How do you get Beta Users for your SaaS Product?
Hello awesome people of Indiehackers!
I've been building Bottle (www.bottlehq.com) for the past few months with my Cofounders.
Now that we are almost done building our MVP, we are looking to get prospective users to use our beta version of the product.
We've read a few articles and blogs and watched a bunch of videos on getting traffic to your website, getting sign ups etc. But there are just so many different things everywhere that it's honestly left me quite confused.
I want to know from your personal experience - what are some of the best ways to get early users for your product?
A bit bout Bottle:
Bottle is a tool that brings in communication and work-management under one roof for swift collaboration and a boost in productivity. Basically, it's a Slack+Asana in one tool. Our targeted audience is early-stage startups and NGOs for beta testing.
I look forward to your suggestions and ideas! Would love to learn from your journey.
PS: In case you like what you see on our website, feel free to sign up too❤️
First of all congratulations on your work 🌟. I really liked your website and your overall brand image.
As it regards finding customers for Bottle, I'm surprised communities have not been mentioned more prominently here in the comments yet.
I gather from your landing that your product also has a specific geographic focus ("Join the Indian Workplace Revolution!"). I would combine this aspect with your target audience (you mentioned it was "early-stage startups and NGOs") to find communities where your customers hang out. For example, is there an equivalent to IH or Product Hunt for India? Given the size of the market, there may as well be one.
TBH, I had always been skeptical of this kind of advice (doesn't finding the communities become a problem in itself?) but in my latest startup (Adflow.ai – a platform to create high conversion ads using AI) it has actually proven quite successful to find our first 100 beta users.
This is actually really solid advice, Lorenzo! I will definitely look for some communities in India and see what can be done!
The best place to start in your case is direct marketing. Cold emailing / DMing will be your best friend. Its a tough thing to do and time consuming but it has to be done! If you have a small budget then hire someone on fiverr to help with lead gen :)
This is actually awesome advice, thank youu! Is there anything specific you did to find these people? Like I have my rough target in mind but to find the personal details like email or so seems a task. What do you think?
Yeah!
My most successful has been the following:
Linkedin content search - I search for keywords that I needed (my case: zoom Q&A webinar - my tool newny.io) then used Adapt Prospector (chrome ext) to source email and name.
Twitter search (same as above) go to their website then use hunter.io to source email.
Put these leads in a spreadsheet and then test the email validity with a google sheets Add-on (email validator).
Then used Lemlist for cold email outreach (a/b test email copy with 10% of leads to find best copy for the wider campaign)
rinse and repeat.
this is super helpful! thanks for sharing it. I also find DM, comment, email directly to be the most successful ways once you identify good search terms
Wow, Mukhtar! This is the most solid advice I've gotten so far. Thank you sooo much for being so helpful :')
@mooraage is right. Cold email and a little "forcing yourself" in front of potential customers is a good start from my experience.
You can also try MurList.com for cold emailing - I built this tool and if you ever want to give it a try, let me know.
I will definitely check it out :D
Awesome. I also offer hands on guide from lead generation to sending for early users of MurList. So I'd be taking huge work off your shoulders.
Anyways, if you need anything, be sure to reach out.
Define your target users. Go the place like twitter or reddit or linkedin and shoot them a well curated message asking to evaluate your product. send 1000 messages daily and you can see the reply and response. Bye the way it is a crowded market imho.
I see I see, makes sense. Cold DMs have worked for you, is it?
What are your thoughts on ads?
Ads are good if you have enough budget. DMs are better.
Can you actually hit that number? If this was twitter do you actually just DM that many people?
I put a figure to show the intensity of hardwork that they need to take.
That's right and considering only a small percentage reply and an even smaller ends up buying, the number you used isn't misplaced.
The boost is this. You've obviously gone through a lot off effort on this project and it is great.
The reality is this, what makes this better than anything else out there, and why should I use this? Who's problems did you solve with this?
Hey Jacques!
The single biggest benefit of this product is the fact that communication and work management have been brought to one tool for all teams. You don't have to use one tool to communicate, another to manage your tasks and projects - it can all be done in one tool which will increase efficiency and collaboration.
We have also brought in elements of feedback and appreciation that will help boost the overall experience of every employee to perform better. No employee should feel clueless about how well they've worked on something, nor should they feel unappreciated for their work.
Hey there, I've actually written an article with various case studies from other founders on how they've gotten users for free here.
You can find more examples at GrowthHunt.co
Cheers and all the best.
Damn this is definitely a gem! Thanks a bunch! I'm going to read through this tonight itself!
Cheers!
