Ideally you want to find the users for your project before you even launch. However, I am not going to lecture you on that right now.
Still, if you haven’t launched yet then you may want to check out these posts:
- When (and When Not) to Validate Your Idea Before You Build an MVP.
- How To Validate Your SaaS Idea Before You Launch
- How (and Why) To Find Your First Users Before You Launch
Get in the Marketing Mindset first
I am going to assume you are like I was…
I considered myself an Introverted Developer type. You need to change your mindset though and become someone else.
The success of your project depends on it.
When in doubt, SHARE!
With that in mind…
If this article helped you then please share it!
Seriously. Start your journey into becoming a Marketer by reading this article and then sharing it on your social media channels.
Have a question not answered in this article?
Post on Startup Directory Sites
Product Hunt
The best of these and the most valuable is Product Hunt. Notifier has been getting customers from our successful Product Hunt launch for years.
But Product Hunt is so valuable that you may want to put some thought into HOW you launch on it. Check out an article like this one: How to launch on Product Hunt, a detailed Guide
Other Product Launch Sites
So, we actually created an article on the best startup directories sites to submit your project too. The important thing to remember with these is never pay for their premium services. It’s never worth it.
You can check out our article here: The Best Startup Directory Sites to Submit Your Startup To
Post on Reddit
Reddit. The marketers nightmare. Many people have tried to market their products on Reddit only run screaming and crying in pain and never to come back.
Notifier though was born on Reddit.
So, you can say that we know a thing or two about marketing yourself on Reddit.
There are two approaches here:
- Post in threads/subreddits that are made to share new projects
- Go covert and do stealth Reddit marketing.
Posting in threads/subreddits for Sharing New Projects
This is the approach we recommend and in order to save you time we have collected a list of the best subreddits to post your project to: Best Places to Share Your Startup on Reddit.
You may also have some interest in checking out our post on: Amazing Examples of Companies Using Reddit to Connect with Their Customers.
Stealth Reddit Marketing
Stealth marketing on Reddit is obviously much more difficult and much more time-consuming but can be incredibly valuable if you can pull it off successfully.
So because of that it may be worth investing your time in it.
The approach we recommend is to provide some kind of post that describes an approach you have used for building/marketing your own projects and at some place in the post you throw in a link to your project.
Super Stealthy Mode
Even more stealthy Reddit marketers take the approach of not even mentioning their project and instead of waiting until someone in the comments (maybe even them with another account) asks for a link.
Post on Hacker News
Hacker News is even more critical of self-promotion then read it if you can believe it!
Hacker News was actually created and is run by the team behind the Y Combinator Accelerator. There have even been rumblings throughout the developer social media world of their biases and heavy handed approach in controlling and monitoring the forum.
If you have a developer focused product though it may be worth it trying to post in their forum.
Be forewarned though that we have no advice for you in doing so. Here there be dragons.
I even thought they would 😍 the fact that Notifier supports Regex but so far have had no success. If you have any advice on this feel free to reach out to me and we will post it here!
Social Media
Ah, Social Media…
The downfall of our society if you believe all the latest news you read.
Whether that’s true or not one thing is clear…
Social Media Platforms like Twitter CAN help level the playing field against large, well-pursed competitors.
Anyone can see a Tweet. To get seen on Google you have to spend a lot on SEO (usually, we will get to that) or buy expensive Ads.
Social Listening Tools can be a great tool for generating Leads
You didn’t really think you would get to the end of this article without me trying to sell our own SaaS did you?
Keep in mind not all sales is bad. Especially when it’s selling something to you that is useful to you and can help you reach your own goals. Let’s get this over with:
You an use Notifier to get alerted when someone mentions “Looking for X” and then you chime in if X is what your product does:
Cold Email Outreach
Yeah, yeah we know everyone supposedly hates cold email outreach but the fact is the data shows that it’s still converts better than many other channels you can invest in.
Don’t believe us? That’s fine we don’t care because we’re not selling a cold email SaaS. 🤣 Google that ish and find out for yourself.
Here are some tips we have gathered over the years for Cold Emailing.
Personalization may (or may not) be worth it.
In our experience no one is going to be impressed with “Hey Bob…{Here is my template now}” type emails.
If you’re prospects are high value enough to where you can take the time to truly personalize an email then it may make sense to do so.
If not though we recommend sending out the smallest and simplest template email you can. Don’t waste people’s time and get straight to your proposal ASAP.
Here’s an example:
Are you using any Cold Email Sending tools?
- Cave JohnsonIt’s best to have a Virtual Assistant (VA) send these out and to also vary the text being sent each time.
If you try to send out 300 of the above emails most of them are going to be going to the spam folder.
This is why we recommend always having a Virtual Assistant (VA) vary each message sent so that each is slightly different than the one before. You can even have them type each custom message into a sheet that you use to populate a bulk email sending program later.
Do not send all at once
Obviously you need to send a small amount of emails each day. We have had great success with sending emails only Monday through Friday and at most 50 new emails per day.
Awesome Cold email tools
- Hunter.io – for finding emails
- AnyMailFinder – another great email finding tool
- GMass – a great bulk emailer for gmail/gsuite
SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
The idea here is that you write content optimized to rank on Search Engines like Google.
Now this is a very deep field in a lot of ways but high level it can be simplified into the following general concepts:
- The more backlinks you have, the more reputable and authoritative your site is to Google.
- New sites are unlikely to build up authority quickly
Our Recommendations:
- If you have a new site and product then start investing in SEO but expect it to take time (years) to show results
- Write articles that target low competition keywords and see if you can identify low competition buyer intent keywords
- Write articles that target low competition keywords and see if you can identify low competition buyer intent keywords
Ads
- Can be very difficult to compete if you have a lot of competitors in your space that have a lot of money to spend.
This will be finished soon!
LinkedIn Outreach
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Cold Calling?
This will be finished soon!