[0:00] Hello guys, happy new year and in the
[0:02] first video of 2026 I have a gift for
[0:05] you. So before Christmas I released a
[0:08] course building a typical Laravel SAS
[0:10] and the last section of this course is
[0:12] about marketing and sales and I think
[0:15] this will become a crucial topic in 2026
[0:18] because with AI there will be a lot of
[0:21] builders a lot of products from
[0:23] developers but not necessarily also VIP
[0:26] coders will release their own SAS
[0:29] products and probably you will release
[0:32] something as a side project because you
[0:34] will have time to basically prompt the
[0:37] agent to do a lot of work for you and
[0:40] actually implement a project that was on
[0:42] your mind for a long time. But with so
[0:45] many projects on the market, this will
[0:47] be actually crucial marketing and sales.
[0:50] And as developers, we are builders, we
[0:52] are creators, we like starting things,
[0:55] starting new project, doing lot of new
[0:57] and stuff like that. But for marketing
[0:59] and sales, I think I have quite a few
[1:02] insights from my experiments with my own
[1:05] projects and clients project. So I will
[1:07] release three lessons from this course
[1:10] as one YouTube video you will see now in
[1:13] roughly what's 22 minutes. My advice on
[1:17] marketing and sales of your own SAS or
[1:19] maybe that advice could be useful and
[1:22] you can be useful for your client
[1:24] projects and just in general. A lot of
[1:26] that advice may be applicable for
[1:28] example for Laravel package
[1:30] distribution. So yeah, let's talk about
[1:33] how you can promote your product and be
[1:35] successful. And if you want the full
[1:37] course, I will also link that in the
[1:39] description below to our course about
[1:42] technical creation of Laravel SAS and
[1:44] then at the end marketing and sales that
[1:46] you will see right now. I wish to you
[1:48] that 2026 will be productive for you
[1:51] releasing a lot of projects your own or
[1:53] for your clients. And now let's dive
[1:56] into the video. In this video, let's
[1:58] talk about SAS marketing. And this will
[2:00] be different style video as you can see
[2:02] full screen without any screenshots
[2:04] because we need to talk. Marketing and
[2:07] sales are very important for your
[2:09] product for SAS. Maybe more than ever
[2:12] because of AI. So recently Ian Lansman
[2:16] on the podcast of mostly technical was
[2:19] really passionate about AI being better
[2:21] and allowing us to create more stuff
[2:24] faster but at the same time reminded I
[2:26] liked his thought that now we have more
[2:29] software products created that
[2:31] developers are still unable to sell to
[2:34] anyone. So in other words speed of
[2:36] coding was never really the bottleneck.
[2:39] Successful products are about great
[2:41] ideas, great marketing and sales. This
[2:44] is what I want to emphasize. We are
[2:46] builders. We are developers. We are
[2:48] creators. But if you want to earn money
[2:51] with your product, you need to put on
[2:53] the hat of a business guy, a business
[2:56] developer and stop thinking about
[2:58] building features and start thinking
[3:00] about the audience, the distribution of
[3:02] the project and so on. And in this
[3:05] video, I want to give a few pieces of
[3:06] advice structured by topics. Topic
[3:09] number one is idea. A lot of people say
[3:11] that idea is the most important for
[3:14] startup success. But actually I would
[3:16] argue that idea on its own means not
[3:19] that much. What means a lot is the
[3:22] market for that idea. So if you have an
[3:24] idea for a product that you want to
[3:26] build, I would advise to make market
[3:28] research. And that market research
[3:30] should not be from the side of whether
[3:32] someone would use that idea or not or
[3:35] whether similar products exist or not. I
[3:37] would start with the problem. So your
[3:40] idea should solve someone's problem and
[3:42] you need to Google and find out how many
[3:45] people have that problem or similar
[3:47] problems. For example, if you want to
[3:49] create a CRM for I don't know hair salon
[3:52] for example, you need to research the
[3:54] real problems of hair salons. What
[3:57] software do they use now if any and what
[4:00] are their problems with existing
[4:02] solutions? And then from that iterate on
[4:05] your idea to propose a better solution.
