How do you promote your product without sounding too salesy?
I've always struggled with promoting my own work. 😓 It always felt a little awkward because I grew up in an environment where drawing attention to yourself wasn't really encouraged.
That's not exactly ideal when you're trying to build a business, and even less so when marketing is literally how you make a living. :D
I never had a problem promoting other people's products. Just my own.
Now I'm in the same situation again.
I'm building a LinkedIn plugin, and one of the main ways to get it in front of people is by talking about it on LinkedIn.
The problem is, I don't want people to see me as someone who's constantly selling.
What would you recommend doing to promote a product without coming across as too pushy or too salesy?
Here's what I've tried so far:
On X, I'm taking a build-in-public approach and sharing my coding journey and I leave the link in the comments.
I've added the waitlist link to my social media profiles.
When one of my LinkedIn posts performs well, I edit it afterwards and add a short call to action at the end, inviting people to join the waitlist.
If a LinkedIn post isn't related to the tool, I'll sometimes leave a funny comment underneath it and add a P.S. mentioning my tool.
I want to dedicate at least one LinkedIn post per week specifically to the product I'm building.
I'd love to hear what has worked for you.
Replies
Hi Nika, I realized I don't actually promote my product. I promote the problem I'm solving.
I launched a wellness method on here a couple of weeks ago. My instinct at first was to talk about the product itself, features, prompts, the mechanics. But what actually got people leaning in was talking about the problem.
I have two years of GLP-1 maintenance data and no good way to make sense of it day to day. That's a real problem a lot of people share. When I talked about that, the product became the answer, not the pitch.
I also created a companion podcast where I devote episodes to explaining the method and weaving in my real-life story. That's given people a way to understand the why behind the product not just the promotion itself.
A couple of things that have worked for me:
Share the before, not just the after. People connect with the problem you were trying to solve, not the polished tool you built.
Answer questions in public instead of posting announcements.
Let the founder story do the selling.
Hope some of this helps.
Netfox
@suzychase suzy this is so spot on, “promote the problem not the product” is basically the whole game. the before > after thing especially.
the podcast idea is really smart too. giving people the why behind it instead of just the pitch is such an underrated move — feels like you’re letting them in rather than selling at them. def stealing the “answer questions in public instead of posting announcements” line, thats a great way to put it.
@gfazioli Thanks so much, I really appreciate that.
Netfox
@suzychase 🙏
@suzychase @gfazioli I really like this. “The product became the answer, not the pitch” is probably the best summary of this whole discussion.
Also, “answer questions in public instead of posting announcements” is something I’m definitely stealing from you, Suzy 😂
@gfazioli @burak_emre_taser 🫶
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@gfazioli @burak_emre_taser @suzychase Suzy has become our sensei!
@suzychase Thank you for sharing the experience here !!!
@pranay19 you're very welcome.
@yamar_app_ Great question. I think people connect with people first and products second. A founder puts a face, personality, and story behind what they're building, which creates trust.
I always think of Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop. Sure, people use the products, but a lot of the connection comes from knowing who's behind the brand and why she built it. It's much more human than just a logo.
That said, I think it's both. Lead with the problem you're solving, but don't hide yourself. People like rooting for founders, especially in the early days. Your journey building the app for two years is part of the story too.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@suzychase Thank you, I need to write this down for my marketing and pre-launch plan. I have a lot of experience with the problem and the pain point, so I will try to talk about it more. Thank you so much!
@suzychase Thank you for your great advice. The idea of promoting the problem rather than the product is a fresh perspective for me.
I’d love to hear the story about what kind of setting it was and what kind of question you answered when you responded publicly.
@hasui0310 I realized I needed a place where I could go much deeper than a forum reply, so I created a companion podcast, Dinner Party on a GLP-1 + a Substack. Earlier this summer, before my Product Hunt launch, I was a guest on various podcasts to talk about the pain point itself and a walkthrough of my product. Product Hunt and social media are great for starting the conversation, but the podcast and newsletter are where I really explore the problem, share what I'm learning, and explain how people can use it.
Scarlett.
I really understand what you mean Nika. Promoting your own product can feel weird.
The approach that works best for me is to become genuinely useful in your niche first. For example, if your product is for LinkedIn, I would focus on becoming one of the best people in your space when it comes to educational content: tips, examples, breakdowns, mistakes, experiments, workflows. Then the product becomes a natural plug, not the main thing.
You educate first, build trust, and then mention the product in the comments or as a light CTA when it is relevant.
We recently had a viral tweet with around 1.5M impressions, and it brought 150+ beta users mainly because the content itself was valuable. The product was just plugged naturally around it.
So my answer would be: be extremely good at the content, make people trust your thinking, and then plug the product without making the whole post about selling.
@byalexai Advice is very sound , How long did it take for you to build trust and find users ?
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@byalexai Wow – which post earned so much attention? The thing is that as LinkedIn is becoming mainstream, the structure of the content that is required by many people has a different narrative.
It seems that people want less educational content, and more fun content.
I think the best promotion is the kind that doesn’t really feel like promotion.
With mobile apps, for example, I think one of the most effective approaches is getting creators to show the product as something they actually use in their daily lives, instead of doing an obvious ad. Seeing the product solve a real problem in a real situation is much more convincing than being told to buy it.
I think the same idea applies to LinkedIn. Instead of constantly talking about the tool itself, I’d talk about the problems it solves, things you’re learning while building it, user feedback, and real use cases. The product naturally becomes part of the story.
