Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen
[00:01:46]
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast. Everyone I am your host Arlen Robinson. And today we have a very special guest Sean Tepper who is the Founder and CEO of Tykr, a B2C SaaS company that helps you manage your own investments. Welcome to the podcast Shawn Arlen, going to be here. Thank you for joining me. I’m really excited to talk to you today. You know, we’re going to be kind of talking about some areas that I haven’t really focused on too much before with regards to creating your product or service offering by getting assistance and collaborating with customers and prospects is something that I know a lot of SAS companies do. I’m familiar with SAS companies. So sassy conference companies, as my audience knows with OSI plead software. We’ve definitely worked a lot with our customers to create our product that we have today. And you’re going to kind of tell us about how that works, why it’s a good thing, but before we do get into all of that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today? Sure. So my background is software engineering, primarily project management, and goes back to about.

Sean
[00:02:59]
2006, got out of school, worked for an agency for about a year, learned the tricks of the trade, if you will like around software engineering and building websites, and really just doing a lot of work for smaller mid-sized businesses. And, and I built that business with a great group of other associates over the course of like five years, went through a merger in 2010. And at that point I knew like what kind of business I wanted to start. Fortunately with that first business learned a lot on the unfortunate side, it was not a lucrative operation by any means. This was an agency service business model, not scalable. Gotcha. But we were exposed to a few hundred businesses and I kind of knew like, okay, the type of business I want to create as a SAS, SAS businesses are highly scalable. And, and I didn’t have an idea at the time.

Sean
[00:03:47]
So I just started working in corporate jobs, project management and software engineering for the last 10 years. What I did around that same time, 2010, 2011 is I got into investing. I started with angel investing, which is essentially investing in private businesses with the hopes that a, you get an early with some business takes off to the moon. And next thing you can retire. Well, I could say this it’s a lot easier said than done. So that never happened. And I learned a lot about investing, but I knew like if I want to get serious about investing, it’s about consistency. So around 2015, I turned my attention to the stock market. And that’s where I really started research the guys that we know like Warren buffet, Charlie Munger, and other gentlemen out there, Phil town, and really put together the math behind investing. And just to take a step back, I knew that these guys were making consistent returns in the market that were beating the market consistently as the key.

Sean
[00:04:47]
And I knew they’re not doing this based off emotions. They’re not gambling. They’re not guessing, right. I’m not getting involved with the game stops and the AMCs of the world, maimed stocks. So how do they do that? Right? And that’s when I, I sought after to figure out the math behind investing. So I started creating an Excel sheet, if you will. It was it wasn’t glamorous, but putting together the equations on how do you analyze stocks and thanks to these guys, including Phil town, I got to give a shout out to him. He was able to put together something that works. And it was, I generated consistent returns between 15 and 50% per year, which if you don’t already know good returns in the market are usually between eight and 10%. So consistently beating the market knew I had something. And I started talking to people, retail investors, as well as institutions asked, Hey, would you use a tool like this? If I turned it into a software? And the common response was absolutely. When does this go live? So, so yeah, started building the software in 2019, took about a year to build the MVP and went live in 2020. And now bringing us to today, we did launch a new version this last summer, and today we have a little over 3000

Arlen
[00:06:01]
Customer. So just to the present. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s quite a story. That’s quite growth that you guys have had in quite a bit of that in a short amount of time. So yeah, definitely. Thank you. Kudos to you guys for, you know, definitely putting something out there that, you know, there definitely is a market for it. And so I think that’s clear to see that, you know, it’s not like you put it out there and you’re just kind of scratching yourself, waiting for customers to come man there. And for sure, good to know, you know, as I mentioned, we’re one of the things that you’d mentioned is that you worked with, you got some feedback before, even kind of really getting in there, diving deep into it and with e-commerce businesses, whether you’re a SAS company, whether you’re or a product company, I think a lot of times, especially for startup companies, a lot of times founders are so passionate about what they’ve developed, whether it’s a, if they’re selling a tangible product, whether it’s an online software, SAS solution, very passionate about it.

Arlen
[00:07:06]
And a lot of times that passion can kind of, I guess you could say distract them from, you know, really focusing in on, is there really a market for it? You know, because they think, okay, this is great. This is awesome. I know I would use it. Why wouldn’t the world? One insight, of course I’ll have that mindset. You know, unfortunately people, a lot of times go down the route where they get it out there there’s really no market. And they end up, you know, closing shop and, you know, end up spending a lot of marketing dollars trying to market it, but there’s really, they don’t really get their return on it. So, you know, what would you say are some proper ways to, in which you can really empower customers or enabled even, not even customers, prospective customers that are just kind of in your list, your network, how do you empower them to, to help you create the right product that you want to put out to market? Yeah.