[4:08] For that of course you need to know the
[4:09] target audience first and the audience
[4:12] everyone could use that is not the right
[4:15] audience. In my experience everyone
[4:17] means no one. The more targeted is your
[4:20] audience the better you know them and
[4:22] the better you can solve their
[4:24] particular problem. For example if your
[4:26] audience is developers then I think the
[4:29] audience is too broad. Of course, it is
[4:31] possible to get away with it, but it's
[4:33] better to serve not just developers, but
[4:36] for example, Laravel developers or
[4:38] junior Laravel developers who can't get
[4:41] a job. For example, someone would offer
[4:44] a solution for juniors to get job
[4:46] better. That would be a great example.
[4:48] Or for example, Laravel business
[4:51] companies from 50 developers and up.
[4:53] This is a target niche. But basically
[4:55] with the market research your goal is to
[4:57] answer the question of who is the user
[5:00] of that product that you want to build
[5:03] and who is the buyer which may be
[5:05] different things. So for example users
[5:07] of Slack or linear or other similar
[5:11] software are developers or regular
[5:13] employees but who pays for that is
[5:15] usually companies. So yeah, basically
[5:18] you need to find who would pay for that
[5:20] and do they have a problem and is the
[5:22] problem big enough so they would
[5:24] actually pay. Of course, there's another
[5:25] alternative way called scratching your
[5:28] own itch. For example, you want to
[5:30] create a product for yourself with hope
[5:32] that more developers or more people
[5:34] would use the same thing. This may work
[5:37] if you are the target audience. You can
[5:39] probably imagine similar people and
[5:42] solve your problem and their problem in
[5:45] the same software in the same product.
[5:47] But still, I would make market research.
[5:49] Are there enough people like yourself
[5:52] with the same itch or similar itch to
[5:54] scratch? Unless your goal is to actually
[5:56] build the product for yourself to use.
[5:59] So even if you don't have paying
[6:01] customers, you would be happy on your
[6:03] own, then it is fine. But in this video,
[6:05] I want to target someone who want to
[6:07] earn real money. And speaking of real
[6:10] money and ideas and AI specifically, be
[6:13] careful with ideas around AI. So if you
[6:16] want to create a software that would
[6:18] call AI like OpenAI API or claude API or
[6:22] some other API to perform AI
[6:24] transformations like transcribing videos
[6:27] or finding similar text and stuff like
[6:30] that calculate the cost because recently
[6:32] I've seen quite a few stories of
[6:34] startups burning money with such a big
[6:37] speed that their revenue MR it's
[6:40] successful on the surface but the cost
[6:43] of APIs for AI I may be astronomical. So
[6:47] the idea can be good on the surface and
[6:49] AI allows us to do many things but
[6:52] calculate because you may end up paying
[6:54] the providers more for quality result if
[6:57] you want the quality than you would
[6:59] charge your customers. For example, one
[7:01] story of a mobile developer recently I
[7:03] saw on YouTube. His price point for the
[7:06] application is $10 per month because
[7:09] that's how much it costs for him to call
[7:11] the AI APIs and $10 per month is the
[7:15] minimum cost that he can afford to
[7:17] basically break even. So the real cost
[7:20] in his calculation should be even
[7:21] bigger. So yeah, just a word of caution
[7:23] about AI niche specifically. And the
[7:26] final word about market validation and
[7:28] market research is talk to customers.
