[Idea Validation] Reddit Marketing Tool ?!
Hey guys!
I'm creating Howitzer - a marketing tool for Reddit, that enables you to:
- Collect Reddit data (usernames, posts, comments)
- Marketing Automation (automatically send PMs, automatically comment on posts or reply to comments)
- Reddit Monitoring (monitoring subreddits, posts, comments)
- AI-powered subreddit analysis (to help you execute successful marketing strategy)
I need to know if you think that you'll be using this tool ?
Also, ideas and opinions are welcomed!
For more information, check my landing page:
https://howitzer.landen.co/
Trending on Indie Hackers
Aren't automated posts/PMs against Reddit's ToS?
They provide these features in their official API, so I don't think it is a violation of their ToS.
Hootsuite, Buffer and Later offer automated posts, too.
I think you need written permission from Reddit, as per their terms:
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/api-terms
But this is more for charging for your service, not for the service itself. I still think automated DMs shouldn't be allowed on Reddit, I personally wouldn't want to start receiving spam in my Reddit DMs.
Thanks for noting it.
Will look at this in detail.
Another reason why Reddit will probably not allow this: it would probably would be a direct competitor to Reddit ads (why get ads from Reddit, when you can automatically contact the users of a specific subreddit directly).
The idea sounds great, I think there definitely is a market for it.
The problem is in Reddit itself, they can detect self-promo from miles away and are really against any type of marketing (even if disguised).
Totally agree with you, but I believe that at the end, the Reddit community is there to benefit from Reddit, to learn new things, to gather new information, so if you offer them things that are really useful for them (ex: you offer no-code mobile app builder to subreddit for no-code enthusiasts) - it will be some kind of win-win situation.
I'm advertising a productivity tool in a specific subreddit at the moment, and it seems that the users (not the mods) are really glad that they see that product.
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Yes, will e-mail you the links and results right now! :)
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looks promising!
Thanks!
I really like this idea as I'm a successful reddit hacker for one business, but have no clue how to enter it for another.
To give context - I use to post on reddit for mechanical keyboards, and literally one post would be equal to 5-10K USD in sales.
For developers tools like kintohub... completely lost at how to approach it.
I'd love to try it, I think building something out like audience for twitter, but curated for reddit is awesome. Start simple and teach noobs like me on how to genuinely - and I really mean genuinely explore that market without coming off as a sales person!
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback and the ideas!
By 'Start simple and teach people how to genuinely explore the market without coming off as a sales person', you mean (besides creating and offering this tool) to give tips and directly lecture people on how to successfully market their business or Reddit ?
Also, I don't really understand what do you mean by "50% is not enough" ?
There are two paths. Educate why your tool rocks (aka, myself who has 2 reddit karma on my most recent account, knows about reddit, has seen/heard success of marketing on reddit, but cannot even begin to start!) OR people who use reddit already. You may be so familiar with reddit, that the knowledge you have to share is already valuable.
What I mean by this is that - you can target people already marketing on reddit and need tools to expand their needs, or you can target people who want to start. These sound slightly different, and it may sound "easy" to do both, but focusing on one, especially at the beginning - will be gold for your early feedback.
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Regarding 50% not enough, you need to give your tool away for free or a trial so that you can learn from your early adopters. the pay wall, (even with 50% discount, 99% discount, put in your damn credit card please) is going to have a dropoff at the beginning. You dont need to do this forever! I'm just saying, at the beginning, first 30-60 days (call it free beta access), you can get a lot of gold again from your early user base so that you can learn, adapt, evolve and then ship something that is worthy for the credit card.
Even right now it says 50% off, get notified when its out. I bet you will see an uptick in people reserving a spot if you remove that and say signup for FREE 30 day early access when it become available. No CC required.
Thank you very much!
The idea about 30 days early beta access, instead of 50% discount sounds better and really makes sense!
Will implement it!
Thanks again.
Cool! Wish you the best on it! Let me know if there's any way we can collaborate my venture, KintoHub, as well! Would be happy to host you guys.
Great!
Thanks for the offer, definitely will contact you soon! :)
Also pricing looks high. Start with a free tier (or preferably trial for your business model). Use stripe billing (the service, not the api), to automatically get these credit cards / trials / subscriptions with almost zero code and once it works, you can create your own billing system built in to save $$ from the % fee.
Use the trial / cheap option (50% is not enough) to really go viral and get user feedback otherwise you may not find your product market fit fast enough and give up before you hit the sweet spot.
Seems very interesting.
I see myself using this from time to time.
Will you implement a pay-as-you-go pricing model (something like Keywords Everywhere)?
Will there be a free trial?
The Pay-as-you-go pricing model seems interesting, but I'm not sure about that at the moment.
Will have a thought about it :)
As for the 'Free Trial' model, I'm thinking more about a freemium model, where you can collect Reddit data as much as you want, but the manipulation, analysis, marketing automation and monitoring will be included in the premium model(s).
I like using reddit to market my products but its hard to keep the post up sometimes long enough since mods delete them... maybe find a way around this obstacle and youll make money for sure.. Ill be ur number one customer if u figure this out
Yep, that's on of the classic reddit marketing problems.
Have you tried a more subtle way of marketing your products ?
For example:
You try to sell a board game in r/boardgames, but the mods forbid self advertising. Instead of the classic self-promoting 'Hey, try my new boardgame...' and getting deleted/banned, try to approach them by posting as you are a hobbyist/user who tried that board game (ex: 'What do you think about the new board game ... ?', or 'Found a new board game that ...', or 'Has anyone tried ... yet ?', ...).
Also, you can find posts/comments that are asking for new board games , or specific type of board games (if your board game has something specific), and comment/reply there.
Another way is to find users who are interested in trying new board games for example, and directly message them on Reddit.
PS: The idea of Howitzer, is exactly this. To help you easily automate these approaches.
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Yeah, I was also a little bit doubtful about that part, but after talking with some friends who are into growth and have used e-mail and linked in automation, concluded that maybe it is a good feature and will provide it.
Thanks for the opinion! :)