How to sell a product nobody's looking for
A prompt for category creators
Category creation is tough – nobody imagines your product might exist, so nobody’s looking for it. How do you even explain it to people? And where do you find customers?
I’m helping a team like that now – it’s a photo-sharing app that millions of families would use, if only they knew it existed. Here's how we cracked it.
Background
23Snaps lets families share baby photos privately – without posting on social media or spamming a group chat.
A useful product! But most people don’t Google "private family photo sharing app." They just live with the annoyance.
But some people do search. Not for the product, but for workarounds. And that's where we found our message.
The prompt:
When people’s searches end up taking them to [incumbent or workaround] – that’s a product category most people don’t know about. What are the top of funnel searches that lead to it? Include use cases, alternative solutions and how-to’s that those solutions eventually rank for.
We tried this for 23Snaps, here’s what we got:
“How to share baby photos privately with family?”
“Private baby photo sharing app”
“Safe alternative to Facebook for family photos”
“Simple photo sharing app for grandparents”
Those phrases became our headlines.
The search volume is tiny – ignore it. For every one person who searches, there’s 1,000 who won’t. But when they see that language? They’ll recognise the need in themselves. So test that language in your normal channels, e.g. ads, emails, events, organic social, influencers, etc.
Simple next step
Paste the prompt into your LLM of choice (I use Gemini for search intent questions)
Pick the phrases that sounds like something your customers would actually say
Test them in your usual channels (ads, emails, organic social, etc.)
Use the winning phrases on your landing pages, app store listings and onboarding.
Remember: the category may be new, but the need never is.
I hope this helps!