Soft launch to 44 signs ups and first paying customer, what worked for me (and what didn't)

I recently launched my SaaS Optiwing, which is a pay as you go SEO keyword grouping tool that groups keywords into topical clusters that can be targeted with a single article or webpage by using live Google SERP data.

Here are the marketing channels I used in the first week+ of launch and how well they worked (or didn't) for me. After getting 44 sign ups and making $69 from my first customer! (Not bad for a first time SaaS bootstrapper)

1. Reddit Communities

Reddit was probably the best channel I have used in so far. Communities like /r/webdev, /r/SaaS, /r/indiebiz, /r/indiehackers (of couse), and /r/sideproject (best for developer/bootstrappers, or if you have a tool developers would get a lot of value from especially) all garnered quite a bit of attention and helpful/positive feedback. My posts performed best on /r/sideproject, /r/webdev, and /r/indiehackers as they all allow self-promotion and more importantly, videos/gifs! Scrolling through the top posts on these subreddits of the last month/year I noticed almost every one was a video, or at least a gif/image. People generally don't like reading beyond your title so if you can make a clean demo video absolutely do it. I made a short 1 minute demo video and posted it to each of these communities and got a lot of great responses. Another great channel for reddit is subs made for feedback, a user on /r/design_critiques gave me an incredibly in depth response on how to improve my landing page, and I was able to quickly implement many of their suggestions which improved my landing page's appearance a ton. I was amazed at their analysis and almost felt bad they did it all for free, they even offered example images of how they would improve it.

The last place on Reddit I posted to was subreddits for the market/niche my SaaS targets (/r/SEO, /r/Digitalmarketing, ect.) These were the hardest because being targetted at marketing folks, they don't allow any kind of marketing or self promotions for the obvious reason that the sub would quickly get filled with unwanted spam of services promotion, they also don't allow videos and images, and don't allow links. But I was still able to do some guerilla marketing by starting a conversation about the strategy involed/problem my app solves. And then mentioning I'm a devloper and made my own tool to do this myself called Optiwing. That's it. This will generally fly under the radar of most communities mod teams because it's participating and not blatant self promotion.

I'm also fairly certain this is where all of my best leads and my first customer all came from. It's hard to be 100% sure because they came from direct search, but nowhere else would they have heard about the app without a link to follow and have to look it up themselves.

2. Facebook/LinkedIn group

This channel worked just ok for me, unfortunately a lot of these groups are just giant piles of spam, and the ones that are legit tend to be pretty strict about self promotion as well. I found a couple communities that were worth their salt and allowed some form of self-promotion and did similar to what I did on the niche subreddits of starting a conversation on the topic of keyword grouping and plugging the website. I generated quite a bit of attention but unfortunately no really strong leads.

I think this could be better, but I'm a regular user of Reddit and almost never use Facebook/LinkedIn so it might just be a familiarity and comfort thing. If your niche has a lot of good tight knit communities and especially if you already participate in them, and even if it's against group rules, you can reach out to the mods/admins about plugging your SaaS. Keep it simple "Here's the value my thing provides, heres a link to said thing if you want to check it out." I think this is a really good channel for new SaaS apps personally.

3. SEO

I think it goes without saying one of my primary focuses is and will be SEO, it's a bit of proof is in the pudding scenario. I have a powerful SEO tool at my disposal, I use it to boost SEO, ranking high provides evidence that the tool works for improving SEO, ???, profit.

Unfortunately this will still take some time to create content to cover the niche and build topical authority, and for earning backlinks. But I think given time SEO will definitely be the main marketing channel.

I launched the landing page a couple months ago to get indexed on google and start getting some data, and already am generating nearly 10K impressions a month. Unfortunately the CTR is still awful as it's not on the first page for most of these search queries which is where a vast majority of the clicks flow. But it's a good sign that there is a lot of search interest/intent for what I've made, if even on the second or third page of Google people are digging through the results.

4. Paid Ads

I also tried running some paid ads on Google, but even being extremely restrictive with my targetting, it was wildly expensive and the leads were poor, the inent did not match the product at all. I probably wont do paid ads again for a long time, and if I do, be even more restrictive on when/how to show them.

5. IndieHackers

I've also gotten a lot of helpful feedback and interest from you lovely folks at IndieHackers.com, and listed Optiwing on here as well. Thank you all for the support, and I'll certainly be sticking around!

6. Capterra

I got listed on Capterra but am yet to get any reviews. I'm going to add some incentive for reviews on Capterra in the near future, so this might be meaningful soon, at least as a form of social proof.

7. Cold Outreach

I've done very little of this so far, but have gotten a lot of nice responses from some of the people I have reached out to so far. Will likely continue to do more cold outreach in the future but it likely wont be my primary focus because I want my marketing to be pretty low-touch.

Conclusion

So there you have it, what I've tried and what worked for me, I'd love to know where your first customer(s) came from, or which channels are your favorite for smaller/newer SaaS apps.

For the near future I think my main focus will be on building SEO, participating here at IndieHackers, and trying to find a good market fit. Social media is a great channel but it's a lot of effort with much more short term returns than SEO content, and I don't want to spam any of these communities I mentioned, so it will be a more occasional choice.