Marketing
How to drive SaaS product adoption article is nice.
Think Poolsuite does marketing incredibly well. All the products they release evoke emotion.
One way to do launches with possible virality is rewarding people who retweet with potential to win some amazing reward like life time subscription. Just don't overdo it and do it rarely.
Best way to do marketing is simply launching features often and sharing updates through multiple channels (Twitter/Email are most effective). As well as making teaching content via nicely readable shareable docs or videos.
Landing Page Copywriting is great read.
Building a brand that people recognize and like takes time but ultimately it's about iterating on product thoughtful & fast. Communicating releases well. And having clear feedback channels with your customers. If user based analytics are used, they should focus on getting closer to great product.
Recently, I like how CleanShot iterates and shares updates on their product.
Nice ads
Nice company Twitter accounts
Notes
- Every startup should focus on its inbound and outbound strategies.
- Inbound Marketing: Publish great content (blog posts, white papers, videos, resources things people will find genuinely useful) across the web on topics related to your service so that users find you. Out the most compelling resources behind a lead form that helps you qualify them as potential buyers. This gets the user acquainted with you and also gives you their contact info for follow up marketing or sales contacts.
- Outbound Sales: Reaching out directly to the leads you have acquired (best quality) or off some other list (lower, variable quality). Sometimes the contact will be happy to engage and learn more. Other times not.
- You can and will win sales from the inbound piece alone, especially if you have a clear and efficient sign up process. But you'll find you can greatly amplify the number of closed sales by reaching out to users and engaging them directly. That human touch adds a whole new element.
- 4 tricks to building products for a community:
- Build demand. Use waitlist + limited access to drive demand
- Design boldly. Bold design stands out.
- Write simply. Easy-to-understand ideas win.
- Data = your friend. Use Junglescout, Redditlist to gain intelligence.
- 5 ways to monetize your open source project as an individual: 1. Ads 2. Licensing 3. Consulting 4. Sponsors 5. Premium Code
- No one can actually prove ads any any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior.
- How to sell your product: tell people how they can solve the problem it solves, without buying your product.
- Simple marketing rule: If you make people feel good, those "people" will be customers for life
- If you're only able to make 1 marketing hire at your startup, I strongly recommend starting with a content writer.
- Build communities, not audiences.
- In developer marketing, "Talk benefits, not features" doesn't work! Developers are sick of vague promises and wary of black boxes. Instead: Demo - reach Wow! in <10 mins. Explain how it works. Show how real companies use in prod.
- Your content has a half life and the average varies by platform: Twitter: 1-24 hours. YouTube: Weeks-Months. Blog: Years.
- The title should inform the reader what they'll expect when they read it.
- Content marketing is how startups won in the last decade but it's becoming a commodity. The only way to stand out from AI tools and cheap writers is by adding personal experiences and strong opinions. That’s the only thing they will never be able to copy.
- Until you are clearly #1: Your homepage should plainly list the 3 things you do better than the competition.
- Far better it is to have a high level of engagement from a concentrated set of user than a low level engagement from a high number of users.
Links
- Lucky Retweet - Just paste a tweet and choose a number of winners.
- Content Marketing Stack - Curated directory of content marketing resources.
- 5 Building Blocks for YOUR Customer Acquisition Machine (2019)
- Marketing For Engineers - Curated collection of marketing articles & tools to grow your product. (HN)
- How to maximise traffic to a bootstrapped beta launch
- 1,000 True Fans? Try 100 (2020)
- MakerMove - Directories to submit your startup.
- Lensant - Alerts you when your business, project, or other interest is mentioned online.
- Marketing Yourself (without Being a Celebrity)
- React landing page template (Web)
- Ask HN: How to get good at social media? (2020)
- Sales and marketing strategy in the time of COVID-19
- Yonder Narrative - Detect early signs of coordinated conversations and the online groups responsible for them — before they go viral and impact your brand.
- Notes on growth (2020)
- How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users (2020) (HN)
- Brightloom - Harness data science to increase the value of your current customers and owned channels.
- Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-To-Market Handbook (2020)
- Sandwich - We make commercials. The kind people like.