Sean
[00:08:02]
This is a hot topic. And to give you context, I was that guy building the product. This is the product that people want. I want it. Therefore, everybody else wants it, right. You’re going to spend a bunch of time and money on this. Cause I’ve, I’ve had other ventures in the past that I’ve moved forward with and you launched and it’s crickets. Why can’t I get any customers what’s going on? What, what, they’re the ones that are wrong. I’m right. And it’s actually the opposite. And what I find is, and after studying how people actually execute SAS businesses, I’m sure this can be applied to e-commerce if you’re selling a physical product as well, but you want to put in the minimum amount of time and money into creating something that people want just at a high level, because all you really need to do is you need to, I think of it like a ballpark, like get in the ballpark.

Sean
[00:08:53]
You don’t have to be like in the dead center though. We’re like a bullseye, just get on the map. And then what you want to do is this is what I did. And this is what I learned from other business. Performing, get your product out there for free, as much as possible. You want to get as many people using it. And you want to be engaging in conversations, not once a month. We’re talking every, every week, get the feedback. What do you like? What don’t you like again, MVP, minimum investment, get it out there. And you just start compiling the features. They liked the features. They don’t like, what do they want added? And that’s what you focus on. It allows you to pretty much get a laser focus on what your product should be. And I tell you, this product you want is usually completely opposite where the customers want.

Arlen
[00:09:42]
Yeah. I definitely know that feeling. And then you kind of have an idea of really what’s ideal and it may be before your needs, but you know, it’s a lot of times it’s not right for everyone,

Sean
[00:09:57]
Right? Yeah. And it’s just a re add a little to that. You’ve got an idea let’s say, and you know, it can solve a problem. You don’t have to be a hundred percent, right. You have to be again in that ballpark. But the key thing, isn’t how right. You are. It’s your communication with the customer and getting the right customers because they’re the ones that are going to guide you to the center of that bullseye. And it just takes time and feedback. And if you can do it right, if you’re a good communicator and you take good notes, ask good questions, you can get there. But you really, honestly, you put hard work on them. It’s actually easier than, than entrepreneurs think.

Arlen
[01:10:35]
Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is. I totally agree with that stance of, you know, creating the minimum viable product, getting it out there, whether it’s a service offering or whether it’s, you know, it’s a tangible product, you know, even in swimmable goods, direct to consumer products, even if it’s a, a food item, whatever it is, you got to get that feedback. But I think a lot of times the hesitation from, you know, a lot of business owners is that they’re like, ah, you know, this is great. I’m going to get it out there. They’re thinking they are, they could be kind of undercutting potential sales by just getting it out there for free. The thing I’m losing out. I can’t just give it out there for free. Yeah. That’s I think a lot of the hesitation people have, but you know, it’s not the case.

Sean
[01:11:20]
I literally, I am talking to entrepreneurs every week and there’s this sense of pride that needs to be removed because it’s not about you anymore. It’s not about revenue. It’s not about cash. It is all about the customer and solving their problem. And I tell people this and they, their knee jerk reaction is no, when I say this, but if you get a SAS product, try to get a hundred free licenses, a hundred free subscriptions out there as fast as possible. They’re like, are you kidding me? I gave away five or 10. And at most I’m like, no. And if you can go more, go more, but just in, we’re talking over the duration of three to six months and people don’t like to hear that too though. So I got to go another six months without making money. I’m like buckle up, sweetheart. You’re in for a ride to work to do here. You don’t know about.

Arlen
[01:12:08]
Definitely. Definitely makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. Cause I could say with a hundred licenses, free licenses out there, just the amount of feedback that you could get from that. And if they’re using it consistently, you know, and the thing is, it’s really kind of all about numbers, you know? And I think you’re saying a hundred because yeah, you can get a hundred licenses out there, but out of those hundred it’ll realistically, okay. How many of those aren’t really actually going to use it. So that’s why I see you do have to shoot.

Sean
[01:12:35]
You do. Cause you look at the numbers. You’re, if you can get a hundred out there, you’re really going to get good feedback from maybe 10 to 15, maybe 20% at best. That’s just the way it goes. They’re going to be highly engaged. And you’re going to see the consistent feedback within that small percentage. But that’s the way it is. And let’s say you aim higher. You go for 200. I mean, if you can get a, a wider net cast it, I mean, there’s more people you, you can talk to. And unfortunately with a SAS business and you’re not manufacturing a product, so it’s a little easier to get out there. It’s just really server bandwidth or consuming, which is next to nothing. These days I get it. If you’re an e-commerce product, okay, you’ve got some investment to do. You got to spend money in the product, get it out there. But if you can consistently get the right feedback and create the product exactly what her, what people are looking for. That’s when you forget about that hundred or 200, because you start getting into thousands of customers and that’s where your growth really starts happening.

