffic to this site. The real test of whether your product/service is ready will be when it's in your target markets hands. I've begun setting up marketing channels and will hit it full force come end of January and early February.

The plan will be:

  • Direct marketing sales letter to select neighborhoods
    • Test small segments to see what letters perform better
  • Online marketing (AdWords, Facebook Ads)
    • Retargeting audiences who've visited or shown interest previously
  • Traditional sales channels (signs, flyers, etc.)
  • We'll track this information through unique calls to action
  • Utilize unique phone numbers or coupon codes
  • Email marketing to specific lists of pulicly available data