- Tips on doing sales
- Why Marketing Flywheels Work (2020) (HN)
- Launch Cheat Sheet
- 10 places and tactics you can use to manually recruit your first users
- Why is Readwise killing it? Thread on their strategy. (2020)
- Swipe Files - Marketing & Copywriting Examples Library.
- TLDR Marketing - Daily feed of digital marketing news without the fluff.
- Pre-Brand - You don’t need a perfect brand, you need to keep moving.
- How to Market Yourself (2020)
- Онлайн-курс по брендингу. Системный подход
- Lessons in growing a large audience and media company (2020)
- Clatters - Easily monitor in one place your brand name, product name or any other keyword on your favorite social networks.
- Headlime - Create Headlines Like Copywriting Experts, Without Writing Them.
- Got Users - Marketing services. Without the risk.
- How To Sell (2020) - Contains everything I wish I’d known, before I started, about doing sales at a startup.
- I got 400 signups with a video of a product that didn’t exist (2020) (HN)
- How today's fastest growing B2B businesses found their first ten customers (2020)
- Startup Lessons from Spotify Wrapped (2019)
- How I made $10,041 by combining a feature launch with a lifetime deal (2020)
- Oatly: The New Coke? (2020) (HN)
- Clearbit - Marketing data engine for all of your customer interactions.
- Papercups - Connect with your customers. Own your data. (Code) (HN)
- Ads Don’t Work That Way (2014)
- 7 mistakes startups make with their messaging
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- Assembled Brands - New Approach to Growing Brands.
- Top experts on content marketing
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- Effective messaging for startups (2020)
- Sales for Founders
- Buffer - Simpler social media tools for authentic engagement.
- Getting Users Is Hard (2020)
- Hiring the first head of marketing at a startup (2020) (HN)
- Steve Jobs speech on marketing
- Direct sales for SaaS startups – our experience and tips (2020)
- Tips I wish I knew about building an audience when I first started (2020)
- Ask HN: How to learn sales? (2020)
- Zero To Users - Which Acquisition Channels do Consistently Work for Founders.
- The SaaS Website Content You Need to Close Sales [Data] (2020)
- Tips to make viral Reddit posts (2020)
- Booking early growth strategy (2020)
- Audience First book
- “Powered by” buttons for customer acquisition (2020) (HN)
- How to post on Hacker News (2020)
- 10+ Proven Startup Marketing Ideas That Won’t Break Your Bank (2020)
- Dealify - Deals Platform for Growth Hackers.
- Starting a $400,000 Side Business in 1 Month (for Free) (2020) - Write outline. Validate idea. Build & share it.
- Improve your SaaS conversion rate with 11 onboarding strategies (2020)
- HubSpot - Inbound Marketing, Sales, and Service Software.
- Keylitic - Database of trending product keywords.
- Bannerbear - API for Automated Image and Video Generation.
- Facebook Ads Manual (Tweet)
- GrowthHunt - Database of TL;DR business strategies/case studies. (HN)
- Startup Growth Kit - 300+ growth hacks & tools in Notion.
- SaaS Growth, Product Management, Retention, Flywheels: Behind the Paywall with Lenny Rachitsky (2020)
- Magical growth loops: loops where most of your growth comes from existing users (2020)
- 120+ Resources for Learning Sales
- How Duolingo grew from 5M to 200M users in 5 years using product-led growth (2020)
- Standing Out in 2020: Doing Content Right (2020) (Resources Directory) (Videos) (Web)
- GrowthList - Browse +120 proven tactics to boost your growth.
- Autopilot - Marketing automation software made visual.
- Getting our first 1000 users in one day (2020) (HN)
- Acquisition Channel Opportunities: Instagram Keyword Search, FB Ads Targeting, Pinterest Ranking on Google (2020)
- Does Advertising Actually Work? (2020) (Part 2)
- Entreprenerd: Marketing for Programmers - Condensed Guide to Marketing Software.
- What's your top acquisition channel right now? (2021)
- How Loom grew from 0-500K users, and beyond (2021) (Part 2)
- How Loom built a successful referral program for their SaaS product (2021)
- Zero to Marketing - Learn marketing from case studies.