[7:31] Actually talk. I mean it may be online,
[7:34] it may be on Slack, it may be on
[7:35] Discord, Reddit or whatever. It may be
[7:37] in real life. It depends on your
[7:39] scenario. But actually without talking
[7:42] to real people who would use your
[7:44] software or your product. Do not make
[7:46] any conclusions. Ask that specific
[7:49] question. Would you pay not would you
[7:51] use would you pay for this to exist? In
[7:54] ideal scenario, if you trust your idea
[7:56] enough and if you have enough audience,
[7:58] you may create landing page already
[8:00] pre-charging your future customers to
[8:04] support your product and to kind of
[8:06] prove to you that it's worth building
[8:08] the product. So build a landing page,
[8:11] build a waiting list, build something
[8:13] like Kickstarter campaign and that would
[8:15] be the best proof of your idea before
[8:18] even building that. As developers,
[8:21] again, we are creators, we are builders,
[8:23] and we like to create stuff and be in
[8:25] our cave and then show something to the
[8:28] world. But my advice would be to save
[8:30] some time and do at least some market
[8:33] validation and market research before
[8:36] any coding. Of course, a little better
[8:38] way is to vibe code something with AI or
[8:41] some prototype version 0.1 and then show
[8:44] something to the world already working
[8:47] or already in prototype stage. But it
[8:49] depends on the product. Not for every
[8:51] product. It's possible to show something
[8:53] really minimal. So there's a risk that
[8:55] version 0.1 people would dislike
[8:58] immediately, but that would be maybe
[9:00] false positive. It depends on the
[9:02] project. But basically spend time on
[9:04] market research and talking to real
[9:06] potential customers. The next thing I
[9:09] want to talk about related to marketing
[9:10] your SAS is presentation and positioning
[9:13] of your product. So I see a lot of
[9:15] developers while releasing their
[9:17] packages for example they fail at readme
[9:20] stage basically. So they release a
[9:22] package which has a great potential and
[9:24] they are too lazy or maybe not qualified
[9:28] enough to show what the package actually
[9:30] does visually. A lot of read me files
[9:34] for packages I've personally reviewed on
[9:36] YouTube were too textbased listing the
[9:39] features of the package or the product
[9:42] without emphasizing what the product
[9:44] actually does the package what is the
[9:47] before and after. What is the use case
[9:49] visually as developers we're kind of in
[9:52] love with the features of our products
[9:54] but actually the presentation is even
[9:57] more important because this is the first
[10:00] impression. So for example, I get a link
[10:02] to your product from somewhere and then
[10:04] I go to your landing page and then
[10:07] basically you have like 30 seconds of my
[10:09] attention max. Convince me quickly that
[10:12] what you do is interesting to me. And if
[10:15] on that website or on read me I see a
[10:17] lot of text that I need to read and try
[10:20] to understand myself. So basically I
[10:22] need to turn on my brain on 10x level to
[10:25] even understand what you do. Then I'm
[10:27] out. And I'm not even talking about
[10:29] visual design of your website which is
[10:31] also important but that can be generated
[10:33] by AI these days with pretty good
[10:35] quality. I'm talking about positioning.
[10:38] So basically you need to come up with
[10:40] tagline or even the title of the
[10:43] product. The product name is important
[10:44] if it can explain what the product does
[10:47] clearly. But also the main taglines and
[10:50] the titles and the headers on the
[10:51] website should clearly explain what you
[10:54] do for whom and how exactly. One of the
[10:57] typical kind of framework people suggest
[10:59] is we help the audience to achieve some
[11:03] result without pain or with some other
[11:06] constraints like in 5 minutes without
[11:09] digging deeper or some other condition.
