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Alessandro Canella

Did you build an audience before launching your product/s?🫡

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Hey guys, some of us build a significant audience after launching a product, mainly because we are limited in workforce and finances. Indeed, having an audience before the launch is critical. How do you handle this issue, especially if you are into marketing? 🤔

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Paco Sainz
Started posting daily updates on Twitter and have gotten about 200 followers. I think I need to start doing the same here
Paco Sainz
@paco_s also got about 600 beta users so far so maybe that will help during launch. I plan to add a view on my app to ask for emails to be notified of launch
Ekaterina Arbuzova
@paco_s that's an impressive result! Did you use any other socials except for Twitter?
Paco Sainz
@katerina_arbuzova I also posted on relevant subreddits (so Reddit) Got a lot of feedback that way super fast! I'm also starting to write on Medium so maybe that will help as well. Medium has a lot of SEO
Matt Bilardo
@paco_s Hey Paco, any pointers on how to build twitter followers?
Paco Sainz
@matt_bilardo yes. The fastest way to start from zero is to follow people who are doing the same (building in public). Basically search for the tag #buildinpublic and follow people that you like. Then start sharing your journey building your product on the daily. To grow you need to leave a funny or insightful comment on bigger accounts and you'll start to get a following. This community is super supportive so you can ask for feedback, but start by helping others with feedback, your opinion or tips
Richard Gao
Yep. Haven't launched yet, but currently building a community in my discord through leaving comments on reddit. Since I'm developing an API for AI that allows users to run a couple AI models we host on the cloud, I mostly frequent AI subreddits like r/MachineLearning or r/StableDiffusion and post links to my discord when people express discontent with current AI products. Already got 200+ members and growing. If anyone is interested, feel free to follow on twitter @TheRealEtch for more updates or join the discord.
Alessandro Canella
@therealetch @richard_gao2 Great strategy! Reddit is a great platform to get authentic traffic on products. I am also using it and is giving me satisfactory results. 👌
Ekaterina Arbuzova
We built a community on Reddit prior to our launch. Got almost 100 beta testers from there. We’re also a team limited in financial resources and workforce so I think exposure is crucial for us :)
Alessandro Canella
@katerina_arbuzova Very true! It is important to get authentic beta testers. People who can authentically test the product and be true about their feedback. All the best 👍👍
Grace Bulman
@katerina_arbuzova Hi there! I am currently trying to boost my product's social audience/gain engagement, but we are just in beta testing and do not have much feedback or content to post. Can I ask which subreddits you targeted to gain beta testers/get the word out about your product? Thanks in advance!:)
Ekaterina Arbuzova
@grace_bulman Hi Grace! There are a few subreddits devoted to finding beta testers, but I didn't find them helpful :( As my team's building a knowledge-sharing platform for tech experts, we mainly focused on specialized subreddits such as startups/marketing/entrepreneurship/etc, and posted/cross-posted related content. Here's the link to our subreddit in case you want to have a look: https://www.reddit.com/r/DEKS/ And the post about promoting our startup on Reddit + statistics and insights: https://www.reddit.com/r/DEKS/co... If you don't have much content to post, you can share your experience working in a startup and stories of success and failures. Or you can engage with your target audience in the subreddits they would most likely use.
Joan Mateo Duarte 🚀
Great networking before launching for me. Talking about your product publicly is the best way for me.
Alessandro Canella
@joanduarte I agree! But do you also indulge in specific publicity activities that might be helpful later or it's just genuine organic marketing? 😊
Chebet
Not yet but I'm going to soon
Robert Haake
I first started my business. All of my sells are 'cold' but it works. Quality and endurance is the key!
Alessandro Canella
@windywell I can understand! Persistent effort at the right platform will help you gain attention of your audience. You can try IG and YouTube for starters. Best wishes 🙌
Matt Bilardo
@windywell Hey Robert, I know cold emails can be a blessing specifically when you are starting out. How do you get targeted email lists? Any pointers?
Puneet Kohli
Short answer - yes! Long answer - start a discord community, create social posts on relevant topics to your target customers, etc etc We did this for careerflow.ai (We have now 100K LinkedIn followers) and are doing our first Product Hunt launch next week. The caveat here is that only a small fraction of our audience on LinkedIn actually uses PH (<1%), will be willing to interact on launch day, etc etc. It's also generally hard to convert your social audience to customers (I think ~10% is an amazing conversion rate for a free product and maybe about 2% for paid), but building the audience shows proof that you are in a space that someone cares about, can find early adopters, and use as leverage to attract more customers. Let me know if you'd like to discuss more (Also would love if you could follow our launch happening soon!)
