This marketing strategy actually made me happier

It’s an excellent question, @printscreen! And one could argue that with a second product I now have 2 marketing challenges instead of just one! 😳

And that may very well turn out to be the case. But here is my initial plan and thinking:

#1. I sent an email newsletter to all existing GQueues users telling them about Hijinx. This obviously won’t drive any new traffic to GQueues, but I’m hoping it will jump-start people using Hijinx. And because Hijinx is always played with a group of people, hopefully from these initial players it will spread to non-GQueues users.

#2. I am going to email all people in my personal and professional network to let them know about this app I built to make remote meetings better. If I were promoting my paid product, I would feel a little sheepish doing this, but since Hijinx is free and will make their life better, I feel much better about it. This message now comes from a place of giving instead of taking.

#3. I will reach out to, and post everywhere online I can think of where people might be looking for ways to do virtual team building (bloggers, tangential products, forums, Quora, etc..). Again, since Hijinx is fun, useful and free, my thinking is it will be received and spread fairly easily.

#4. I might try Facebook/Instagram/Google Ads. But only for a short period of time and small amount of money, just to seed that initial set of users. (I’m still on the fence about this, since I wasted so much money on ads in the past with GQueues).

#5. I may eventually try to launch it on Product Hunt after some initial traction.

In essence, my main hypothesis is that it will be easier to promote and spread a free and inherently fun product with built-in virality. My paid product, GQueues, is super valuable to people, but I wouldn’t consider collaborative task management inherently fun ;)

Btw, I just checked out Flowful and I’m going to try it out today while I work. Super cool!

Thanks for sharing these metrics and your experience, @GreyRock!

The ATC review site is incredible - that's a 7% conversion rate! And since it's based on community reviews, it seems like it will just keep growing over time.

And I totally agree about spicing up dev life - after so many years in the same code base it's fun to work on something completely new every now and then!

Let's gooo, is the traffic from Dronedesk bigger than the small tools?

Thanks for sharing these @Frenchcooc! It looks like all 3 of these free tools would be really useful for a person who might use your paid product, Mailmeteor - which seems really smart!

Would you be willing to share the impact these tools have had?

#1. Are they driving new traffic to your paid product?
#2. Would you consider it worth the time/effort spent to develop them?
#3. Was there anything you did to market the free tools when you launched them?
#4. Anything you would do differently for your next free tool?

That's awesome, Matt!

Was there something different or special about SVG Backgrounds that you think made it more successful than your other attempts?

Were there any downsides or "things to look out for" that you experienced with the engineering-as-marketing approach?

That's great, @behn. Please do let us all know how it goes! I think the more examples and data points we have around this the more we'll learn.

Also, I just tried out SecondThought - what a great tool for dealing with the struggles so many of us face as entrepreneurs!

These are really great questions and suggestions, Jay! And it's definitely got me thinking in some new ways.

GQueues already has a way to publish a list or embed it on a webpage, but maybe I could create a customized dashboard that a person/company could share with others, that would be at their own subdomain. I'm definitely going to think on this some more.

Nothing's coming to mind right now for Hijinx, but if you or others have ideas I definitely welcome them! I'm going to ponder this over the weekend.

Thanks for the thoughtful critique, @zachswinehart!

I see your point about the ad copy being vague. Right now the extension randomly chooses from a set of 10 messages for the ad when it loads in the meeting - most of them section headings from the website. It is tracking clicks for each message to see which ones perform best. But I really like this idea of advertising a lead magnet in this space so we can contact people later and nurture them down the funnel. I think I’ll add this to the testing!

It also got me thinking just now that it might be worth testing an ad where the CTA is to start a free trial of GQueues directly. The ad copy would definitely need to be clearer - probably something along the lines of “manage tasks with your team”.