People usually don’t mind seeing the same product multiple times if they’re getting something new or useful each time. It only starts to feel salesy when every post is basically the same pitch.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@burak_emre_taser That thing with the app works best when your product is already "famous". But to get first-time users, it is very difficult to have an influencer at a low cost. But once your product is famous, people will gladly share it organically to "flex" in front of their community.
@busmark_w_nika Haha fair point, Nika 😄 Maybe the real startup strategy is: first convince 10 small creators to pretend you’re famous, then wait until you’re actually famous 😂
But yeah, I agree — getting those first users is definitely the hardest part.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@burak_emre_taser fake it till you make it! :D
Netfox
@rohvan yeah rohit i know that exact feeling, where even a genuine use case starts sounding like an ad in your own head lol.
what helped me was flipping the order. instead of “here’s flownotch doing X”, start with the annoying moment that made the use case exist. like don’t say “my tool solves this”, say “i wasted 40 min doing this stupid thing last week” and let the tool show up at the end almost as an afterthought. people lean in on the frustration, not the feature.
also honestly the biasedness never fully goes away, you just stop trying to hide it. saying “yeah im obviously biased but here’s how i actually use it” reads way more honest than pretending to be neutral. worth a shot imo.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@rohvan @gfazioli Yes, this is also what @suzychase described – we need to talk about the problem more.
Databox
Post about the problem, not the product, for as long as you can stand it. I did this for weeks before launching Genie on PH and by launch day people already agreed with the problem, so the product read as the answer, not a pitch. Worked better than any CTA I tried.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@zigapotocnik will incorporate that into my strategy! :)
Outcome
@busmark_w_nika @suzychase @pranay19 @oshylabs at this stage of the launch day - I am debating resorting to simply begging hahahahah Take a look if you're interested in quiz funnels that give unique outputs for each user OR if you just want to support another community member! All are welcome!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@suzychase @pranay19 @oshylabs @dzaitzow BTW, congrats to the first place :)
Outcome
@suzychase @pranay19 @oshylabs @busmark_w_nika Thanks so much - I think we honestly got a bit lucky with the Friday launch - but the midnight oil was burnt for sure. Excited that a few more indie products like @BrowserAct and @Freebuff were also able to outclass the big wigs at @Gemini 3.7 Flash and a @DeepSeek launch - I know they don't tend to put a ton behind them but its nice to see the community band behind the little guys!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@suzychase @pranay19 @oshylabs @dzaitzow You are rocking it!
Cheers Nika. This thread has more useful advice in it than most marketing content I have read this month.
LinkedIn engagement is super low. The reach is only a third of my followers, and it needs long drafts and curated content. It's a really time-consuming task.
Have you checked out Reddit? I feel like Reddit or similar platforms could connect us directly to the problems the product is aiming to solve. And it shouldn't sound as salesy as other platforms.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@roopesh_donde I think that Reddit is more strict, and you can be more likely to be banned there (not only by moderators, but also by the platform).
When it comes to LinkedIn. I used to have 5k or 10k impressions per post, then got banned several times and for 2 months, my impressions were like 200 – 400 per post.
Now, I am getting back. You need to keep posting.
Teable
I can be that “someone who's constantly selling.” 😂
Someone has to tell people about good products.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jocky I need your courage :D
Teable
@busmark_w_nika You have my courage. And my upvote
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jocky awww, thank you
Netfox
hey nika, this hits home. i build dev tools (netfox for networking stuff, findergit for git, octoscope for github insights) and honestly technical folks sniff out a pitch instantly 😆 so Ihad to drop the whole “promoting” thing entirely.
couple things that flipped it for me:
I stopped posting about the product and started posting about the annoyance that made me build it. for findergit it wasn’t “check out my git tool”, it was more like “i kept losing track of which folder was on which branch and it drove me nuts” — and the people with the same headache just showed up on their own. the tool’s the punchline, not the headline.
I share the messy stuff. a bug i fixed in octoscope, a design call i got wrong in netfox and had to revert. reads like a builder thinking out loud, not someone selling. link goes in the comments or a p.s., same as you’re already doing.
tbh your instincts are already solid — editing a post after it does well to add a soft cta is a smart low-pressure move. only reframe i’d throw in: you’re not promoting yourself, you’re just documenting a problem you happen to be solving... that little shift is what made self-promo actually feel ok for me
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@gfazioli The things is that my LinkedIn community is not used to my "process of building part" – I would rather share that on Twitter. But as for the problem, I think this is something my LinkedIn community is very familiar with since I was ranting every single time they restricted me :D
Thank you! :)
Netfox
@busmark_w_nika haha yeah that makes total sense, the build-in-public stuff def lives better on twitter. keep that split.
but honestly the fact that you were ranting every time LI restricted you IS the goldmine. thats not build-in-public, thats just you being mad about a real problem your whole audience feels too 😄 like the restriction rants ARE the content — you dont even have to frame it as “im building a tool”, you just keep telling the story of the annoyance and the plugin quietly becomes the obvious answer.
kinda poetic too, the platform restricting you is literally handing you the marketing angle for the thing that fixes it lol. i’d lean into that hard.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@gfazioli The worst thing is that if I were yelling too much on LinkedIn about LinkedIn, they can ban me again, and I will lose my main distributing channel :D
This is genuinely the most difficult part of a bootstrap for me and honestly it has puzzled me the most ! Coming from product background it has really open my eyes to how important is marketing and sales :)
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 How long have you been trying to distribute your solution? :) I am trying to do it before a proper launch.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 Can directories actually help? Because I think that there are many, but I do not know how much traffic you can get from that.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@pranay19 maybe it can improve the authority domain mainly at the most.