I really believe any team developing a product should be talking with potential costumers from day one. Being a technical person, it’s really easy to hide behind the code and make all the decisions from my guts. But you end up playing roulette at the product launch: either you have a stroke of luck and nailed exactly the critical need, or, more commonly, few people like it and no one loves it.

With Bundlr we’re forcing ourselves to speak to a couple of potential costumers each week. We have a list of people we want to talk to and try to reach two or three weekly. So far, it’s working great for several reasons:

Solves internal discussions

We’re a team of two and often have different opinions. How do we solve the arguments? We just think what would future users prefer. After chatting with a some it gets easier to personify the target costumers.

Prioritizes features

There are really a lot of features we would like to implement in Bundlr. Content aggregation comprises many interesting use cases. How do we decide what features to do first and what to leave out? We just ask target users which features would they pay for.

It’s still marketing

People you interview are more likely to engage with your product and tell others about it. You’re still marketing your product and it’s going to pay off in the end all the people you talked to.

Great for motivation

Finally, nothing motivates us more than having someone telling us how much they want what we’re building. And even when we don’t get it right, having a clear knowledge of the problem is essential to stay focused and motivated.

Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, is a book on how to promote your ideas so they “stick” on people’s heads. The authors analyse why some ideas are catchy while others quickly forgotten, and present the key features an idea must have to be “sticky”. Those features, coined under the acronym SUCCESs, are:

Simple
Find the core of your message and focus on transmitting only the really important part.

Unexpected
Break patterns to get attention and use teasers to hold attention.

Concrete
Real examples triumph over abstract concepts, if you want to spread an idea.

Credible
Use life examples. Take advantage of both authorities and anti-authorities.

Emotional
Make people care: switch their brains from the analytical side to the emotional side.

Stories
Stories can inspire, get people to act, and stay much longer in everyones heads.

The best value from the book comes from the concrete suggestions on how to solve specific problems like “Everyone nods their heads when I’m speaking, but I can’t get them to act on it.” An important resource for anyone doing marketing or trying to change to world.