If you ever marketed a desktop plugin, which activities helped you with visibility and purchases?
I am possibly preparing for marketing my own tool (a Chrome extension) and collect the activities I can use for future visibility and possible purchases.
Right now, I am thinking about basics:
SEO within the plugin (name, description, description in the Chrome Store + visuals)
Listings in directories
Reddit mentions
Building in public
I am aware that it is not sufficient, and there will be much more work.
If you have any experience with marketing such a tool, do you have any suggestions on what worked best for you?
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@busmark_w_nika Have you thought about targeting specific workflows instead of broad SEO? Like positioning it for a niche use case instead of a generic Chrome extension.
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@vishal7017 Okay, it will be a LinkedIn extension. What do you exactly mean, because I do not understand quite well.
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@marcelo_earth We need to wait for the answer :D
articles, LinkedIn posts
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@julia_zakharova2 Cool! Actually, the LinkedIn article didn't come to my mind, and it is actually the platform I am aiming for! :D thank you :)
not my own experience, picked this up from a friend group of indie founders who've shipped extensions. consensus:
store listing carries it. keywords in the name itself, screenshots showing the result not the UI, video preview, and review velocity in the first 2 weeks. that early spike shapes how the store treats u for months.
google > the store for discovery anyway. ppl search "best chrome extension for X" and land on a blog post, so seo and comparison pages vs incumbents punch above their weight (this advice is gold for any product regardless of its nature)
video demos work because extensions r visual. one good tiktok or yt short can carry u for weeks.
reddit only if u show up where ur actual users hang out, not r/saas or r/startups. answer real questions, mention the tool when it's the answer(setting up a reddit that scans rss feeds for people complaining about your problem takes 2 hours and has insane roi for this)
skip directories and bip unless u already have an audience. real unlock is finding where ur icp complains about the problem and showing up there.
best of luck !!!
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@saad_el_gueddari Thank you, I am saving this link for sure to not lose this convo! :D
@busmark_w_nika offc, happy to help :)
Hi Nika, not a desktop plugin, but a desktop program. Animo is an animated video generator.
What I did was open-source the code, build a community, and offer the program with updates as a paid, licensed version. That made my product very ranked on Google, and I started receiving a lot of traffic because of it. But other important distribution channels are the GitHub repository itself and more posts on Reddit
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@marcelo_earth Do you think that tool (plugin) for LinkedIn ban prevention would be popular on GitHub? Because I cannot find targeet audience here.
@busmark_w_nika I'm planning to use LinkedIn more, and I didn't know ban was a thing to prevent (like, how many posts/comments/messages or activity you have to do to reach those).
But yes, I would think it would be popular in GitHub. Take account that you should write a good REAMDE, have a LICENSE, plus share it at least once on a forum (like PH and others), so Google can rank it well. My most popular project has >800 starts thanks to a long README + I share it quickly
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@marcelo_earth I haven't been thinking about that lke this, maybe it is worth trying that :)
I would start narrower than “marketing a Chrome extension.”
The most useful thing is usually to pick one painful workflow and make all the early content about that workflow, not about the tool.
For example:
“I review 50 LinkedIn profiles a week and need a faster way to save good examples.”
- “I comment on prospects’ posts and need a way to keep context.”
- “I collect screenshots/posts/leads and lose them after a few days.”
Then the marketing becomes much easier: one workflow page, one short demo, one comparison article, a few real before/after examples, and comments in places where people already complain about that exact problem.
I would not spend too much time on broad directories early. They give a backlink, but usually not much learning. Real examples from early users are more useful because they become landing page copy, SEO pages, demos, and social posts at the same time.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jinji_huang So should I invest into articles? The tool is supposed to help prevent from LinkedIn bans.
@busmark_w_nika Yes, but I’d make them problem-led articles, not product announcements.
For a LinkedIn-ban prevention tool, people may search things like “why did LinkedIn restrict my account”, “safe outreach limits”, “how to avoid looking automated”, or “LinkedIn automation risk”. Those are better article angles than “here is my extension”.
I’d also be careful with the wording. “Prevent bans” can sound too absolute. “Safer LinkedIn workflow” or “reduce risky outreach behavior” feels more credible.
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@jinji_huang This is gold! Thank you. I actually have many inputs on this :D
@busmark_w_nika Glad it helped. I’m still figuring this out myself, but one pattern seems clear: distribution works better when the product story is specific enough that people can repeat it in their own words.
Mailwarm
From our experience, the biggest lever isn’t SEO or directories, it’s plugging into existing demand.
What worked for us was showing up where users already have the problem (Reddit, niche communities) and answering it directly.
Not “here’s my tool”, but “here’s how to fix this problem...”.
If you nail that, distribution becomes much easier.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@thamibenjelloun yeah, but when people are banned from LinkedIn, they will not find the solution on LinkedIn :D because they will not have the access during that problem :D