Learn from my SaaS marketing mess-ups.

All my “misses” from Month 1 of launching my SaaS

Author

Tommy Clark
November 11, 2024

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files — your no-BS guide to growing a successful B2B social media presence.

Hope you had a great weekend. I got a 10K run in on Saturday—mileage is slowly climbing back up. I think I’m at 14mi on the week.

I’m about 1 month post-launch with Bluecast. Feedback has been great and momentum is strong—but we made plenty of mess ups. Which is what I wanna share today. Looking back, what would I have done differently with our marketing?

Let’s find out.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Learn from my SaaS marketing mess-ups.

All my “misses” from Month 1 of launching my SaaS

I launched my SaaS—Bluecast—to the public 1 month and 1 week ago.

It’s been a whirlwind. Mostly good. But I’ve also messed up quite a bit.

And I figured it’d be helpful to walk you through a few of the marketing mistakes I’ve made so far—so you can just avoid them altogether in your marketing.

Cool? Cool.

Mistake 1: I was too worried about repetition.

We came out of the gate with a lot of noise on the timeline. Our launch post popped off. I felt like the “new user” emails just wouldn’t stop for the next week. Talk about a dopamine rush.

But I started slacking. I haven’t been shilling Bluecast as much as I should over the past 2 weeks. Why?

Here’s are some of the thoughts that were rattling around in my mind:

What if I sound too repetitive?

I already posted about this feature.

Is my audience going to get tired of this story?

After a few days of thinking through this, the (almost comical) epiphany backhand slapped me in the face.

These are all the same talking points—excuses, really—that drive me clinically insane when clients say them to me.

Especially the repetition one. God, it drives me crazy. It’s the cardinal sin of content creation. You find a winning angle, and then do nothing with it. No derivative posts. No repurposing. Insane!

But here I was, committing the cardinal sin myself! Memes really do imitate life.

I should have been blitzing the timeline at all times with the same core messaging that drove the initial wave of sign-ups. I should have been posting nonstop propaganda about the benefits of personal branding. I should have used Bluecast to repurpose winning ideas into more content (wink wink).

Because the truth is:

→ When you find winning messaging—you want to plaster it everywhere.

→ Most of your audience doesn’t even see each post you make.

Audience fatigue is this made up boogeyman in our heads that keeps us from printing internet money with content. We need to wage war against it at all times.

It’s like the founder-led content version of the Spotlight Effect—the idea that everyone is always looking at us. Breaking news. They’re not. Post more. I will be.

TAKEAWAY: The fear of repeating yourself is an imaginary monster in your head. Nobody is paying as much attention to your content as you think they are—you actually want people paying more attention to what you post. So post more. Repeat winning messaging. Blitz the timeline.

Mistake 2: I got too fancy with it.

Marketers want the fancy stuff to work so badly. It’s easy to lose your way.

I always go back to one of my favorite Kobe Bryant stories when I find myself overcomplicating stuff like this.

This trainer got to sit in on one of Kobe’s 3:30 AM workout sessions.

Hours passed, and the guy just saw Kobe practicing basic footwork and drills over and over and over again. The type of stuff you might see at a middle school basketball camp.

The guy finally asks Kobe what the deal was. Why was he doing such simple exercises despite being the best player in the world? Kobe tells him, "Why do you think I’m the best player in the world? Because I never get bored with the basics."

The best founders (and marketers) never get bored with the basics.

Yet I lost sight of this for a moment. I was trying to script the perfect viral short-form video that would drive thousands of people to the Bluecast site. I thought one content piece would take us to the promised land.

Because of this I was posting about the product less frequently—and user growth slowed down for a week or two. Uh oh.

After a while of beating my head against a wall—along with dealing with some agency fires to put out—I just said “screw it” and posted a repurposed clip from a YT video that demo’d how I use Bluecast to repurpose content. Wasn’t anything flashy, but I just wanted to get a post out that morning.

Ding. New user email alert.

Ding. New user email alert.

Ding. New user email alert.

Lmao. I was breaking my brain trying to crack the viral formula when I should have just posted a few simple use-case videos to Linkedin.

I was trying to nail a Dude Perfect trick shot from full court when I should have just taken the layup. Lesson learned.

TAKEAWAY: When you're an early-stage founder or marketer, it’s easy to try and do fancy sh*t. Resist. Do the boring work. Brute force your way to your first few revenue milestones by being relentless with the fundamentals. They work. If you won’t listen to me, listen to Kobe. Lol.

Mistake 3: I diluted my attention.

I’m gonna pull some receipts on myself right now.

In my essay breaking down Bluecast’s launch marketing playbook, I wrote:

“LinkedIn and email are the only channels we will need to get Bluecast off the ground. We are going to blitz these two. I always advise my clients to go hard on 1-2 channels rather than ‘keep the lights on’ with 5+.

I know we don’t have a Gary Vee-level production team. I know we’re going up against a much larger competitor with a bunch of budget to throw at influencers. So I’m picking our spots carefully.”

Fast forward 1 month and I’ve been trying to publish across 3 LinkedIn accounts, keep the newsletter consistent, launch a new newsletter, go viral on Instagram Reels, fire off tweets multiple time , launch an influencer marketing play…

So much for sticking to 1 platform.

I felt like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. Well, more like 2 boulders since I also had agency fires to focus on. Wrote about that last week (we’re so back).

I tend to fall into this trap because I confuse activity for effectiveness. It feels like I’m being productive when I’m posting 13 content pieces across platforms in one day.

But, one content asset that’s crafted intentionally—the hook, the topic, the visuals—will pull just as much traffic as 13 average piece that were pieced together frantically.

There’s a sweet spot here though. I just told you how I can’t be overcomplicated content and praying for one post to go viral. I need more data points. I need more reps to get better at making Bluecast content.

How do I reconcile these two ideas?

I should just listen to my own advice. Pick 1 platform. Post frequently on that one platform. Be intentional about iterating the content I produce on that platform so it starts performing better, faster.

Another point of clarification here. This shift isn’t about putting less effort into content. It’s about allocating the creative bandwidth that you have into the most effective channel possible.

TAKEAWAY: Don’t confuse activity for effectiveness. Funnel the effort you're putting into content into the 1-2 highest leverage channels you have. Not 3. Not 4. Not 5. Just 1. Maybe 2. You have a finite amount of creative bandwidth—especially if you're a founder running a company—squeeze as much juice out of it as you can.

One more note.

It’s funny. It seems like I need to learn this lesson once per quarter. Keep it simple.

Get customers before you try to get too creative.

Repeat your winning messaging.

Focus on 1-2 core channels.

If you're a founder, you for sure see this play out in other areas of your business. We should launch this new product. No, you should refine your core offer. We need to go hire 9 more bodies. No, you should probably focus on training your current team and making them more efficient.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Alex Hormozi quotes: “Fancy fails. Simple scales.”

You're probably gonna have to learn this lesson a few times for yourself. But hopefully this essay will save you from 1-2 of those go-arounds.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week. It’s not an honor I take lightly.

In the spirit of sticking to the fundamentals marketing Bluecast, he’s a classic shill. Go ahead and sign up for the tool here.

Getting great feedback from early users.

Give it a spin here. And LMK what you think!

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want Compound to run a founder-led content motion for you… save a spot on our waitlist here. We’re at capacity through November, but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in December.