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7 Comments

How to promote your product? (Early Stage)

  • Product: streetwear dating (can't post link)
  • Product detail: a dating site for hypebeasts and the streetwear community.
  • Stage of development: Validation stage. Trying to understand if there is demand for my product in the streetwear community.

I'm currently trying to get some signups for my product, but I keep running into roadblocks. I've tried posting on sub-reddits, discords, and forums to get the attention of my target audience. It's been a failure. All my posts have gotten taken down or no attention. They've all been pretty similar something along the lines of streetwear.dating | dating app for hypebeasts and the streetwear community coming soon!. Then I try to link to my site.

Q: How are you promoting your products in the early stage of your product

  1. 3

    I think at early stage you should always manually reach out to people one by one. Find users who might be interested in your product in relevant communities (Facebook groups, Reddit, Twitter, Product Hunt, and many more).

    1. 1

      Thanks. I haven't thought about doing this. I have a next step now!

      1. 1

        I will tell you little bit about my experience:
        I work on a tool that help people list theirs home searches in one place so I contacted around 80 people from FB groups and posted also few posts on groups that are connected to searching an apartment/house etc. What I got is: most of them thought its a scam so they blocked me in private messages, also some of them was ignoring my messages, sometimes you don't even know if they read them because they have a "private" account.
        So Facebook I wouldn't recommend from my perspective. But its just my opinion and maybe you will be more lucky! Anyway wish you all the best to find customers/users 😍

        1. 1

          I am approaching people one by one on twitter. Make sure you sound human. Be thankful for their time. Don't start with links, but with something like 'Hello Name, I am currently making xyz that can help you in xyz ways. Are you interested in giving me feedback?' or something like that. This way you show that you are human and not some bot that just wants to market. Make sure to wait for their feedback and read it carefully. Make sure to start a conversation and be thankful and friendly no matter what they say. And if they like what you have to say, then suggest for them to sign up or whatever you want and THEN give them a link.

  2. 1

    Here is my suggestion. It will require a small budget. But it is worth the cost.

    1. Design a good landing page for your site with a sign up/notification form. You may have to hire a freelancer to create the landing page if you can't create it yourself.

    2. Design a good FB ad graphic and wording.

    3. Buy some FB ads.

    The reason for this is that it is better to find out if your idea has a tangible market before you jump into it. And most IH are not good with marketing. So FB ads will be one of the easy option to try. If so, you have to do all these any way. If you can't get enough traffic from your landing page or you can't get enough people to sign up, then you have to re-think about your business idea, market, and/or your marketing skills. It is very most effective way to real world test your business idea.

    Since your biz is a service, FB ad should be more suitable. If your biz is products, Google Adwords should be more appropriate.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Here is another thought I wrote. You may be interested to check it out.

    https://medium.com/@netuser00/how-to-decide-if-you-should-start-a-particular-business-e1a6d4c6ea79

    1. 1

      Thanks for the advice. I will definitely take it into consideration.

  3. 1

    Next to the previous valid comment (people one by one, and in groups), I would like to add:

    If you fill in a current existing need, you can use Google Ads. People will google your service, and find your site via ads.

    If you don't fill a current existing need, you can use general adds, like Reddit in specific groups. You can also cold mail (but please check the rules of cold mails).

    Of course SEO is important, but that's for the long run from my perspective.

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