Arlen
[01:13:35]
Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that. Now let’s say, you know, someone listening is, you know, they have an idea of a product. They want to get it out there and they’re like, you know, everything makes sense. You know, I gotta get it in the hands of people. I don’t want to develop too much of it before. You know, I don’t want to go down one road, spend too much money if it’s not the right fit. So a question I know a lot of people are wondering is okay to get these free licenses out there or free product out there. How am I selecting these people to get it out to, you know, in my buying a list, let’s say I’m fresh out of the gate. I have no customers at all. I don’t have too many contacts. What’s the best strategy to pick the right people to get it out to.

Sean
[01:14:16]
Fortunately, if you’re passionate about what you want to create, you probably have a few people in mind already. Maybe some friends, family, it’s pretty easy to get a network and that’s, I never recommend buying a list. I never, you want authentic, true customers coming to you organically. Or if you do advertising, it’s really targeted. But in my case with, with ticker retail investing is growing super fast. So I already had friends that, you know, they create like a Robin hood TD Ameritrade or E-Trade account. It’s like, Hey, check this out. So that’s pretty easy now to touch on creating an MVP. You can do that in multiple ways. There’s you could literally create mock-up designs and like Photoshop or some other design platform to simulate what it would be. And you could start there, but then there’s also no code type platforms where you can create, you can get like 50 to 75% of the way there, like an idea. And that way people can actually use the tool. That’s going to be a little better than designs because designs can be subjective on the spot. Like if you present them to somebody, but if they can use a tool, otherwise you gotta go to the point where custom coding is involved and there’s an expense there, so right. There’s different levels in other words.

Arlen
[01:15:33]
Sure. Yeah. And fortunately these days, there’s a lot of ways you can create mock-ups and it’s, I’ve been approached by people, you know, I’ve been in the business a long time. And so I’ve talked to a lot of kind of budding entrepreneurs. They’ve got these great ideas in there. A lot of times I see that they’re itching to really just kind of develop it, get it out there, get it out there. But yeah, I always try to rein them back, tell them, wait, you know, you know, if you can just put together just something basic, whether you use one of the no code platforms that simulates what you’re doing, you know, isn’t actually, if you have any coding in the background or anything like that, but you know, maybe simulate stepping people through a process or something like that, do that rather than, you know, the spin that money. I’ve seen a lot of examples of how to cash

Sean
[01:16:19]
Is that we’re talking six figures, sometimes seven figures sunk cost and it’s something they believe is going to change the world. And next thing you know, the businesses closing up and you did hit on a point there it’s a step back. You have to move slow and methodical in the beginning, you have to ask those questions and get the right feedback. And it’s going to be a slow process and you have to set those expectations. The real speed comes when you know what customers want, they’re ready to put their credit card in your system. Right. And start spending that’s when you’re like, it’s go time. Let’s do this. Let’s put it together for real. It just takes time to get there.

Arlen
[01:16:55]
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now we talked about getting these people in your network, whether it’s friends with his family or his people within your social network, you’re getting, you’re tapping these people. You’re trying to get at least a hundred people, you know, get their hands on the product, the hands on what it is that you’ve created. Initially, we need to get it out there. Now, once you’ve done that, what are some tools or resources that you recommend for, you know, getting their feedback and kind of compiling that and just keeping it in an organized fashion? Or was it something that you use or that you recommended?

Sean
[01:17:28]
Yeah. So we use air table. It’s a great platform where you can create surveys and forms and then you can compile the data in like an Excel type format and export in Excel. We find it to be a brilliant platform. I think there’s a free option for that as well. You could also a project management software, like a sauna or Trello, you know, might be good options. They don’t have forms or anything, but you can organize the information in a nice way, but air table I’d say is number one.

Arlen
[01:17:57]
Okay, great. Great. Yeah. I am familiar with irritating. Well, I’ve used that before. Yeah. Really easy to use solution because I know a lot of people that may not be comfortable with Excel or even with Google sheets and, you know, kind of setting up the, you know, the different things that you can do with the, the cells and the table and all of that. It’s really easy to point and click and drag and drop type of thing. So we have our idea and I take it that it’s really a good idea to have all it, to get that in place beforehand, because you want to make it. The bottom line is these people that are using the product for free, they’re going out of their way. They’re taking their time. Then maybe their frigging friends or your colleagues. You want to make it super simple for them to provide feedback. And even if they’re not directly providing feedback via these forms, if you have somebody calling them, like you said, on a weekly basis, somebody on your team needs a simple way of taking that information over the phone and then, you know, inputting it in there. So, you know, you know, you know, any wasted time, you want to make sure that you capture everything. So I know that’s very important.