And thanks for the feedback on the website positioning. We actually just re-wrote the copy on the entire website back in January, with an emphasis on benefits for our ideal customer. Perhaps we went a little too far though! To me, GQueues is obviously a collaborative task manager for teams -- but after building the product for 13 years I’ve completely lost the perspective of someone who may be new to the site/product! So thanks for those fresh eyes. And I can see now that by just reading the text on the homepage it’s not necessarily clear. We’ll do some A/B testing of other messages. And thanks for the references to Streak and marketingexamples!

That's great to hear you've found success with this approach, @Michael_Andreuzza!

Are you willing to share how you got the product featured on big YouTube channels? Is there something you'd recommend to others to increase the chances of getting this kind of exposure?

I definitely think the "free product" could be more on the technical side, and it probably should be if the ideal customer for your main product is a technical audience.

In terms of building SDKs for your core product as "engineering-as-marketing", I found this quote from Failory's post on Side Project marketing helpful:

The project can’t be focused on your existing customers. If that’s the case, it’s instead a product feature. For example, if you build a Chrome Extension that provides new features to your product, even though it is a stand-alone product, it’s not Engineering as Marketing as it’s not aimed at attracting new customers.

So if you want test this marketing approach, you'll probably have the best chance of getting the results you want with a technical tool/product that targets bringing in new customers.

What are your thoughts?

Regarding your sidebar, you're right -- this is a pretty broad definition of our ideal customer. And we use the full persona we've created internally when thinking about the actual ways to communicate with our prospective customers.

But for determining what free product to build, I found even this broad definition useful.

Google Workspace Users
GQueues is only for Google Workspace users (you MUST sign in with a Google account, and it integrates exclusively with Google products), so while this might seem like just a technical requirement, it's actually pretty important in scoping our audience. So, for example, when considering what free product to build, I ruled out building a Zoom Addon, even though it's a more popular meeting platform, because it caters to everyone, instead of just Workspace users.

Teams
In the beginning GQueues focused on individual task management, but in our efforts to increase LTV, the last several years have been focused on building for, supporting and marketing to teams. So this was also an important criteria for this new product. I didn't want to build something that was just used by individuals. We want teams as customers, so the free product also needed to be for teams.

Does that make more sense?

Yes, you keyed in on what @printscreen and @briancldo already mentioned in their comments about needing to market the new product.

It's such a great question though I think it's worth re-iterating my response to Brian and what I hope to learn with this approach:

I think you're right - there's no way to completely escape marketing!

What I hope to discover with this experiment though is:

#1. Is it easier to market a free product with built-in virality?

and

#2. If so, can I take advantage of that to then market my paid product that doesn't have built-in virality?

If those questions prove true, I still won't be able to avoid marketing, but perhaps I can play on "easy mode" instead of "hard mode" :)

Great question, Goutham!

The “build and they will come” strategy only worked during the first few years of the business. Keep in mind this was 2009, when the internet was much smaller, and specifically the task management space was very small. Basically the only online task managers at the time were Remember the Milk and Basecamp. Google Tasks had just launched but was even more bare bones than it is today. “Things” was desktop only. Todoist, Asana, Clickup, monday.com, Trello, TickTick, Any.do all DID NOT EXIST!

So when I launched GQueues, there weren’t a lot of competitors. Google App Engine had just recently launched (which GQueues is built on), so I posted on their “Built with App Engine” page and got traffic that way. I posted on some other directories too (back when people actually went to directories). Random productivity bloggers came across GQueues and would write about it completely unsolicited. I woke up one day with 300 new users all from a blog that a teacher wrote in the UK about tools for educators. A bigger tech blog wrote about GQueues and I got 8,000 new users within a matter of hours. Things like this kept happening - which was great because I got to focus entirely on building the product.

In 2010 Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace (now Google Workspace Marketplace) and I listed GQueues there which drove a ton of on-going traffic, and it’s still my best marketing channel. The person who ran the marketplace at Google noticed GQueues was getting traction and invited me to give a talk at Google I/O in 2011, which in turn drove more traffic.

Everything was easy at the time, but over the years more competitors kept appearing (some with lots of money), and the space became very crowded, and getting new users became much harder for GQueues. So I had to start focusing on marketing.