Alessandro Canella
@puneet_kohli Rightly said! SM audience might be hard to convert but they do provide validation for the product. It has become increasingly important as customers more or less rely on what SM position the product holds. 👍👍
Chris Watson
Yes, building an audience prior to the launch is very important! It would be best if you prepped the community for your product launch. Hype is important! I create the one by engaging and solving their problems with my product benefits!
Alessandro Canella
@excellentweb_australia What is the best way to create hype for an app? 🫡
Chris Watson
@alessandro_canella Multiple. Hire a famous influencer in the niche, publish some teaser videos and create the hype for full video, etc...
Rajan Walia
Yes, We are building for the our product launch.
Agrima Sharma
Joined PH 5 days ago!! Trying my best to build a network :)
Luca Micheli
Yes we did, and I've explained everything in this article: https://www.customerly.io/blog/h... After years I wanted to build a better community on twitter. This is why I started sharing my journey in public on Twitter. Best decision ever.
Michael Patrick
I didn't really, and I launched today. I was hoping by some miracle the good product itself would be enough to get support organically, but so far, that hasn't proven to be true. Lessons for next time! I have a lot of features lined up that can be launched as separate entities. Here's my launch today, for those curious: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Alessandro Canella
@ushercakes Thanks for sharing your side of the story. I will have a look at your product right away 😊
Abid Unnisa
Well I thing it is crucial to build an audience before the launch. I have seen a lot of products do that.
Jasper Ruijs
The trick is to move followers from social media to your digital tribes. You will battle with everyone for your follower's attention on every social media platform. On Discord, Telegram, and Whatsapp communities, you don't have that problem. Furthermore, those community platforms are focused on a topic/business. Therefore people feel freer to think and express themselves because there is no social backlash. So you create free brand ambassadors. Before doing this, make sure you hire a Community Lead because using a chatbot to welcome users is nice, but you need someone to stir the pot. They have to throw up exciting topics constantly, have audio-only meetings, and other digital events. If you don't do this, either the community dries up, or they go ballistic without a proper moderator, creating these mega spam groups, or going into lengthy discussions, alienating new members. A community leader is a full-time job that has to coordinate with design and marketing teams; it cannot be thrown into the hands of social media intern. To do this well, you need to have activation strategies because social media will punish your marketing efforts; for every link you place that leads elsewhere, you usually a 20-60% decrease reach of the posts because they want their users to stay on the social platform to show them more ads. But there are some workarounds. Come to my meeting Monday with Jacopo. I will go into detail about building this community because I have done some analysis, and you guys got the top funnel covered, especially in the organic SEO area. 🙌
Alessandro Canella
@jas801 Thanks a lot for the explanation. I loved your insights and they really work. Let's connect 😊😊
Izuchukwu Ahamzie
I have worked with different founders mostly in the web3 sector and I’ve come to learn different ways to go about this, for me it depends on the concept of your project. The idea I love most is getting everything done and ready on the back end then building the community slowly and organically
Alessandro Canella
@iz_aham1 I like the concept, but don't you think getting everything done is a continuous process and should include even the slightest efforts of audience building. 🫡
Izuchukwu Ahamzie
@alessandro_canella Yes it’s a continuous process and should involves the community also. My point exactly is to build from the back end to a great extent before involving the community, this is when beta tests, incentives and community building comes in.
Karthik Tatikonda
I would recommend building the product in public, this way you can build an audience before the launch. Also, you can checkout the communities where your target audience will hang out and organically plug your product.
Alessandro Canella
@karthik_tatikonda I agree! It will also help get real time feedback for tweaking the product per customer needs. 😊🫡
sowmya k s
Great networking.
Jordan M. Thomas
Yes, as an author/content creator, my products are books and articles
Vijay Singh Khatri
Having a great network will always give you a booster dose though you can have your presence without influencer marketing.
Alessandro Canella
@vijay_singh_khatri Rightly said! I also believe that a co-founder's personal network plays a huge role in initial product promotion 🫡😊
Sangeetha Banger
Participate in discussions, start following your target audience on Insta, Linkedin, etc and engage with them and build connections. When your product is ready for launch, reach out for reviews.
Alessandro Canella
@sangeetha_banger ON POINT! Authentic discussions are very important to build an audience ready to invest their time on your launch. 🙌🫡