I spent two weeks reaching out to creators. Here's what happened
Decided to try creator marketing for my SaaS. Picked people who already talked about tools like mine, personalized every message, kept it short.
Almost nobody replied. The one person who did quoted me more than I had in my entire marketing budget.
I don't blame them. They get flooded with requests from companies way bigger than mine. A no-name founder with barely any users isn't exactly a priority.
That experience didn't make me give up on the channel. It made me question whether the whole model makes sense for founders at this stage.
Has anyone here actually made creator marketing work early on? What did it take?
Early on the cheapest creator you have is yourself. When I was bootstrapping SocialPost.ai, posting our own build-in-public numbers did more than any paid placement, because it gave niche creators something real to point at later. If you do pay, put it into rev-share or lifetime access so the creator only wins when you do, not a flat fee for 12 clicks.
Exactly. We implemented Life time access and rev-share since, before, most creators campaigns were just: "pay me", then they make a post and don't care at all about the result you have, which led to many failure campaigns
Ran into the same wall. The math doesn't work when you have no users — creators want social proof you don't have yet, and the ones who'd actually move the needle for a $15/month tool are priced for companies with real budgets. What shifted my thinking: instead of paying someone to talk about my product, I started just being useful in the communities where my target users already hang out. No pitching, just answering questions. It's slower but the trust compounds differently. One thing I'm curious about — did you try micro creators (under 10k followers) or were you going straight for the bigger accounts? My assumption is the smaller ones might be more open to genuine partnerships at early stage, but I haven't tested it yet.
Microcreators tend to be more open yes. I testes that. But then, the real work you must do is finding the exact creator with your potential customers. Why? They don't have that many reach as a big creator but they can give you real engagement if your product and their audience are really, REALLY, aligned. Thanks for your comment!
That alignment point is key. A creator with 3,000 Shopify store owners beats one with 200k general entrepreneurs every time. The hard part is actually verifying the audience before you commit — follower count is visible, but whether those followers are your exact customer is a black box until you're already in it. Did you find any signal that predicted alignment before reaching out, or is it mostly trial and error?
Had better luck starting with micro users, not creators.
Let them become advocates first, then reach out.
Cold creator outreach felt like pushing too early.
you mean "testers" by "micro users"?
Of course, in many cases, what you need before reaching to creator to distribute your tool is having a solid product
This is a valuable insight. Authentic recommendations usually outperform paid promotions because they feel more credible. Thanks for sharing your experience.
It outperforms every time. Thank for your comment, Murad!
Two weeks of this is brutal lol. What was your reply rate? I’ve been doing cold outreach and it’s been pretty dead, slowly moving toward places where people already ask for feedback instead. Curious if warm stuff worked better for you
Reply rate was okay. The problem where fit: out of budget in most cases and not so much engagement whith the product, which would have led to poor results in the campaign (audiences notices what is just a an ad or a true recommendation) . Fit is the key. That's what we are working right now
marketing is brutal
When everyone can built, distribution, marketing, is the hard part. We fixed that
Maybe the better move early is not paid creator marketing, but finding people who would genuinely use the product and letting the content come from that.
We implemented the idea of "trade premium access for distribution", so you don't have to "pay" at all. Therefore, obtain valuable insight from people, tech creators, really interested in your tool
That's when a product becomes viral (take the case of open claw or Notion, for example), but, in most cases, the post launch wall is real. That's why we implemented the "be discovered by creators who genuinely would use your product, and let them made your content, since their audience are your customers". Basically what you say about "finding people who would genuinely use the product and letting the content come from that"
Exactly our point. Thanks a lot, Nelson!
With the fantastic world of AI at our fingertips, everything becomes easier. Now we just have to know how to choose the tools we really need in our daily lives, and a good part of our problems are solved. The difficulty now is knowing which is the best tool and which one best suits the problem. I sincerely hope this is one of them, and one that I hope to use in the near future. Congratulations and good luck on the journey ahead.
Exactly. And thanks a lot, Joao! Hope this helps you get your tool in front of more people. Any question/request, don't hesitate to write me!
I had two gigs, one via Fiverr and one as a direct contact on Reddit. The Fiverr-gig was a faceless video which in retrospect I wouldn't want to show anyone (ps: I didn't!).
The direct contact provided a talking head video that I used for an ad-campaign, however no sign-ups happened afterwards (people don't like ads, obviously).
My biggest problem is that I do not have any reach on any platform.
ah, an the Fiverr route makes sense to try, but what you're buying there is production (the video), not distribution.
->No audience behind it, so it doesn't matter how good the video is.
that's exactly why we built Aproov -started from the same place. Product Hunt gives you a spike that lasts a few hours. Paid placements with big creators reach audiences that are too broad to convert, and engagement is low precisely because of that. what actually moves the needle is a small creator whose audience is specific enough to care. A newsletter with 1k subscribers all into SaaS tools will outperform a creator with 100k general followers every time. we're opening a second cohort soon, might be worth a try.
What would be a no-brainer for you right now? Have you already tried Aproov's way: matching with the exact creator you need for your tool, a micro/nano niche creator? Would love your takes. We aim to help.
Yes, I saw that when I checked out the site before and signed DopaLoop up. Thumbs pressed!
We will open second cohort in 1-2 weeks. Hope this help you with distribution (that's our aim). In the meantime, any request/need, don't hesitate to say it, we will work on it!!
Curious what "personalized every message" actually looked like in practice. Most outreach that claims personalization is still basically a mail merge with the person's name and one sentence about a recent post. Did you ever get feedback, even indirectly, on why people didn't reply, or is it genuinely a black box where you have no idea if they even opened it?
If peronalization is just a name, yeah, definitely is not going to work. Every persone is different, and so is their content. Most of the time was black box, to be honest. I think the key is finding the right creator, reaching to one real creator for your tool, not just 20 that talk about tech in general.
Fair point, specificity of fit matters more than volume of outreach, that's a cleaner way to think about it than just "personalize more."
I'm working on a project called ClashMash, and I'm curious - how many cold emails did you send before getting a reply? I'm trying to figure out the right approach.
Well, the right approach depends on what you would like to accomplish. Is it to get ClashMash promoted or anything else?
One thing I'd question isn't whether creator marketing works, but whether it's the right sequence. Established products often use creators to amplify existing demand, while very early products may first need enough customer proof that creators have something credible to point to. The channel might be right, just not at this stage of the journey.
don't you think creators can also bring first customers?
Possibly.
I'm not convinced the important question is whether creators can bring the first customers.
I think it's whether the business is asking creators to create demand, or to amplify demand that's already been proven.
The strategic implication of that distinction is the part I don't think I can unpack properly in a thread.
Fair enough
User complaints are actually a good kind of demand.
So true
here to answer anything