If I were building a new product today, I would definitely build something for an existing app marketplace / ecosystem. As someone who doesn’t really enjoy marketing, it seems to be the easiest way to get new users. Of course there are risks that go along with this strategy, but that’s probably something for another post.

I was just reading about this idea, Misha, where the side project actually generates the need for the primary paid product. That's next level for sure!

I guess HubSpot does this with their Website Grader. People use the free tool to get their website graded, and then if certain areas are low, the tool recommends ways the person can use HubSpot to improve the website.

Thanks! I'll definitely post updates.

I checked out Fern -- looks like you're solving a cool problem around managing research studies!

I think you're totally right. I've seen both "side project marketing" and "engineering as marketing" used interchangeably.

I actually just came across this article which has some great examples of the different types of side projects/products that work well for promoting a paid primary product.

Side Project Marketing: What Is It & How to Do It, +10 Examples

If others are thinking about trying this approach, this may be a good starting resource.

It's a great question and point, Brian, and I think that's exactly what Drew (@printscreen) was getting at in his comment.

I think you're right - there's no way to completely escape marketing!

What I hope to discover with this experiment though is:

#1. Is it easier to market a free product with built-in virality?

and

#2. If so, can I take advantage of that to then market my paid product that doesn't have built-in virality?

If those questions prove true, I still won't be able to avoid marketing, but perhaps I can play on "easy mode" instead of "hard mode" :)

Does any of that resonate?

I checked out Bathtimer -- I love the idea of conserving water through a shorter shower routine! Are you thinking about building a game to market this app, or something else?

For sure! I just set a reminder task to update this post with real metrics after the first month.

Great questions!

#1. For Google Ads, I learned (the hard way) that the price-point of GQueues is too low to make paid advertising worth the expense. At $4/month, GQueues is on the cheap side. If I were charging $50+/month for a product, then paid ads might have worked (maybe).

The main challenge is the productivity landscape itself. ClickUp, monday.com, Asana, Trello, etc… are all willing to pay $13 PER CLICK on an ad - because they have tons of money and just want to take market share. So that was the bidding price I was dealing with. When only a small percentage of clickers start a free trial, and only a small percentage of those buy a subscription, all of a sudden I’m paying hundreds of dollars to acquire a single paid user.

I’m definitely not saying Google Ads won’t work for other products or markets, but I just couldn’t get them to work for GQueues (unfortunately).

#2. If I’m understanding product-led growth correctly, then yes, I think this could come into play with Hijinx. My hypothesis is definitely that a person will play Hijinx with her team, and then people on that team will like it enough to play it in their other meetings, and those people will share it with others, etc… I really focused a lot of effort on making the sharing/ installing experience SUPER SIMPLE.

When the host of the meeting opens Hijinx, they just click a button and the link to install the extension is sent to everyone else in the meeting via the Google Meet chat window.

With just two clicks, everyone else in the meeting now has the extension installed.

Are there other aspects of product-led growth that you think might be relevant?

Yeah, it's kind of like a "portfolio" site in a way -- give the prospect a sample of what you can do, and if they're impressed and find it useful, they will check out your other offerings.

Thanks, @GriffinJohnston. I'll definitely post some actual stats after this first week.

I checked out https://behold.so -- it looks like you've built a pretty slick way to embed Instagram feeds!

Is your target audience people who host on WordPress, or is it more general or specific? Do you already have an idea of what you might build as a mini-product for marketing purposes?

[...] better long-term marketing approach, you must incorporate your existing clients through loyalty marketing.

@aaronnock I agree that would be a great additional angle on this (vs bringing new customers). I would be curious what people have tried for low priced products.

@cameronh mentioned in another comment that Google Ads didn't work out partially due to the low subscription cost of $4/month. I have a similar priced product with BuzzMeIn and can't figure out a loyalty "program" that's worth it for my existing customers. Get a month free and save $4?!

Or does it all come down to "you need to charge more"?