A Running Thread Of Ways Founders/Makers Can Grow Their Startup
As a former founder of 20 years and as Head of Ad Sales at @producthunt, I meet founders every day looking to grow their startup. But the truth is, it's hard to get distribution! And it's only getting harder as building is getting easier. I am starting a thread where I can share some ways i've grown my prior companies, with specific tactics. Feel free to add your own tactics and add to the conversation, and upvote anything you think is helpful to you and other founders.
Replies
Thanks Mat for doing this, would love to hear your marketing tips. Bookmarked this post ✅
Here is what we did to get our first 10 paying users, I hope it helps new founders:
Pre Launch
1.We shared our challenges and asked for feedback during the building phase (design, user persona, pricing, marketing, basically anything).
2. Help and support others, and make friends on Twitter.
3.Engaged in conversations where people are talking about the problem we were solving (you can use F5Bot, a free service that emails you when your selected keywords are mentioned on Reddit or Hacker News).
Soft-Launch
4. Create a no-brainer offer (70-80% discount) and DM potential users to share their feedback.
5. Reach out to users over DM of our previous product.
6. Joined the PH community on LinkedIn and share love and feedback with people and ask for feedback if they are our ICP.
About to Launch
7. Promoted our product in the communities of products we used to build your product (like softr, a no code website builder, has a community)
8. Joined the community of founders/creators we love (our favorite is morningmakershow)
9. Promoted our product on "pitch your product" tweets.
10. Launched on launchpads like Uneed, Microlaunch.
11. Launched our product on relevant platforms and directories.
Cross- Launch
12. Collaborated with founders and platforms having the same audience as ours.
13. Find creators and founders whose products or services work well with ours. (For example, we are building a platform submission service, Boringlaunch so we collaborated with a launch platform to create a bundle of featured listings on the platform with our submission services on other platforms)
Post-Launch
14. Tried ads on social platforms (didn't work out for us, but it may work for you)
15. Overdelivered and ask for a testimonial.
16. Shared your small wins and learning over the internet.
17. Try, try, and try until something works, and double down on what works.
All the best for your launch 🚀
P.S. The order of these steps may vary based on your product, audience, and 99 other factors. So, feel free to adapt and experiment. I have shared the list of communities where you can promote your product here