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independence2 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

6 claims · 5 articles · 4 receipts

window

2016-11-29 → 2021-01-26

2 builders who never spoke to each other

Say plainly that one person runs this

Founders dress a small operation up as a company because they fear the truth costs them sales, and the customers who notice mostly report the opposite: they would rather back a person than a brand. Answer support as yourself instead of as a team, put your photograph and a note inside the product, and describe who you are in plain paragraphs. The test for any asset is whether a real person, real language and a real customer appear in it.

The method

  1. 01

    Strip out any impression of a seasoned team: publish your photograph, say plainly that one person runs the product, and blog openly about building it.

  2. 02

    Go further and market the smallness deliberately, putting the founder's face and a personal note inside the product itself.

  3. 03

    Stop dressing your small business up as a big one.

  4. 04

    Answer support in the first person singular instead of a corporate plural, since more buyers are enthusiastic about backing a tiny independent company than insist on buying from a large one.

  5. 05

    Explain who you are in one to three plain-spoken paragraphs and follow it with short bios of the actual staff, dropping the corporate register.

What it returned

  • The author expected this to be risky; instead customers repeatedly told him they chose Storemapper over alternatives because they would rather support independent developers

  • The author put his photograph and a personal quote into the footer on each of the app's primary screens, and says many customers like it

  • The author had been writing as though a support team existed when it was only him

  • Applied by the author to his own email popup

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in copy

all copy plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.