Hey @JassilJamal
I just made a post about my system for validating ideas and getting users before I even make the MVP here https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-validate-ideas-and-generate-mrr-immediately-system-8f522c8ff0.
If you have any questions comment on the post, reply to this or reach out to me on IG @owenthurm!
I just read your post, and it's awesome!
I love how it's quite simple yet powerful? Thanks a lot, Owen!
And yes, following you on IG right away, would love to stay in touch
Hi, I really liked your product (idea + UI) it is just amazing. I've down that road more than once now I've tried a lot of methods, I'll try to explain them a few very generic strategies that work always.
Define your target audience (take a chunk of time in this as this is one of the key pieces). Make sure that your audience has money to spend on your product.
Gather their contact info like phone numbers, emails, etc. about the emails make sure you have the right ones even after taking them from a trusted source do check them for bounces (use thechecker.co, hunter.io) there are a lot but use them to purify your list else you sending domain will be effected. You can try clientlist.co for getting hot leads every Monday morning (a little self-promotion :p).
THe above 2 steps are key after this you just need a little infrastructure to reach out to your target audience either via emails or cold calling. For emails create a GSuite account (with each account you can send up to ~1500 emails a day) now depending on your email list but 2-3 GSuite accounts. With that, you'll be able to send 4500 emails a day.
Disclaimer: Do NOT use this strategy to send SPAM emails.
Write your email copies w/ personalizations and schedule them via Gmass or any other there a lot of them.
Afterwards, you need to handle responses. Create a filter in each Gmail account that automatically forwards responses to one primary email address (Account Executive) that you manage.
This is pretty much scalable and you'll get tonnes of Beta as well as paying customers.
Feel free to shoot me an email (pratik@clientlist.co) if you have questions.
Daaamn, this is so amazing!
I genuinely appreciate the time and effort you took to reply in such an insightful manner.
This is going to be my strategy for sure, I can't wait to try this out :')
Good luck. Do share your outcome!!
I would find ten organizations within your target audience that have the exact problem your product solves.
Start with just those ten, create a tight feedback loop with them, and begin documenting how your product is (or isn't) solving their problem. Along the way, share your insights on social media and in online communities where your target audience hangs out and goes for information – Indie Hackers is one great example. This, to me, is what the buzzwordy phrase "building in public" means.
I've seen this work with countless solopreneurs and it's the journey we just started with Knapsack.
Good luck and congrats on your progress so far!
This makes sense. You're right, just focus on a bunch and make it the best thing for them and then scale!
Thank you!
I think you have already given yourself an answer by naming the target audience in your post. Make a list and find out how to best reach them.
Hahah yes
That's what I'm overwhelmed by
Like do I simply mail them or call them? Or just make SM posts?
I dont want to do anything and everything. I'd rather focus on 2 or 3 methods. What do you think?
I think focussing on a few methods is a very good idea. I'd probably search for places online where they hang out and see what can be learned there. And perhaps I'd just walk into two or three NGO offices and start a conversation about the topic. I think having something to offer for free might be good. (Not sure how I would do it exactly but I'd probably go in there looking to find out what they are doing to see if I think they are a good fit for the product.)
Awesome awesome, makes a lot of sense! Thank you!
Jassil, why don't you launch on producthunt for early adopters?
Hey Alan! Good to hear from you, buddy!
I believe ProductHunt is a brilliant platform to launch your almost finalized product. I mean, getting ranked on PH and everything is a task in itself, and I'd like to save that for when we actually launch the product.
For now, I'm looking at folks who are a little bit more niche-specific whom I can approach if you get me.
What do you think?
Like how Murlist said, you can launch bottle MVP on product hunt to grow your beta testers, and launch bottle final later if there is a need to do so. also, every ph guy is hardcore productivity crazy fans.
Good luck.
No, you can launch multiple times on ProductHunt. I have seen companies launch twice, just tag it 2.0. Only do this once there is a clear improvement since last launch.
I see.
I was under the impression that it's best to launch once with all the noise on PH.
What you both said makes sense, I shall definitely try this out!
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Hey, thanks for asking this!
Slack is a tool made mainly for communication and it does a wonderful job of eradicating the need for siloed emails.
But for an average team or manager, he/she has to use Slack for communication and Trello/Asana for work management. This means using two different tools on different platforms while paying for them both per user basis. The integrations make it kinda easier, but it's still two different tools.
We believe that communication and work management should happen in the same tool to increase efficiency and collaboration. This is exactly what Bottle does.
If you can, check out this demo video of ours. I'm sure you will have much more clarity then - https://www.bottlehq.com/demo
Let me know if anything else!