So we've launched this now and it's been live for just under three weeks. Uptake has been slow, slower than hoped; We are at about 30 trials, I'd say less than half of these are actually using the system though. The people who have actually signed up and used it are really positive about it but we need more people signing up. I'm confident that once people start using it they will like it and stay. We've got a few decent USP that our competitors don't offer but it's tough getting people to part with their free time to actually look at it, let alone money in these times.
I think the issue we have is that my business partner and I have strong software development skills but zero marketing experience. I've taken over the marketing while he works to add additional features to the system. We are missing online booking, dashboard and reporting. Once we have these in, we will have parity feature wise but at a lower price with better usability.
As my partner runs her own grooming salon I see the struggles of the job so I have produced a load of short videos on the Facebook page that show how we sort these pain points. I originally recorded all videos on the desktop but quickly realised that 95% of our visitors are on mobile so I need to be recording them on my phone. I'm trying to work out the best times and days to post these videos are engagement varies a fair bit. We have just over 600 likes on our Facebook page but most videos and posts don't really get much engagement, where I am brand new to marketing I don't know if this is something to ring alarm bells or just par for the course. I did a webinar demo last night, I thought I advertised it quite well, had zero people turn up!
I'm hopeful that this will work, I think it just needs more time to get established. If we get to the start of the 2021 and it's still not really doing much then we will get full time jobs and leave it building in the background. It will be feature complete by December so it won't need much work doing on it so would work quite well if we were both in other jobs.