[11:11] So three parts of kind of slogan and
[11:14] what do you actually do? So that should
[11:16] be your kind of first answer clarifying
[11:18] the question of what you do and then the
[11:20] visuals. I cannot emphasize enough that
[11:23] you need to show product in action in
[11:26] video in GIF, in screenshots, before and
[11:29] after. It depends on the product. But
[11:31] there's a golden evergreen rule for
[11:33] hundreds of years which says show don't
[11:36] tell. People buy with their eyes. People
[11:38] buy with their emotions. So as soon as
[11:42] you trigger any emotion and the emotion
[11:45] is triggered usually by visuals, then
[11:48] you are on track to something. Another
[11:50] option for doing that is anchoring to
[11:52] another product or product category. So
[11:54] for example, you may call yourself like
[11:56] cursor for dog owners or cursor for
[12:00] designers or whatever. So you can
[12:02] compare your product to something that
[12:04] people would be familiar with your
[12:07] audience. So for example, your product
[12:08] could be described as for example
[12:10] deployment to server without knowing how
[12:13] to SSH or knowing docker or git which
[12:16] may be the actual problem for example
[12:17] for vibe coders who don't know any of
[12:19] those things but they do need to deploy
[12:21] somewhere right so your main headers and
[12:24] titles should trigger that pain point in
[12:26] other words you need to work on the
[12:28] presentation of your product similar
[12:30] like a slide deck so imagine you have an
[12:32] audience of 100 people and you need to
[12:34] prepare the presentation the talk about
[12:36] the product so they would not fall
[12:38] asleep and you have only like brief 5
[12:41] minute slot of that audience or
[12:43] so-called elevator pitch of 60 seconds
[12:46] or so. Get to the point and impress your
[12:48] audience because so many ideas
[12:51] especially by developers actually over
[12:53] my career I've seen potential good ideas
[12:56] presented in such a poor way that they
[12:59] didn't take off. Now let's talk about
[13:01] distribution of your product. How do
[13:03] people find out about your SAS? And
[13:05] there are so many ways here. And this is
[13:08] probably the number one problem for
[13:10] developers. Again, we are creators. We
[13:12] are builders in our own cave. And to
[13:14] distribute the product, we need to get
[13:16] out of our cave and tell the world. And
[13:19] of course, you probably realize by now
[13:21] that the approach build it and they will
[13:23] come does not work. Unless you are
[13:25] already very popular startup or
[13:28] household name like for example in
[13:30] Laravel if you are spotty and you create
[13:32] a new package that would get immediate
[13:34] traction but not everyone has such a big
[13:38] audience right so basically what are the
[13:40] options how to tell the world of course
[13:42] the classic is SEO so for example you
[13:44] can blog about your product on your
[13:47] website and then hope that you would
[13:49] target keywords and people would Google
[13:51] and land on your website but this is a
[13:53] very long term And with AI SEO becomes
[13:57] really risky because AI overviews and
[14:00] chat GPT give the answers to people
[14:03] without visiting any websites at all. So
[14:06] posting on your website with hope that
[14:08] someone would come is not what I would
[14:11] advise in 2025. The next approach is to
[14:14] post something on platforms on social
[14:16] media. The classical would be Twitter or
[14:20] Facebook or LinkedIn where you just
[14:22] create a post, a video or image and then
[14:25] try to catch your target audience. That
[14:28] approach is fine but also probably long
[14:31] term because if you have zero followers
[14:33] today, the Twitter and LinkedIn
[14:35] algorithms would not necessarily show
[14:38] you on their feed automatically. Then of
[14:41] course you can cold email people find
[14:43] the target audience and try to basically
[14:46] spam them so to speak. So direct sales
[14:48] via email or on social media maybe
[14:51] LinkedIn direct messages but you
[14:53] probably hate them yourself right if you
[14:55] get such emails of like I have a product
[14:58] for you right it's kind of like
[14:59] doortodoor salesman it's sleazy it's not
[15:02] really what developers even do in their
[15:05] heart again we are builders where
[15:07] creators were not direct sales people so
[15:10] yeah this is something that I would not
[15:11] advise but what I would advise instead
[15:14] of direct messaging people is reply
[15:17] replying to their social media posts.
[15:19] So, you need to find people with the
[15:21] problem you're solving and reply to
[15:23] their tweet, to their LinkedIn post in
[15:25] not a salesy way. Just explain the
[15:28] solution that you suggest and then maybe
[15:31] post a link to your product or maybe
[15:33] just leave it as it is and your product
[15:35] will be in your bio somewhere and then
[15:38] they would discover that. But also, of
[15:40] course, don't do that for the posts
[15:41] which are like months long. It should be
[15:43] relevant. It should be hours ago. Fresh
[15:46] natural conversation. In general, what
[15:48] works is participating in discussions
[15:51] around your problem, around your target
[15:53] audience, replying with valuable advice
[15:56] to a lot of people, and then someone
[15:58] would discover you. To be honest, what
[16:00] worked for me back in the days, like 20
[16:02] years ago, on forums when I was not
[16:05] really looking for developer job, but I
[16:07] was a developer freelancer at the time,
[16:09] and I was helping people with
[16:11] development advice. And then suddenly
[16:13] people started DMing me on that forum
[16:16] asking for like real paid help with
[16:18] coding. That happened not overnight
[16:20] after like hundreds of posts. But then
[16:23] you get so-called karma points on forums
[16:25] or on social media. You get followers.