Sean
[01:19:01]
You’re absolutely right. And just to touch on that with questions, you know, there’s an art to the questions you ask, whether it’s in a call like this. And I actually, you know, the surveys work well, but if you can get people on zoom calls, that’s even better, right. Really get there and tell them upfront, be brutally honest. Don’t try to make my feelings feel better. Like I want to know like, what am I doing right or wrong? And there’s a good book out there called the mom test. And that book teaches you to ask questions that are not what would they want, but what kind of tools are they using today and why like, why are they going back to it over and over? And you, you can frame questions more on what they’re using today, not what they, because when you get them in a mindset like of creation mode, they’re going to kind of create subjective feelings and kind of lean to what you’re doing, but he asks questions and what they’re using and why that’s, when you can kind of implement into your tool a little better, especially if it’s in the same niche product, like people who use investing tools, I would say, why are you using the investing tool?

Sean
[02:20:05]
Why are you using this feature? What do you like about it? Is it easy to use? Is it sticky? Does it make you come back? Stuff like that. So, you know, like, okay, I know I need to do that in my tool. Right?

Arlen
[02:20:17]
Yeah. I liked that. I like that really can capture really. Cause he know that these are tools that they’re probably already paying for. There are certain features that they like that they don’t like. And yeah, I think that’s a great way to get really some ideal feedback. So, you know, really kind of what direction that you should go. So, yeah. Great, great advice there. You know, one of the things that I was also wondering with regards to this feedback and all of this information that you’re, you’re gathering, I think you mentioned it earlier, but I want to kind of circle back on it and clarify, is there like a set time period where you’re, you need to kind of go through this process of getting this information? What did you do or what would you recommend certain amount of months or, you know, cause I know you’re going to have to give it some time. What would you recommend?

Sean
[02:21:05]
Yeah. At a set expectations, I’d say a minimum of three months and you can go, you can go definitely six months or longer, to be honest with you, our tool is still like we’ve got traction, but we are still evolving and still continuously getting customer feedback. And we’ve been live now for a year and a half. That’s just the way it is. But to set expectations, SAS businesses, you know, it can be three years before they really start getting some serious traction in that whole time is really, if you do it right, it can be feedback, but you can shorten that timeline if you can get feedback fast and then develop those feeds.

Arlen
[02:21:44]
Yeah. Yeah. That’s definitely key getting that feedback and then developing it and just getting it out to the market. Right. As right as you can. Right. Yeah. One thing I was thinking about when were talking about finding people to get the product out there, to test it out for you to get the feedback from them. You know, a lot of times people can be a little bit leery. They may not necessarily want to approach people in their network. And they’re like, oh, you know, I don’t want to just keep asking them, you know, maybe they leaned on them before with other business ideas and they’re like, okay, what do I do? One thing that I want to kind of throw out there. And I’m not sure if this is something you may have thought about. There are a lot of sites out there as far as let’s say, this is for a SAS product actually, where you can actually pay a third party person to kind of go through it and give feedback.

Arlen
[02:22:28]
One such site that I’ve heard of. And that that’d be actually in our company, I thought about using at one point is called user testing. So user testing.com and then with what you can do, they have a network of people that basically they go through and they either go through a website online, they go through a product online and then they record their whole process and the whole system records it for you. And while they’re going through it, they’re kind of speaking, saying, okay, I’m confused about this. I don’t like this color. They give you all of that real-time feedback in a record little session. Yeah. Something like that is another great way. I think to get feedback from just totally anonymous, third parties that don’t know you, they’re not familiar with maybe your product or anything like that. So that’s another idea if you want to kind of pull from another resource.

Sean
[02:23:21]
Yeah. Here’s my thoughts on that. We haven’t hired anybody like that, but I know hiring that type of resource is really good for functional beta testing, which means they’re going to test the usability. User-friendliness, you know, buttons are in the right place or features are just hard to use. Awesome. But you’re going to get more of an emotional feedback, which is what you want. If you can reach out to people and you’re right, because you don’t want to be that guy. I think of like MLM sellers. Okay. I’m going to sell to my friends and family immediate and urgent knee jerk reaction is get away from me. Right. You know, so I found is you, you should probably connect with people on LinkedIn, join a group on LinkedIn. You know, I’m part of a few investment groups there, same with Facebook. That’s where you get like-minded people that are passionate about your, your product and that you can start reaching out to them there.

