10
16 Comments

How do I build audience before launch?

I'm making iconvey.io and it's a B2B tool and want to build an email list before launch.

I don't have any popular social handle, neither a popular blog.

What should be my initial steps to drive traffic on my landing page and how long do you estimate it to take to build an email list of 500 fans?

  1. 6

    To echo other comments here - communities where your target audience hangs out was where most of our early users came from. That includes:

    However, it is easy to get this wrong! Lots of people land in a community, post a link to their product upcoming, and then bounce. That might get you a short term sign up or two, but in the long run you'll run out of communities to spam. And there is a lot of overlap in these communities, so people will begin to recognize you as a spammer.

    So definitely make sure you are there to add value first, and be a good community member. Share your insights and experiences, help people solve problems. Better yet, turn these insights into content that you can then share in other communities.

    If you build a bit of social capital, not only do you have a better audience, but you can also use that to do user interviews, build relationships with these early users, have them be more willing to give you there time. I wrote up some other tips here.

    I'd also preface this with, in my opinion the goal of this audience shouldn't be about vanity metrics like pre-registrations, or web traffic, but actual engaged people who will give you feedback and want to use your product.

    Lots of people sign up for a product launch, and then move on/forget about it. So focus early on quality of the audience > quantity (again in my opinion).

    Hope that's helpful!

    1. 2

      this post was super useful :-)

    2. 1

      Thank you Matt, great resource. The community list would be really helpful.

  2. 2

    Believe me just start don't waste time on thinking and don't waste time on planning just start and eventually you will figure out, getting started is the key here.

    1. 1

      Thanks Malav, I'm actively working on the MVP while building audience in parallel.
      My goal is to launch iconvey.io by the end of the next month.

      1. 2

        great, best wishes buddy:)

  3. 2

    Try Ship Feature on Producthunt. ✨🌈

    1. 1

      Thank you, I'll give it a try.

  4. 1

    Linkedin is good for b2b. It's important to focus on businesses that are likely to have some spare cash...

    1. 1

      Thanks @technopreneur, I'll definitely start with linkedin.
      Although I think it is difficult to reach right audience on linkedin as it's a big player in networking market.

      1. 2

        Better to talk to a few people who can pay you than to a lot of people who are broke...

        1. 2

          I agree, thanks for the great advice.

Trending on Indie Hackers
Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 18 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments How I Launched FrontendEase 13 comments