Website Planet interviewed Grant Bostrom, co-owner of Dealify, an online platform helping growth marketers and entrepreneurs find the best deals on growth marketing tools while bringing great early customers to new software tools.
We learned how their approach to finding and testing tools helped them stand out from the competition of giants like Appsumo and reach over 40k newsletter subscribers, while driving early revenue to startups.
As growth marketers ourselves, we need software to help us work more efficiently and effectively. With Dealify we help growth marketers and entrepreneurs like us find and test newly available tools that will help them succeed.
What problems are you solving for your customers?
Growth marketing is always changing and there is a seemingly endless number of digital marketing channels (see below from Mamble.com on just a fraction of those channels). What worked 2 years ago, 1 year ago or even 6 months ago may or may not still work.
So, as entrepreneurs and growth marketers, we always have to be figuring out how existing channels are changing and what new channels are becoming available. As part of this, growth marketers always need to be looking for online tools and software that can help them be successful in testing and scaling in all of these rapidly changing marketing channels.
For example, as growth marketers, how do we leverage AI in existing and new channels and what tools are being developed and released to help us do that?
We work hard to find great marketing tools and software to help growth marketers and entrepreneurs be more successful and then we feature those at a discount (usually in the form of a lifetime deal).
On the other side, one of the hardest things for new software entrepreneurs and companies is to get their early customers. This is critical not just to start creating revenue but also to get early customers to learn how those customers are using their products, what they need, and what requests they have for the product. The best companies develop their software products closely with their customers and partners.
We help software companies and entrepreneurs get early revenue and attract customers that can help them develop the product they need.
Which types of companies benefit the most from your services?
There are other software deal sites out there, but we put a lot of our focus into finding great growth marketing tools to bring to our customers. Companies and entrepreneurs looking to grow the most efficiently and effectively get a lot of value out of the products that we feature. This is because we have some really unique growth marketing tools but we also have tools that are similar to some of the big and expensive tools out there but at a much cheaper price.
For example, instead of spending hundreds of dollars per month on certain SEO tools, some of our great partners offer similar tools for less than that for lifetime use. Therefore, we find that ambitious growth companies without endless funding really see the value in what we provide.
In terms of which companies/partners do best by featuring their products on our platform, we find that the best companies are active with the customers on the platform. They answer our customers’ questions, ask their new customers what they want to see more of with the product and are looking to improve their products to better serve the market.
What makes them eventually choose you over your competitors?
We are much smaller than a couple of the big players in the software deals space. But, we look at that as an advantage and we think our customers do too.
In fact, we differentiate ourselves by curating the best growth marketing tools and products while providing responsive customer service. We focus only on the best deals, instead of just throwing as many as possible out there to see what sticks.
We also look to be very responsive to our customers and be a pleasure to work with. That earns us loyalty, as testified by some great reviews on Trustpilot from the tens of thousands of companies and entrepreneurs that are subscribed to our regular emails that bring them great growth marketing tools at a discount.
Since you started, what helped you grow and retain your audience?
Early on, most of our audience came from word of mouth and social. We had an active growth marketing Facebook community and we also were active in various social channels. More recently, most of our growth continues to be from word of mouth and through some great affiliates that help us get the word out about our deals.
How are you doing today and what’s in the roadmap for the future?
We are growing at a steady state. Our goal is to continue to grow intentionally instead of trying to become a $100 million dollar business. Maybe we’ll get there but we want to get there in the right way – curating the best software tools and treating our customers and our partners well.
As we continue to grow, we want to curate a broader range of growth marketing resources for our customers – AI tools, courses, events, etc…We also want to evolve our platform technology more and have a roadmap for doing so.
What tools are you using to run your business and daily activities?
Email is still such an amazing marketing channel and most of our business relies on email. We use MailerLite for our email efforts. We have used their product for a while and the team there is always pushing to add features and improve the platform.
We also use Subscribers, a web push platform that enables us to send out updates on new products available. It is similar to email marketing but features short and sweet messages through people’s browsers. That drives really great engagement and conversions for us.
And, we use Metorik to track our business – Metorik is great to keep track of our business and learn where we can be better.
As growth marketers, we also regularly use a lot of the tools we feature on Dealify.com. We are always looking for new tools to grow our business so we love using many of the tools we feature on the site.
What perspective do you have about where your industry is headed?
It’s getting harder and harder for companies to make the math work on paid acquisition across social and search. It used to be pretty easy for software companies (and a lot of other companies) to get strong ROI on paid acquisition. But, with things going cookieless and the price of keywords and traffic going up, it’s becoming harder and harder. Therefore, we believe that sites like Dealify are necessary for companies to find a way to gain new customers.
We also see a huge number of competitors in every software vertical. It seems if a company is able to get traction in a market, there are other companies that fast follow with similar products.
This can make it difficult on the software companies that have huge expenses or have raised a lot of money because they have to charge a lot for their software products. For example, a company that has raised a ton of money for their AI SEO tool has to charge a very high monthly price. But, there are very smart entrepreneurs and companies that have equally good products but can make their businesses work well without having to charge huge amounts for their products.
Finally, everybody is talking about AI and this is especially true in engineering and marketing circles. We believe that the best companies and entrepreneurs won’t be scared about AI, but will instead embrace AI to be able to help them do more and better work. We are hoping we can continue to evolve Dealify to help marketers tap into powerful new AI tools to help them do great work.
Bethenny eats, sleeps, and breathes digital marketing. She helps clients take charge of brand awareness and create lead generation strategies via a number of marketing channels, including email, social media, SEO, and content. When not a marketing superwoman, you can find her playing with her three dogs on her five-acre property, or planting yummy treats in her vegetable garden. (She is also a bit of a Real Housewives junky, #guiltypleasure!)
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