- CopyAI - Create Marketing Copy In Seconds. (Tweet)
- Framework for prioritizing marketing strategy (2021)
- Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP? (2021)
- Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what? (2021)
- 21 lessons I’ve learned over 4 years that will help you get your first 10 customers
- What is the most clever customer acquisition strategy you’ve ever seen? (2021)
- 7 key areas to focus when starting a consumer brand (2021)
- Headless Brands
- Importance of Sales team (2021)
- Top 0.1% of marketing mental models (2021)
- Ask HN: Desperately need “sales for nerds” advice (2021)
- How to quickly grow an online audience? A mix of writing, marketing, and startups. (2021)
- 160+ Platforms to get free traffic for your product (2021)
- Iterable - Cross-Channel Marketing Platform to Improve Customer Experiences.
- The Embedded Entrepreneur: How to Build an Audience-Driven Business (HN)
- Best growth channels for growing Transistor (2021)
- Pinterest's Growth experiments (2021)
- 70 marketing lessons
- 150 Places to Post Your Startup/Product
- Ask HN: What is your “sales stack”? (2021)
- Customer.io - Marketing Automation for the Whole Customer Lifecycle.
- Ask HN: How to learn how to sell? (2021)
- 20 iconic marketing and advertising campaigns in history (2021)
- Relaunch like a pro: 100+ places to launch, relaunch, and list your product (2021)
- Hacking is the opposite of marketing (2021) (HN) (Tweet)
- How to get to #1 on Product Hunt (2021)
- Ask HN: Good Book on Branding? (2021)
- How do I get my first 1000 users?
- Things to know before PH product launch (2021)
- Awesome Developer Advocacy
- Developer, you may need a co-founder in marketing (2021) (HN)
- How I’ve approached founder-led sales (2021)
- Death of advertising (2021) (Tweet)
- The Mom Test – How to talk to customers (HN)
- Startup guide: How to build a big brand on a small budget
- Affilimate - Affiliate Dashboard and Link Tracking Tool. (Tweet)
- Promote Your Next Startup - Free resources you may use to promote your next startup. (HN)
- GoSquared - Effective customer engagement tools for happier customers. (Twitter)
- Why You Should Repeat Yourself, A Lot (2021)
- Marketing for SaaS (2021)
- What company really hit the jackpot with their slogan? (2021)
- The Developer Advocate's Guide Series (2021)
- Accord - Build Your Repeatable Sales & Onboarding Process. (HN)
- The Startup Marketing Checklist (Code)
- Tips for marketing your app (2021)
- Marketing Tools & Software for Businesses
- Marketing is scary for a solo developer (HN)
- Best marketing resources for startups
- Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all? (2022)
- 30x500 - Learn to Launch Profitable Products. (Twitter)
- Principles of online marketing
- Ask HN: What will it take to destroy the ads market? (2022)
- How to drive SaaS product adoption in 2022
- Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users? (2022)
- LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products Book (2022)
- Of Chickens and Pigs - The Dilemma of Creator Self Promotion (2021)
- Ask HN: Best dev tool pitches of all time? (2022)
- Reflio - Create a referral program without breaking the bank. (Web) (HN)
- Ask HN: Where and how do you find your early adoptors? (2022)
- How to design a referral program
- Taku - Easy Way to Communicate with Users. (HN)
- I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls (HN)
- Race car growth framework
- Ask HN: How to Learn to Sell? (2022)
- Companies that are best at telling their story
- Spending 0$ on traditional paid marketing but still acquiring customers (2022)
- Narratives (2022)
- Senja - Collect, Manage and Share Testimonials. (Demo)
- Product Hunt Launch Checklist
- ChatGPT will change marketing
- How to be a writer on a marketing team without sounding like a jerk
- Startup Handbook: Landing Page Copywriting
- Landing Page Copywriting Advice
- Vintage Apple advertisements (HN)
- Underrated growth tool: playgrounds
- How to market your product not only on Twitter (2023)
- How Duolingo reignited user growth (2023) (HN)
- Developer marketing for early-stage startups (2023) (HN)
- Developer Markepear - Resources for developer marketers.
- Awesome Developer Marketing
- Dittofeed - Send marketing messages at scale.
- Scalable growth channels (2023)
Images
Aspirational marketing