[16:28] Again, this is a long game. But that's
[16:30] what may actually work in 2025. human
[16:33] contact, genuine value on social media,
[16:36] not posting at people, but participating
[16:39] in their world where they are on their
[16:42] posts, on their feed. The next option is
[16:45] to go to paid ads and go for Facebook
[16:48] ads, LinkedIn ads, Google Adwords, and
[16:50] stuff like that. But this is a game of
[16:52] numbers. I know so many people who tried
[16:55] ads on whatever social network or
[16:57] Google, burned a few hundred dollars,
[17:00] got a few hundred people and only a few
[17:03] signups and then they don't know what to
[17:05] do next. Of course, it may be because of
[17:07] the ad content and the whole funnel of
[17:11] converting to paid user of the product.
[17:14] That may be also leaky bucket but still
[17:16] typically you would turn on ads on
[17:19] already working product to amplify the
[17:22] sales to amplify the SEO results on
[17:25] Google to be on the first page on top
[17:28] but the product should be already having
[17:30] sales even without the ads at least
[17:33] that's what I've seen on the market and
[17:35] finally where I'm getting at is what
[17:37] works in 2025 is video so the same
[17:40] thought that I mentioned in the previous
[17:42] video about positioning and
[17:44] presentation. Presentation of your
[17:47] product is the key. You need to
[17:48] demonstrate the product on your homepage
[17:51] but also outside of it. You can shoot
[17:54] videos on YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram
[17:56] reels or longer form. Any social network
[18:00] now can accept longer videos including
[18:02] Twitter, LinkedIn. So you can repost in
[18:04] many places resize and recrop into like
[18:07] one minute demonstration or 15-minute
[18:09] demonstration or full presentation. But
[18:12] basically again show your product in
[18:14] action but not in a way like here's my
[18:17] product the title. No the title should
[18:19] be I can solve this problem here's my
[18:22] process and then during that process you
[18:24] show the tool. And getting back to the
[18:26] idea of SEO is getting down. I heard so
[18:29] many marketing people now talking about
[18:31] SEO is down. Social media algorithms are
[18:34] unpredictable especially Twitter and
[18:36] many of them bet on YouTube as the
[18:38] platform to go. I know a lot of
[18:41] entrepreneurs who started or got back to
[18:44] YouTube channel to video after 10 years
[18:47] of being off camera with successful
[18:50] business. But now a lot of founders,
[18:53] CEOs, and entrepreneurs go on camera and
[18:56] go on YouTube. Of course, maybe I'm
[18:58] biased because I'm a YouTube creator
[19:00] myself, but it took me like 10 years to
[19:03] be more comfortable on camera. And it's
[19:05] not necessarily that you need to be on
[19:07] camera, by the way. You can hire someone
[19:09] to make a video. You can do a video with
[19:11] AI. You can do a faceless video. It
[19:13] doesn't necessarily have to be you. But
[19:15] of course, human touch does help.
[19:18] Getting back to previous points around
[19:20] human touch. So people still want to buy
[19:22] from people, not from faceless channels.
[19:25] But basically what I would advise in
[19:27] 2025 is start with video post in a few
[19:31] different places. By shooting that
[19:33] video, you would have also presentation
[19:35] material for your website. If you're
[19:37] lucky, you will get comments on your
[19:39] videos from real people who would be
[19:41] interested. Then you follow up with
[19:43] second video showing some other features
[19:45] of your product and then it goes in
[19:48] circle. And then the most important
[19:50] thing, it rarely works with one or two
[19:53] videos. It needs to be a consistent
[19:55] effort of new videos, new pieces of
[19:58] content showing different features or
[20:01] even better different use cases for
[20:03] different problems for different niches
[20:05] of your customers. So for example, when
[20:08] I was trying to advertise our quick
[20:09] admin panel generator 10 years ago for
[20:12] Laravel, I made a video about how to
[20:14] create a sports league website with
[20:16] quick admin panel, how to create a CMS
[20:19] with quick admin panel and it targets
[20:21] different audience. Each video was like
[20:23] 30 minutes and I was very bad at videos
[20:25] back in the day, but it helped a lot
[20:27] actually. And each video is kind of like
[20:30] a lottery ticket. It's not necessarily
[20:32] going to work. It may not work for many
[20:34] reasons. It may be quality of your
[20:36] video, but you need to kind of keep
[20:38] shooting in like basketball analogy. And
[20:41] at some point, you get better at video.
