Submit to Betalist, ProductHunt, Hacker News and Indiehackers
Submitting to these resources is an excellent way to grow your initial userbase. Please note that Betalist only accepts submissions from companies that have not yet launched (you’ll require a landing page with a subscribe form). Also, they have quite a lengthy wait list, so you’re probably better off paying for their expedited service if you want signups sooner rather than later.
Furthermore, you’ll require someone to submit your startup to Product Hunt for you. Take a look at http://500hunters.com for the most infuential people who can submit you.
Indiehackers is a newer but equally brilliant community — create a ‘Show IH’ post there, but remember to contribute to the community and not to only use it for promotion (you’ll be received negatively)
BetaList, Hacker News, Product Hunt, Indiehackers
Engage with relevant communities
There are a lot of communities you can engage with, so make sure you take part in useful discussion and build a rapport with the members in order to get the most out of them:
- Reddit (find useful subreddits such as /r/startups, /r/smallbusiness etc.)
- Indiehackers
- Hacker News
- Slack groups (find relevant slack groups here)
- Facebook groups (search for Facebook groups and engage with their communities)
- LinkedIn groups
More places to submit your startup
Here’s an awesome GitHub link with a bunch of sites (constantly updated) that you should submit your startup to:
Updated List of Places to Post Your Startup
Get free adwords/bing ads/Facebook ads vouchers
Take advantage of free advertising vouchers for Bing, Google, Facebook and Twitter. You’re able to get free vouchers for (depending on location) if you don’t yet have an account with them.
Finding a voucher for these sites is pretty easy. Just google [Site name] free advertising vouchers and you’ll come across plenty of results. We Googled ‘google free advertising vouchers’ and found this relevant page as the first result:
Make use of the power of referrals
65% of new business comes from referrals; it’s quite simple really, if you’re referred by a friend, you’re 4x more likely to buy ← these leads offer higher conversions.
Try and harness the power of referals by setting up your own campaign. One of the most famous examples of a referrals campaign is by Harry’s — I recommend reading that article!
Harry’s offer up some open source Ruby code to help you setup your own referral program.
If you’d like to quickly setup a referral campaign, we recommend visiting Viral Loops or Salescamp.
Use social networks religiously
Setup Twitter & Facebook profiles for your company. If you produce something visual (in the slightest way), use Instagram and Pinterest (and maybe Snapchat) too. Make use of hashtags, relevant images and post frequently to increase your following. Don’t underestimate the power of social networking — you can bring in high quality targeted signups through this medium.
Search for relevant hashtags on Twitter by entering your hashtag into the searchbox. Reach out to potential customers by publicly messaging them.
Here’s an example for the term ‘startups’:
You can setup Twitter alerts for when someone tweets a term relevant to you. This gives you the opportunitiy to engage with them quickly and without having to spend time searching for Tweets.
Social platforms provide a great way to engage with potential customers and if you’re not actively engaging, you’re missing out.
Don’t forget, you should also monitor your competitors on Twitter. Follow and engage with their followers, setup alerts for when they receive new customer queries and make your company known to their potential customers.
Cold emailing is still #1
Whether you like it or not, cold emailing is a brilliant way to acquire new customers. You can try to make intros as warm as possible if you hate cold-emailing, but you can’t deny the ROI.
Find your target customers with web searches, Twitter searches etc. Contact them directly via email or through contact forms.
Try to write a personalised message (do things that don’t scale) for better results. It can be time-consuming, but once you begin to reap the rewards, you will be thankful you spent the time doing it.
Pitch to relevant press outlets
Too many founders think that getting on TechCrunch is the be all and end all of startup success. Don’t get too hung up on this. Focus on the smaller outlets as well as the larger players.
Even if you don’t get picked up by TechCrunch, Mashable etc., by focusing on smaller news outlets, you’re more likely to have one of the bigger guys write you up at a later point.
Search for press outlets in your niche & find journalists who write about startups like yours. Write a great pitch (focus on the problem you solve and a story of your solution. Revenue/sales figures can be impressive too).
At Prumio, we find the most relevant press outlets and journalists for your startup, so if you have the budget (we start at $199 monthly), consider using services that can automate this for you. Getting featured in just one targeted outlet can bring in a metric ton of engaged customers.
Create blog content & guest blog
Content marketing is still an excellent way to pull in relevant customers. Setup a Wordpress or Webflow blog and link it to your website (e.g. http://www.example.com/blog). Post your blog articles across relevant LinkedIn groups, Reddit subreddits, discussion boards, LinkedIn, Slack, Indiehackers, Medium, Facebook groups etc.
Writing blog articles will also increase your organic (search engine) search results, so you’ll get more long-term traffic this way too.
Don’t forget to pitch to other blogs as a guest writer. You’ll be able to harness their traffic and promote your own products/service.
Ensure that you have a smooth user on-boarding experience
If you have a poor on-boarding and UX experience, your users aren’t going to understand your product and they’re going to have a bad time. Take a look at UserOnboard.com, an excellent reference website to help you understand the on-boarding experiences of companies such as Basecamp, Google, Quora and Tumblr. I guarantee that you’ll learn something.
Do things that don’t scale
OK so you’ve probably heard this one before, and rightly so. Getting your first 5, 10, 50, 100 customers is going to be hard for most people. Don’t spend money acquiring your initial customers, try to find customers by doing things that don’t scale, e.g. personally emailing potential customers with personalised messages, manually PMing users on Reddit etc.
Once you’ve got your first stable customers, you can focus on collecting feedback and improving the quality of your service, in addition to bringing in revenue.
Plan out a marketing strategy & keep it regular!
After you’ve done most of the things above, and you’ve experienced a surge in traffic, you’ll probably face a steady decline — don’t fret though. Keep up with your marketing strategy; create high quality content; provide a smooth user experience; perfect and improve your product and you’ll be building the blocks for long-term growth.
Remember: what works for one company may not work for you, so you need to experiment and find something that is a.) cost effective and b.) time efficient.
Thanks for reading!
Did you enjoy reading this post? Great! If you’re interested in getting press coverage for your startup, visit www.prumio.com and follow us on Twitter.
