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6 · Go-to-market
Who buys first
The market is every business whose website is a brochure it cannot change. In practice the first fifty customers come from three places, in this order:
| Segment | Why they buy | Where to find them |
|---|---|---|
| Local service businesses | Hours, prices and photos change constantly; nobody updates the site; they are embarrassed by it. | The high street. Walk it. Every café, salon, garage, gym, clinic and shop with a bad website is a lead, and you can show them their own site on your phone. |
| Sole practitioners and small professional firms | Accountants, architects, therapists, tutors, trades. Their site is their credibility and it is five years old. | The operator's own network, LinkedIn, local business groups, the accountant who does your books. |
| Clubs, associations, small charities | A volunteer built the site and left. Events and news never go up. | One introduction leads to the committee, and the committee knows every other committee. |
Later: franchise branches, small hospitality groups, property agents, anyone with several small sites that should stay in step.
The pitch, in the customer's language
Not "AI agent" and not "GitHub". Say this:
"You will have a website you can change by asking. You send a message, the change happens, you see it on your phone. I set it up properly and I keep it working. You own everything."
Then show them a mock-up being changed live, in the chat, in under a minute. That demonstration is the whole sales process. Nothing else is needed.
The offer that converts
Borrowed from the operating model this plan sits under: ship it, give it away briefly, take it away, see if they miss it.
- Rebuild their site in a day, free, on a preview URL. From their public site and whatever they send. It costs the operator two or three hours and some tokens.
- Give them the customer session for two weeks. Let them change things. Watch the change log.
- Take it away. The preview goes dark on day fifteen.
- See whether they miss it. The ones who call are the customers. The ones who do not were never going to pay, and you have lost an afternoon.
The conversion from a free rebuild they have actually used will be high, because the alternative is going back to the brochure.
Positioning against the alternatives
| Against | Their position | Ours |
|---|---|---|
| Template builders | Rent forever for a tool you fight | You own the site; you change it by asking; you pay for what is done |
| Agencies | £3,000 to £15,000 and every change is a quote | Live in days for hundreds; changes in minutes |
| A freelancer | Good until they are busy or gone | The repository and the playbook outlive any one person, including us |
| Doing it yourself with an agent | Possible, and we will show you how | Most people want somebody accountable who has done it fifty times |
Channels
- Referral. Every customer's footer says who looks after the site. Every monthly note asks for one introduction. A referred customer gets their first month free; the referrer gets a month free. This is the main channel and it compounds.
- The demo. Rebuild a local business's site unasked, send them the preview. Ten a month, two convert.
- The sales site. One page, built exactly the way the customer's will be, with the mock-ups live and the prices on it. See
mockups/sales-site.html. - Partners. Accountants, business coaches, co-working spaces and local trade associations see every small business at the moment it needs a website. A referral fee or a free site for the partner.
- Content. Publish the change logs of a few customers (with permission) as the marketing: this is what a site that gets changed looks like.
Pricing posture
Publish the prices. All of them, on the sales site. The market this competes with hides prices behind a quote, and publishing yours is itself a differentiator, and the honest one.