What are some of the best ways to get beta testers?

Question

I'm currently building a CRM for entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses. One thing I need to plan for is releasing a beta version for testing & fixing bugs, however my ideal customer is usually very busy running their business. Any tips or advice to finding & convincing enough people to test out my product before launching?

Ryan Hoover · Accepted Answer

Good question. First I would identify who you want feedback from. E.g. If you're building a social app for Gen Z, feedback from a baby boomer that barely sends text messages probably won't be that useful. Your target audience will inform where you find those people. One strategy to you might want to consider is building an audience first within your target demo. You can do this by starting a newsletter, hosting events, running a podcasting, etc. Casey Neistat is a fantastic example of this. I wrote about this community-first strategy a while back.

Abadesi · Answer

@michael_reale There are tons of groups where entrepreneurs hang out - WhatsApp groups, Slack channels, Telegram groups. Once you identify the personas of your target customers you could tap into these groups and ask folks to help out. I would also offer an incentive e.g. a discount on the service when it launches / a free trial / any other benefit you can spare.

Rohit Kaul · Answer

@michael_reale Ryan's advice below is spot on. There are also some communtiy based start ups which offer testing as a service. 99tests.com is one such (I have no affiliation). I am not sure if the TG is what you are looking for though. You may explore such options for something in the short term.

Florent Merian · Answer

As @rrhoover and @abadesi said, start building an audience and contribute to relevant communities. You can draft an early-access survey to create curiosity and get data from your target market. Then add your product in startup directories. To go forward, here are a few tips on where to find your early-adopters by the team behind Front.

Nicolas Botti Salici · Answer

@michael_reale @nguy_n_hung_tu_n1 Of course.
So, it always depends on what your expected results are, and it may not be the right fit.
Jane is a platform for cannabis home growers, that means no ads in google, no ads pretty much nowhere.
So, we opened up our instagram, contacted growers and started preaching like if we where Jehovah witness. "Hey i see you are a grower, your pics are awesome, we have an app for cannabis home growers. Would you try it out and see what you think?"

The thing is, we knew our product was already working, but being honest about us being a small startup of friends and growers really related to this community.

This is just a small part of that, you can also try to mingle and ask for real questions, don't be selling your product. They are human beings, they have issues and if you solve them they will like you for it. And if you are honest they may share it with people as well.

Does this help any bit? If I knew more about you guys i would be able to give better advice.

Nicolas Botti Salici · Answer

@michael_reale Well alread a lot of great advices. We have 20K users and if I had to do it again, I would try to partner up with some company that will eventually benefit from my solution and get them to share my Beta with their users.
Lets say you make car tires last longer, contact a Pirelli or auto shop and get them to help you out. 
Another thing you can do, what we did, is go guerilla on instagram. Find the market you are targeting, learn from them contact them directly and be honest "Hey we are a couple of guys trying to build something that might help you out with your XXX activity. Can you test our software and see what you think?"
Its a lot of work, but we learned a lot from people A LOOOOOOOT.

Tuan (Alan) Nguyen · Answer

@michael_reale @nicobotti Hey thanks for the thoughtful review! We develop a habit tracker app named Habitify - available on iOS, macOS, Android and Web.

What I am currently doing is the same as you, but to our users: commenting on their post to ask them to try out the app. But like, I think it's like asking a girl to bed on the first date...

I do think about creating a conversion funnel where we'll raise awareness, interest, demand and then action. but that's too long for just 1 user and we can't do that...

Michael Reale · Answer

@rrhoover Awesome, thanks for the advice Ryan!

Nicolas Botti Salici · Answer

@michael_reale @nguy_n_hung_tu_n1 
Well lets put it this way.
Follow all the people you can/want to target. No matter how many followers or whatever.
Then download addons to chrome or others to see the network value of instagram users. They help measure the "influencers" and their power.
Target the ones with the highest value

Another thing, ask somebodys brother, sister, granpa to do this an hour or two a day for a few bucks. Get them to love your product as much as you and make them help. Your time is too valuable.
And trust me this first beta users will be telling everybody about you, thats priceless. Talk to them as humans, not targets.

Tkachenko Arthur ~UA~ · Answer

@michael_reale I think it's not against the rules - when I was researching this topic - i collect a lot of links. i put them into an article: https://hackernoon.com/collection-of-projects-that-can-help-you-to-find-beta-testers-ef410338a7ce

Tuan (Alan) Nguyen · Answer

@rrhoover Thanks for both the comment and the article, Ryan! This is really helpful for me!

Tuan (Alan) Nguyen · Answer

@michael_reale @nicobotti Nicolas, could you share about the guerilla marketing method you did on Instagram? We are touching on this channel and quite lost ...

What are some of the best ways to get beta testers?

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