Launching tomorrow - already grew our users to 10k! AMA

@imtiyaz922 Thank you! Yes, happy to share few of the strategies we used below. Will start with answering your question about how are planning to retain these users in the future - by regularly asking for feedback and improving our product. As a SaaS startup, we always look for ways to expand to other niches or upgrade what we do to an even better version. As to the growth strategy, we started by giving value and interacting in the channels that our ideal clients would spend their time on the most and offered solutions to their pain points as part of our funnel to drive traffic to our landing page. We kept our landing page simple and with a clear CTA and product positioning. We featured a Freemium plan which gave them the chance to test the waters before deciding to sign up for the paid plan. We also got as much publicity as possible in newsletters, twitter posts and online articles that we could to become more visible. This really spiked our traffic! To rank on page 1 in Google, we picked a keyword that we wanted to target as part of our SEO strategy and ensured that we are performing well for that keyword (happy to create another post to explain this further). Also based on that information we ran some paid ads with a very clearly defined audience and a strong video solving their pain point. Our freemium plan also helped as it means people can test the product before spending their money. Let me know if this helps!

@mirena_vasileva and how many of them using the product? I'm asking because I knew a startup with 10k users and zero active users :)

@erinakate yes, so this is the figure we acquired in a month :) Thank you very much!

@erinakate Oh I see! We get approx 20k messages being exchanged with Ariana daily :)

@pranabgohain Thank you so much, Pranab! Really appreciate your kind words and looking forward to you smashing your launch too 🥳

@mirena_vasileva Thanks too! Excited 😁

@aaronoleary Hey Aaron! It took us around 4 weeks in which we focused on both paid and organic growth. The paid took a lot of testing of ads and re-defining of target audience but eventually we got to a really good CPC and a high CTR and just kept it on the back burner. We also found where our ICP spends their time and interacted with them by bringing value in different communities - whether that was reddit, twitter, on here etc. We also got plenty of both free and low budget PR - wrote an article that ranked 2nd on Hackernoon for 3 days in a row and collaborated with some newsletters that our target audience reads that really got us a spike in traffic!

@aaronoleary @inc_gemoo Thank you!

@joseph_adeyemo Thanks, Joseph - really appreciate your feedback! Would love for you to check Ariana here: https://www.producthunt.com/post...

@kseniya_avtukhovich Thanks for the support! ArianaAI differentiates from other similar tools by the fact that it has 'memory' and so you can have follow-up conversations with Ariana, it is also useful to have her on WhatsApp to use on the go. Thanks for your support!

@mirena_vasileva Sounds great! Best of luck :)

@karthik_tatikonda Thank you, Karthik! We are hoping to get visibility and land anywhere between position 1-10 :) It's our first ever launch so not focused on the Upvote metrics as much as the overall experience

@shaur_ul_asar Thank you, really appreciate it!

@prashant_kumar_1992 Definitely is, yet so important! Thank you

@tunc_emran It really depends on the product! But here is what comes to mind: 1. Split the budget between paid, organic and owned media 2. Get a team of experts to run the paid ads and do it well 3. Get a team to perform organic acquisition strategies as well as organic social media growth (ryanair's tiktok is one great example) 4. Get a community manager to build and participate in an online community 5. Webinars 6. Live Events 7. Creative billboard advertising 8. Partner with influencers 9. Create a referral program 10. Partner with another brand Run all of these simultaneously and ensure that you have nailed your ICP, your niche and your messaging because if you haven't no money can buy them. Ensure that your funnel is sustainable and keeps bringing fresh leads - once you notice what is working double-down on it instead of trying to re-invent the wheel. Pro tip: focus on retaining your customers and increasing their LTV to bring your CAC down :) Hope this sparks some ideas

@mirena_vasileva Very good I would enjoy talking to you more about marketing strategies. You took the time and wrote this. Much appreciated.

@tunc_emran @mirena_vasileva Thanks for sharing it. I am wondering if you hire different professional teams to take care of different channels or do you have your own team members to do everything?

@tunc_emran @inc_gemoo We have our own small team to take care of it all :) But if you want to do it properly I would outsource

@tunc_emran My pleasure! Will be in touch

@ethan_ow1 Thank you! Definitely shoutouts on relevant PR and newsletters and Twitter

@hosseinyazdi We used Twitter (low visibility as it needs daily posting and engagement), Reddit (good visibility) and Facebook (paid - great visibility).

@mirena_vasileva Thanks for sharing Mirena! I've heard so many makers using Reddit to promote their products, so I should probably consider using it.

@hosseinyazdi as long as your target audience spends time there it's worth it :)

@abhishek_jha14 Thank you and so glad to hear you are using ArianaAI daily! It differentiates from other similar tools by the fact that it has 'memory' and so you can have follow-up conversations with Ariana. Thanks for your support!

@mirena_vasileva thanks for the answer, but today when I went to use Ariana AI, it's showing "Oops. It looks like your subscription has expired. Activate your plan today and let's get you back on track.", but I haven't used my daily free 10 messages.

@abhishek_jha14 That's odd, I have passed to the tech team. Do you still get that?

@mirena_vasileva yes!

@elly_cho Thanks, Elly! This is really hard for me to answer, as it is our first launch and I am struggling to pick a 'realistic' number but we are hoping to get a minimum of 300 :) what about you?

@mirena_vasileva I feel like that's what I need to do to make it to Product of the Day, but it's hard and overwhelming.

@elly_cho It is overwhelming, I think vanity metrics should not affect us so much and we should focus on visibility and connection (and actually becoming live here which is an achievement in on itself!)

@nisa_meray Thanks, Nisa! You can check Ariana here: https://www.producthunt.com/post... Best piece of advice? Start early and be really active on ProductHunt to get more visibility once you launch :) ensure all other marketing pieces of the puzzle are working well, too.

@tobi_a Thanks, Tobi! Are you launching soon?

@mirena_vasileva we hope to launch in about 6-8 weeks 🙏🏾

@tobi_a fingers crossed!

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@shiiv_shankar @prathamnandha Thank you! We really nailed our ideal client persona (ICP) and found the channels that they spend their time on to inform our digital marketing, what are their problems (and offered solutions as part of our funnel to drive traffic to our landing page) as well as Freemium plan which gave them the chance to test the waters before deciding to sign up for the paid plan. Also based on that information we ran some paid ads with a very clearly defined audience and a strong video solving their pain point. Our freemium allows 10 messages to be used daily, so they get into the habit of using the AI assistant. Hope this helps you with some ideas

@shiiv_shankar @prathamnandha Forgot to add: We also got plenty of both free and low budget PR - wrote an article that ranked 2nd on Hackernoon for 3 days in a row and collaborated with some newsletters that our target audience reads that really got us a spike in traffic!

@mirena_vasileva Very insightful! Thank you very much for sharing. How many active users came from Hackernoon if it's not a secret? Also, can I get a link to the article? I would love to see how you structured it.

@jaka_koprivec So the actual article had 10k users in the first day and about half of that was website visits, here is the article itself: https://hackernoon.com/take-chat...

@_vikki_ Thank you!! ☺️

@realvladgolub Thanks, Vlad - really appreciate your kind words! You can learn more about Ariana here: https://www.producthunt.com/post...

@mirena_vasileva Tnx!

@rishabhravindran You can do a quick Google search to figure out which platforms are most used by your target audience, then create a strategy for those platforms.