Sean
[02:24:10]
I’m seeing more slack groups start up, but these are people who are passionate about your product. And when you ask them to test, they actually feel, they feel special about it. Like I’m going to be a contributor. I’m going to be a product owner per se, in creating this awesome tool that you’re working on. And I get to do it for free. They should be honored to feel that way. And we do, we make our customers feel like rock stars. And when they come back with feedback, we always tell them awesome feedback. And we’re giving you credit for this. Like, you know, like keep up the great work, you know? So that kind of dialogue, like you create passionate people and that’s what you want because you really want to create awesome sticky features, not just a usable platform. That’s got very few bugs.

Arlen
[02:24:55]
I understand. I understand. So yeah, that’d be a little bit better to be a little bit more targeted people getting the venue, you know, kind of ecosystem. But if they’re not in your ecosystem, reaching out to people that you think, you know, I guess like-minded to want to use something like that. And then you just, you know, you know, maybe LinkedIn groups, like you said, you know, Facebook groups, stuff like that. So yeah, it makes us makes a lot, well, shies get ready to wrap things up. Is there any examples of any businesses that you’re familiar with that have really kind of gone through this process to tap outside people or their customers to create a product or service and what exactly

Sean
[02:25:31]
Did they do? Yeah. So one that comes to mind is MailChimp. I actually listened to their story. You know, they were just bought by Intuit for several billion dollars, nice acquisition there. And this was a bootstrap business. They did not have venture capital where they’re throwing tons of money into the business to help fuel growth. And what they had to do in the beginning was get customer feedback. And it was really just the process. Cause these guys, they had an agency and that agency was sending emails and building email templates and whatnot for customers. And they’re like, why don’t we create a tool that does this for us? And then as they built the tool, they asked for customer feedback what features they want, what they don’t want, brilliant path to building an incredible company. Then, you know, 20 years later it was had a nice little bio.

Arlen
[02:26:19]
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Great, great testimony. Thank you for pointing that out. I just saw that myself and I was like, wow, that’s they really positioned themselves properly, created a really solid product. And then as you see it definitely paid off for them. Yep. Yeah. Well, Sean, it’s been awesome talking to you. I’ve definitely learned a lot. Like I said, we kind of went up or direction in this particular episode that I don’t think I’d covered before. I think it’s really, really timely as a lot of people creating SAS solutions or just creating e-commerce products in general and really wondering before they get too deep into it or wondering really kind of which direction to go. And then I think, you know, this method of tapping people, you know, in your network and they’re like many people before getting too deep into it is definitely the best way to go for sure.

Arlen
[02:27:07]
Right on. Well, yeah. Lastly, before we let you go, I always like to switch gears here just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better. If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know. I am a total movie nerd, like, okay. Not all movies, but there’s a lot of movies. If you were to ask me the year, like give me the title of the movie I can hit the year are pretty close and we’re talking movies 1980 to present. Like some people, if they give me something from 1955, I, I may miss the mark, but yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Awesome. I’m a movie buff as well. I think I’m going to test you out. Something popped into my head. I’m thinking of a hippie back to the future to the second back to the future. Okay. Back to the future. One was 85, 2 was 88 and back to the future three, I believe was 89. It released some laughter. You write about that. Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely know your stuff. I love movies and movies from that period. Thank you for sharing. Appreciate that. And it’s been awesome having you on lastly, before we do let you go. If any of our listeners want to reach out to you and pick your brain anymore, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you? Yeah, you can simply go to ticker.com. That’s T Y K r.com or just find me on LinkedIn. Okay, great. Great. Well, thanks a lot, Sean, for joining us today on the e-commerce marketing podcast. Thanks Arlen. This was great.

speaker 1
[02:28:40]
Thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate, review, subscribe, and share it with everyone. You know, are you looking to take your digital marketing to the next level, but are tired of weeding through countless YouTube videos with unproven and untrusted marketing strategies? Well, we have the answer for you. The more sales every month, online digital marketing course in this information packed course, you will learn effective keyword research link, building content, marketing, and much more to attract and convert your site visitors into paying customers. Just go to more sales every month.com and sign up today for a low one-time fee. In addition to this power packed course, if you would like to get access to a growing repository of digital marketing articles, PDFs and eBooks, check out, get osi.com/resources and opt in to get full access to our library of priceless marketing information. To help you take your digital marketing to the next level.

Podcast Guest Info

Sean Tepper
Founder of TYKR