Hi Comm, I’m a solo-founder bootstrapping on an early-intervention wellbeing product, initially focusing on lawyer wellbeing as a B2C.
Most of the resources I’ve either read or listened to over the years emphasised avoiding paid ads as a way to awareness and customer acquisition, but to instead focus on organic and community-led engagement and building.
Problem I personally have is almost all resources, books and guidance on how to build this community tends to be via online channels; social media. Truth is I don’t engage with social media, and haven’t had many accounts like instagram. I left them all because of my own mental wellbeing (ironic, really). I find the idea of shouting into the void of Twitter off-putting (especially since Musk took over), and generally dislike social media in general.
I tried to engage with said community via Reddit, but it’s sun is hideously toxic (to my own surprise). LinkedIn is probably the only platform I use and I don’t mind it, but both cautious about being vocal (as this is a side project from my own role) and over the years, it feels like LinkedIn has been borked in a way that inhibits it’s organic outreach (like the decline of LinkedIn Groups over the years).
Would like to know how many others dealt with this, particularly if you’re trying to reach out to a community that you’re not in and generally isn’t overly tech-savvy as a whole, or if you ever had any success launching with paid ads.
I 100% agree and it’s one of the reasons why I’m currently a bit dismayed with my project. The demand is there, but I’ve struggled with the distribution, because I’ve always wanted to avoid the B2C space.
But every attempt at B2B hasn’t really worked. For instance right now, speaking with lawyers, there is a demand for the product. My attempts to target law firms instead has taken me head on into an ongoing industry issue whereby firms don’t value lawyer wellbeing (an industry of billing by the hour and how work-stress which is the cause of the issues). Must of my experience is engaging with partners who care about wellbeing, they direct me to their HR person, and they couldn’t give a shit.
It leads me to 2 directions; either go direct-to-consumer, which as you say, tends to be a funded pathway, or to stay B2B and try and change the culture of law firms, which is in insurmountable challenge that will take years to change (if ever).