Don't do SEO without product market fit
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by the Digital PR agency Search Intelligence, which uses PR methods to grow a link portfolio and North Star Inbound, which is a recommended agency for SEO and content strategy. See their case studies linked in the newsletter.
I am in Southeast Asia this week. If you are in Jakarta, join me here; in Bangkok, join me here, and join me here in Singapore.
As a consultant, I meet many early-stage startups, and most do not have product-market fit. They solve a problem, but it is often not big enough for their hoped-for audience.
Most startups, especially if they raise money, will solve a problem for someone; the question is whether they solve a problem that people will pay to solve. Of course, this is what they and their investors are betting on.
( Pay attention to the companies building AI solutions. While many of them profess to do exciting things, the ones that survive and thrive will be the ones that can get customers to pay repeatedly for their solutions.)
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Don’t waste money on marketing
While a company iterates on finding product-market fit, it should focus all its efforts on the product and only use marketing to help define that fit. This is not the time to make massive marketing investments.
It gets even worse when these companies want to do SEO without first having this product market fit. This is a massive mistake because SEO takes a very long time to show results, and without product market fit, you are investing in potentially the wrong channel and won’t know that for months.
Search volume is not product market fit
Too many companies mistake search volume with product market fit. Search volume means people are interested in the topic, but it doesn’t mean anyone will pay for what you are selling.
Knowing whether someone will pay for a product is far more important than knowing if they are searching for it.
Search volume is appropriate if pure traffic is a business KPI like in an advertising model, but that traffic alone only makes the most sense if those users are in a funnel.
This calculation can go very poorly when a company is focused on a two-sided marketplace, with traffic volume on one side and conversion targets on the other. I once advised a company that focused on sellers, but for whatever reason, their past SEO agency had built them calculators for buyers. Unsurprisingly, these pages never drove a single lead for their business.
Before embarking on any SEO these are the initiatives I would recommend first:
Talk to real users: Bafflingly, many startups neglect to talk to actual potential buyers before investing in marketing. They spend time and money building sales materials and landing pages without first trying to sell the product. If they had tried to sell first, they might have discovered that their sales approach was doomed to fail.
Do surveys: Given my years at SurveyMonkey, I am always partial to surveys. A survey isn’t a formal survey with statistical significance; it’s just a method of gathering customer feedback on the problems being solved.
Run ad campaigns: Although I earn my income from SEO, I still believe companies should do paid marketing first. It is a quick way to validate ideas and messaging, with data showing up within days. (Message me if I can recommend an agency.)
Promote on social media: This seems too obvious, but social media is a great way to get feedback from the masses. Likes and positive comments will help a company understand a market, while negative comments will tell a company it is on the wrong track.
Build an MVP: This is a two-sided directive. First, something must be built to gauge whether people want it, but it should also be minimal. Invest enough to have something viable for feedback, but you don’t need to create the perfect product at this stage. Perfection should come from the data generated by the MVP, not from what’s cooked up on paper.
Give it away: Freemium isn’t just a strategy for product-led growth; it can also be a way to validate a market. I have met many companies that struggle to get people to start free trials or activate free offers, but I think it’s less about the promotion than the product. If you can’t give it away, that should say something.
Yes, many of these efforts cost money, but in my opinion, giving away something for free makes more sense than spending time and money marketing a product no one wants.
Startups lean into SEO early on for products because they think SEO is a free way to generate marketing, but it isn’t.
SEO is not free
SEO isn’t free to build, although it may be free once built. Building SEO requires tech investments, people, and, of course, time. Another thing that people miss with SEO is that it might be less expensive than other channels, but that does not account for the opportunity cost of not doing other channels.
It makes more sense to spend money to discover that something isn’t right than to spend money and never learn. This effort could even be considered just plain old R&D, not marketing. Learning early on who you serve is the difference between an effortless pivot to a better product and a painful change in direction that leads to upset customers, employees, and investors.
When to invest in SEO
The right time to invest in SEO is always after discovering product market fit. Regardless of how a company builds its SEO, whether content-based or product-led, investing without first identifying product-market fit will almost certainly lead to a wasted effort unless they get lucky.
Building SEO product-market fit means that as you develop your content and product plans for SEO, you will have a high degree of confidence that your efforts are for a defined customer.
SEO is a demand capture channel, not a demand creation channel. If the demand for a specific product has not yet been validated with product market fit, it may just be wishful thinking that there is demand that can be captured with a search effort.
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Recently I was trying to recommend a client that was just launching in a highly competitive market (solar panels) with a just newly created brand to invest in paid and social media. They have targets for 6 months that seo wouldn't get in 3 years!
It surprised me how even colleagues didn't understand that I didn't want to try to force my channel in. I think there is still a wide lack of understanding of digital marketing in general and the current difficulty to actually achieve results in Google. Competition is high, both for paid and organic and clients and markets still leave in 10 years ago I feel.