[20:44] You get clearer on what you want to
[20:46] present on those videos. And then
[20:48] usually what happens for YouTubers
[20:50] basically after like 30 videos, 31st
[20:53] videos suddenly unexpectedly goes viral.
[20:57] You never know if it does and you never
[20:59] know which one. Sometimes it's very
[21:01] random but you need to keep shooting.
[21:04] Also important in your content in your
[21:07] video don't really sell. Teach people
[21:09] something. Show how to solve the
[21:11] problem. Talk about the problem. Talk
[21:13] about the idea behind the solution. tool
[21:16] should be kind of in the background
[21:18] selling itself if they want the result
[21:21] faster but they need to believe in you
[21:23] as a founder in your philosophy in your
[21:26] solution first before buying the product
[21:28] around that solution I like the phrase
[21:30] don't remember who said that that sales
[21:33] and marketing is basically debugging
[21:35] customers problems in live mode for them
[21:38] so if you take that approach and work on
[21:40] the problems of the clients find the
[21:43] angles the storytelling way to convince
[21:46] them that you know what you're talking
[21:48] about and again video is the best way to
[21:51] explain that to impress people visually
[21:54] then you have a good chance the final
[21:56] note kind of as an example I talked to
[21:58] one founder of one plug-in one package
[22:01] and I told him I asked him did you post
[22:04] any videos recently showing your package
[22:07] and the answer was no why should I post
[22:09] because it's on my website it's on
[22:11] YouTube it's on GitHub everything so I
[22:13] basically showed everything why would I
[22:15] bother repeating myself and this is a
[22:17] very wrong approach for the same idea
[22:20] for the same product to showcase that
[22:22] you need to find different angles. You
[22:24] need to not be afraid to repeat yourself
[22:26] with a bit different keywords, different
[22:28] words, different phrasing, different use
[22:31] case scenario. So for example, if I have
[22:33] a Laravel plugin, I can demonstrate that
[22:35] in different Laravel projects, totally
[22:37] different niche, but the same plug-in
[22:39] powering that. And that would already be
[22:41] different separate videos to target,
[22:44] maybe different audiences with the same
[22:46] problem, just different use cases and
[22:49] different keywords for SEO as well. So
[22:52] yeah, these are my pieces of advice for
[22:53] marketing your SAS. Probably the
[22:56] overarching message is don't expect it
[22:58] to be quick. It rarely works from the
[23:01] first demo or first video or first email
[23:04] or first Reddit post. Most often it's a
[23:07] long game and even if you do get first
[23:09] traction from like Reddit or Product
[23:11] Hunt or whatever, it's usually the first
[23:13] spike and then no one buys immediately
[23:16] because they need to think and then it
[23:18] dies down and then your goal is to keep
[23:21] it up with some traction, some traffic
[23:25] until it slowly goes up again or until
[23:27] the next spike with some post but then
[23:30] that spike does again and then it goes
[23:32] in kind of spiral. This is the typical
[23:35] trajectory I've seen for SAS products
[23:39] over the years. But of course, there are
[23:41] exceptions. Of course, you may get lucky
[23:43] or the other way around. You may get
[23:45] unlucky and you get zero traction, which
[23:47] may mean that your product is not good
[23:50] enough as a business. You may admit that
[23:52] too. I've had quite a few failures over
[23:55] the years with that, but that could be a
[23:57] topic for future videos. For now, I
[23:59] consider this Laravel SAS course as
[24:02] finished both from technical and
[24:04] marketing side. But I'm happy to
[24:06] continue with any other topics or
[24:08] related questions. So be active in the
[24:10] comments and see you guys in other