Promote your product by helping others

Jakub Piskor
8 replies
Since I started being active in startup communities, I've seen many recommendations on how to promote a product with or without a budget. I don't want to talk about all of them today. Because I built free-to-use products, it's almost impossible relying on paid ads, although I experimented with them too. I needed to find other ways, budget-free. It doesn't matter if you build a free or paid product. It's always good finding a budget-free marketing channel for an indie hacker. Anyways, back to the topic. I started spending time in communities on Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, and Reddit. I was reading and participating in discussions. I replied to questions or comments every time I saw an opportunity to bring some information to the discussion. I didn't expect anything in return. I wanted to help. If I think it's valuable to post a link to my product (my product can help), I post it. But only if I truly believe it helps the other side. I find out it works, and it's free. Yes, you can say it takes time, and it's not scalable. You'll be right. On the other side, if you don't have a marketing budget but have time, it might work for you. P.S. I'm working on a new project built on this principle - promote your product/personal brand by helping others. I'm looking for the first few participants who would be willing to start it with me. You can benefit from being the first. If you want to know more, send me DM on Twitter.

Replies

Jaida Yang
Thanks for sharing! Curious to see which subreddits work for you?
Jakub Piskor
@jaidayang I mostly participate in r/entrepreneurridealong , r/entrepreneur , r/startups , r/marketing but I monitor 21 subreddits.
Jaida Yang
@jakub_piskor thanks for sharing! Super helpful!
Daniyar Yeskaliyev
I agree that it's not scalable, and takes time. But if the product is "sticky", and the problem it solves is recurring, then at a certain point you hit the right spot. For example, if you need 100 visitors to get 10 users, and need 10 users to find that one user that will become your product advocate - then you really need to push manually to get those 100 first visitors. You do it once - you get 1 product advocate who helps you. You do it 10 times - you have 10 early adopters who are with you on this journey. They'll tell you how to improve the product, and they might have the power to get new users. When you get over a certain 'critical mass' point, your product starts absorbing new users as a black hole - if your product is useful and sticky. I think before you get to that level when your product attracts new users itself, it doesn't make sense to invest big budget into marketing - your product will rely on ads spendings and you'll be just burning money. But in order to get to that point, I think it's safer and more efficient to do it your way - no-budget, leveraging online communities.
Anastasiia K
Have you got your "first few participants" spots all gone, or is there a free slot? I'd be interested actually :)
Jakub Piskor
@anastasiiahere Yeah, I have a free slot. :) Please send me DM on Twitter, we can discuss it further. http://twitter.com/jakubpiskor