Infinite money glitches

Hey y'all,

I've been working on SoloSync, which syncs changes from Salesforce to Notion. I'm scratching my own itch, so I wanted to test demand prior to writing too much code.

Can I acquire a customer for less than one year's contract value ($99 * 12 months)?

The number we're chasing here is called ROAS or return on ad spend. The higher ROAS is, the closer you are to an infinite money glitch.

Here's how I tested demand.

Step one: MVP

My MVP is:

  1. A landing page (built with TailwindUI & Next.js App Router)
  2. A Node app that sync Salesforce Account changes to Notion

The app is not finished, but it's finished enough that I could demo it to a customer. The important learning here is to do this test before you write tons of code.

Step two: Create ads

I created a Google Adwords account, crafted some copy, and set a budget.

Step three: pause and analyze results

While $385 was more than I wanted to spend, I learned a few great things here.

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Drew Bredvick
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@DBredvick
March 8th 2023
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  1. I can get a cost per click (CPC) of around $0.35
  2. A lot of this traffic came from YouTube (I should make video content in the future)
  3. If I convert at "industry standard"* numbers, I can make Google Adwords work as an acquisition channel

*I’m ball parking in my ability to convert 2% of traffic into paying customers through a trial. I’m estimating that on converting 10% of traffic to a trial and 20% of those trials into paid. The 10% is based on my gut but the 20% is an industry standard-ish number.

Overall, am I willing to trade $35 once for $198 per month? Yes. Solid deal.

Even better if I can push folks to annual billing which is super common in B2B land.

Adwords is one of two main acquisition channels for SoloSync. Because I'm building a tool for Salesforce, I can list it in the Salesforce AppExchange (app store) for free.

Getting into AppExchange is my current top priority now that I've validated demand to some degree.

LFG,

Drew

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