🚀 Product Launch Pain Point: How Did You Acquire Your First Users for Your AI Product?
by•
Hello everyone! 👋
I'm currently focused on SEO and keyword targeting to drive initial traffic for my AI product. It's a slow burn, as anyone who has wrestled with Google knows.
I'm hitting a cold start wall and would love to hear from the community:
What were your most successful and non-obvious cold start strategies for your AI product?
Any advice, especially about communities, early adopter channels, or unique marketing hacks, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom! 💡
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I’m focusing on warm leads right now from the communities that I’m already a part. For example:
My consulting newsletter
Waitlist I created 3 months ago before the product was even partially ready
LinkedIn posts and articles that others repost
Friends and associates from past jobs, friend groups, and local communities
Reddit (just talking not promoting)
It’s even on my resume and I share it during AI director interviewers 😂
No secret hack, just talking and talking about it to everyone I know.
GPT-4o
@yvonne_jackson1 Totally agree with you! At this stage, rather than “buying ads,” it’s far more important to talk about the product to people who genuinely want to hear about it. What you’re doing feels both authentic and sustainable. You’ve inspired me — I’m going to start sharing more within my own small communities too 🙌
@mujoe Sustainable is the key word! I have a mantra right now that says: Peace is my content strategy.
So, I’m leaning into community and writing about topics that align with both my business and energy.
People are drawn to those who actually care about what they are building and helping others.
I am kind of sailing in the same boat.
It is even hard when the right audience for your product is very niche.
Right now I am trying to reach out to people manually (on social platforms or emails) to pitch them the product 1-on-1.
Honestly, no fireworks noticed from this strategy so far. But I'm a little hopeful. I feel like Reddit & LinkedIn could help a lot. (Right now I am being very low-key because I don't want to spam people!)
GPT-4o
@purva_guptaa s your product targeted at consumers (C-end) or businesses (B-end)?
@mujoe target consumer base is a mix of businesses and marketing professionals (freelancers, etc.)
Hit Reddit first - with decent posts, it should give you an initial burst of traffic (ex. dozens per day or more)
Youtube - find small / mid collaborators that would love your product, ask them to make reviews or featured vid, pay them if you have to, this will give you a second/third burst of traffic (ex. hundreds to thousands for a week, it will die down, but your new trough should be higher than before the vid)
SEO - Youtube will take care of this - Google loves organic content from youtube for SEO ranking - so if you do Youtube well, you cannot not get indexed. Our products now rank first page on all key terms against products that have been around for 2 decades and millions in daily traffic.
GPT-4o
@makerping That’s really cool — I learned a lot. I’ll go check YouTube and reach out to some creators who are a good fit. Thanks! By the way, may I ask how the pricing usually works? Is it tied to follower count or video views in some kind of ratio?
@makerping @mujoe From my research, one dollar per hundred followers seems to be kind of a baseline, although a few other factors like engagement rate can affect the pricing.
GPT-4o
@makerping @jollytango OK，thanks
@mujoe depends on a lot of things but end of day all negotiated, shop a few and you will get a feel for it quickly.
GPT-4o
@makerping If posts on Reddit include promotional content, won't they get banned? How do you share your product without getting flagged as spam?
TinyCommand
SEO is great, but it’s slow in the early days.
What helped me get early users was simply talking to people where real conversations were already happening no hacks, just honest sharing about what I was building and why
Sometimes that works faster than any growth tactic.
GPT-4o
@anushkahode Where do you usually share it?
TinyCommand
@mujoe Mostly in small spaces, where I’m already active a couple of subreddits and sometimes my own socials when I’m sharing progress.
GPT-4o
@anushkahode Reddit？