How the DevTrends prelaunch went
Today I've finally launched my membership site DevTrends which keeps developers up-to-date with the latest tools and trends with short videos.
Rather than talk about the product or the launch I want to give you a rundown of the prelaunch.
The prelaunch ran for about 2 weeks and was designed to get some early feedback and build interest in the developer community about DevTrends ahead of the launch.
The medium of the prelaunch was mostly email and Twitter. I used these to talk explain the idea then encourage people to check out my landing page and hopefully join my "early access" email list.
Results
In terms of metrics, here's what was achieved:
- Around 450 sign-ups to the Early Access email list
- From 0 to 120 follows on a new Twitter account
Other achievements were getting some great feedback including a few unsolicited reviews like this one:
I'm very happy with the result. The numbers are alright, but more importantly, it shows that some of the target audience has connected with my idea and gives me the encouragement to continue with it.
Also, I feel like everything went to plan which is an operational victory :D
What I did
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I came up with the goals I wanted to achieve - get feedback, validate the idea, and build a list of potential customers who will be receptive to buying the product at the launch.
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I came up with a plan. To do this, I brainstormed all ways I could achieve those goals and selected the things I felt were most promising and I could do in the time I had without overextending myself (I value sleep and I can always try those other things in the future).
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Did some research. I went through other creators Twitter feeds and read articles on IH etc to see what people were doing and give me some inspiration.
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Prepared. I tried to draft a lot of the email content, some of the tweets, and do other time consuming things before the prelaunch launch started (the pre prelaunch I guess...)
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Got some feedback on the plan. Luckily I have a few friends who are either entrpreneurs or in marketing, so I could ask them their opinion on the overall approach, email copy etc.
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Executed and adjusted as I went. As I did the emails/posts etc and got responses from people, it inspired small changes on the way - to the copy, to the timing etc.
What I started with
I don't think the above is useful without understanding what I already started with:
- I already had an MVP. For me that was a website with 6 videos already complete
- I already had some trust with my target audience. I have an email list (the Vue.js Developers Newsletter which I've been curating for the last few years and has ~7k subs), plus my personal 5k twitter followers, too. The numbers aren't what's important here, I think, it's the fact that many people already knew me as a good content creator who hasn't just rocked up suddenly trying to make a few bucks.
- Experience with a few previous launches so it wasn't my first time out.
What now
Now, as I said, the launch begins. With a solid prelaunch done, this is actually pretty straightforward.
If you want to learn more about DevTrends, go here: https://devtrends.io. And FYI I have a great launch discount until Friday ;)
If you want to see an example of how I communicated the idea, check out this twitter thread:
The site is not opening.? what has happened?
This is great! Is this the 1st tweet that you had sent out when building in public?
What are other good twitter accounts to follow when building in public?
Did you also use LinkedIn or just twitter to build in public?
Hey, thanks. That's the first tweet I sent out at the beginning of the prelaunch. If you click through, I've made about 15 replies with additional info in a twitter thread. Those went out daily.
As for other twitter accounts, Kenneth Cassel retweets quite a few creators so maybe start your search there.
I duplicated a lot of tweets as posts on Linkedin. It's not as engaged as twitter so I'm not sure how much difference it made
Thank you so much @anthonygore I've just gone through the thread. this is awesome. I don't see any hashtags, did you opt not to use them?
I found in the developer world that hashtags weren't that effective with the exception of #100daysofcode etc.
You could absolutely use them, but the tradeoff is that people might see your tweets as sales rather than authentic communication.
Makes sense, thank you so much! I was just about to fire off a tweet similar to yours with almost 5 hashtags!