I Built It, but They Didn’t Come Why Field of Dreams Marketing Doesn’t Work casabona.org/wclanc @jcasabona

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@jcasabona -???? If you build it, they will come.

@jcasabona What is Field of Dreams Marketing? • Creating a product or service and assuming people will just buy it • “I think people need this, so they will buy it from me.” • “They will just show up.”

@jcasabona Why Did I think this would work?

@jcasabona My Freelance Career ➡2002: First website, paying, falls into lap ➡Jun. 2003: 10 Clients. No Marketing ➡May 2007: Charing $75/hr. Go to grad school to grow biz ➡2010: I’ve partnered with 3-4 designers that send me code work. I do no marketing, I have regular work.

@jcasabona My Freelance Career ➡2011 - 2017: Work a 9-5. Still do freelance work on the side. ➡2016: Get married. 1st Baby on the way. Decided to cut back on freelance projects in favor of products. ➡2016: Start podcast that also grew organically ➡June 2017: Leave Day Job to make online courses full time. My daughter is 3 months old.

@jcasabona Word of Mouth was basically my only method of marketing.

@jcasabona In this talk… • My Original Process for Making Courses • What Launch Day Looked Like • What I Though I Needed to do • What I Learned I Actually Needed to do • My New Process for Making Courses

@jcasabona Decision Making • “I know how to use this. I will make an online course.” • I never blogged about the topic • I did very little research. • My first course: Create a Blog from Scratch

@jcasabona Problem 1: I was not am authority on blogging. People know me best as a developer.

@jcasabona Problem 2: I didn’t know the audience. At all.

@jcasabona Launch Day • Complete Course & load it into LMS • Tweet out that it’s launched • Blog Post • Newsletter • ... • Profit?!

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@jcasabona This was also problematic.

@jcasabona What I Thought • Regularly tweeting and asking people to promote it was key • People would implicitly see the value in what I was doing

@jcasabona I knew how to sell 1 $5,000 website better than 100 $50 courses

@jcasabona What I Learned • People need to trust you before they buy from you • You need to understand the problem your customers are trying to solve • It’s much easier to sell to current customers than new customers

@jcasabona What I’m Doing Now • Carving out my niches by blogging and going on podcasts • Collecting email addresses in a meaningful way • Offering free advice • Offering deeper learning in a smaller number of areas

@jcasabona I launched a new Course yesterday.

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@jcasabona Joe Casabona casabona.org/wclanc Educator, Developer, Podcaster