Launching and growing without an audience - low cost way
As a founder without an audience, building great products is no longer enough.
It is difficult to find first paying users, grow, and discover where and how to reach them. You have to find the right people through the noise.
As a founder who likes to break the rules, I discovered a method.
I unlocked reaching 10.000+ real potential customers as low cost as $50 with 90% successful targeting.
Solution: Twitter custom audience lists.
This is the Holy Grail.
you can turn it into a lead generating machine by using custom audience list.
Twitter lets you use lists to target.
But there is more important. For this, it does not ask for private information such as e-mail. Only twitter handles (i.e. usernames)
You just need to have a list where you have Twitter handles.
If you are willing to take some time, collect the handles (usernames) of your potential customers.
Or use tools like createtargetaudience.com , which searches and lists according to job title or interest written in the profile bio.
E.g;
If you have a product for developers, list the people who write developer, software in their profile.
If you have a web3 or NFT community, people who write web3, NFT on their profile.
or marketers, designers, founders, no-coders, investors, SaaS, etc.
You can get your list in CSV format.
By uploading your list to Twitter ads, you target only the people you want. So no wasted. And you know who you're showing the ad to. %90 successful targeting.
You will be surprised at the engagement and conversion rate with very low costs. (over 30% for me)
Cost = €5 / $6.5 per 1000 impressions.
You can know how much you will spend based on the size of your list.
If your target audience includes a job title or interest, it's worth a try.
It's shady at best to publish such a post and omit the fact you've created the tool you're recommending. This post is 100% self-promotion rather than helping the community or providing value
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Showing people a new method is fine. Hiding the fact you're trying to sell something is not OK. You can easily edit the post and add a disclosure in the first paragraph that you're the founder of that service.
People are positive in the comments because this post is utterly deceiving.
IH is not the right place for those kinds of things.
I'm sure you're working hard on your product, we all do. I'm sure it is useful, there are people on IH who could probably enjoy it. That said, the point here is simple - we all have to make an effort to make this community better, less spammy and not just about self-promoting and pushing products, especially when it's without disclosure.
What is amazing is, if you think about it, he would have even BETTER results from this post if he'd mentioned "You could do this manually of course, but that's incredibly tedious. This is why we built XYZ tool. Please give it a try, and let me know if you need anything. I'm 100% available for feedback and even custom features"
Isn't that the actual point of IH in the first place? 🤷♂️
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I do feel misled, not gonna lie.
The question is how you'd get people from Twitter to click on a link to try your solution or to even just engage with your tweet.
From my experience, people on Twitter want to stay on the platform and won't click on links as much as they used to - so you can't really advertise your platform directly and instead build up your audience on Twitter.
That's not inherently bad because it gives you more reach and creates multiple touch points, which people need anyways before they decide whether or not to become a user.
To improve the CTR, you must take you time and try to write a short, clear and attractive ad.
It's not easy, but it's the only way.
The beauty of Twitter. It forces you to write better.
Hey Lirian,
You're absolutely right.
in the noise, it should attract people's attention and offer value.
and lots of tests to see which works.
Hey Jan, I agree with what you said.
Getting direct traffic is great.
But we don't like ads that look like ads.
And we are eager to follow the stories.
Using threads, which is Twitter's strength, gives better results.
There's definitely a difference between the two.
Advertising with a direct link
Making a recommendation at the end by providing a useful piece of information or an experience.
Finding your target audience and how you communicate with them are two different things.
I would love to hear about your experience with communicating with your target audience.
Hey ardzehn,
This is a great topic. However, it is quite long.
In short, content and value is still king.
definitely, I'd like to discuss that another day.
Wow, this is so good!
absolutely, thanks porushpuri :)
It looks like promising.. Definitely worth a try.
You should absolutely try it. :)
absolutely, thanks fullnamel
There is a tool that is very similar to what you have just said, the difference is that it works on LinkedIn like this works on Twitter. I have used Aeroleads a lot because I am in the B2B sector and LinkedIn is my primary hunting ground for B2B leads.
Aeroleads is a chrome extension that has a database of over 650 million prospects and works perfectly with LinkedIn which is the best place for any firm for finding prospects. All that is needed to be done is to search for people who can be categorized as the target audience for the firm. Using search filters is an excellent way to fine-tune the search query and produce relevant results. Aeroleads will then display the contact information of everyone that appears in the search results. Here, the user has the ability to choose the people who they believe to have a higher chance of conversion and the tool will build a separate list of those contacts automatically which can be exported and used as sales intelligence. The process makes sure that the sales efforts are not wasted on irrelevant leads.
This sounds like an ad, do you run Aeroleads?
the main post is also an ad. This should be renamed to indieadders
thanks marketanalyst01.
yes it is useful.
but this is a very different method. and most people know this.
There are many tools that do this. and they work very well. e.g ı like apollo
cold email , cold outreach and data enrichment
There you go, now you have new product - selling twitter handles list for each niche
for each niche :)
game changer for a low-cost marketing
this is a very big claim. But thanks for your feedback fabrxdesign :)
This is really a game changer for a low-cost marketing. I need to give it a try for my upcoming products!
game changer :) i like this.
Thanks hey_fk
This was the very first post I ever read on the Indy Hackers, and it already has well justified signing up!
it made me feel lucky. Thanks ChessSpyder :)
That's super interesting, Denizcan, I need to try this. Thank you for sharing your experience 🙌
Absolutely Philip.
This is something most people don't know.
But it's a great hack :)
If you have a question, feel free to write. I can give my knowledge about this subject.
Good luck
This is awesome - what a clever way to target people!
Thanks Logan, I hope, it will be useful for you
It's a great product for those who develop micro products because it finds pinpoint potential customers for you.
You know, absolutely
Thanks for the tip...still discovering Twitter as a means to grow my business
Thanks metanet, good luck :)
This is fantastic!!
Thanks vaibhaw :)
Thanks for the info. I have to try this.
I hope, will be useful for you.
After getting the list do you cold email or DM them?
Hey aditodkar.
The most crucial part of these lists are the ads.
get your list, upload it to your twitter ads and start ad.
because it is low cost and fast.
but it can be used as you said.
You can do cold outreach.
or you can make automatic DM with 3rd party applications. (I don't recommend it)
It seems createtargetaudience only allows 20 usernames/handles. This is way too little. What tool is everyone using to pull this off? It seems this custom audience lists can be up to 10gb to upload to Twitter.
Hey Mark
You can sign up for the waitlist for CreateTargetAudience.
This is the beta version with 20 results.
will be on the market soon.
Then you can achieve as many results as you want. and you can download, your want all lists on csv format.
I haven't seen any other tool that does this task exactly as it does.
It is not possible to do such a targeting with a standard Twitter ad.
Definitely going to try this! Didn't someone use this to target only Elon musk at one point? 3000+ usernames, one being @elonmusk, all others were female. Then he selected to only target the males from that list, which was just Elon.
hahaha this is so clever
no problem loading the list
but only when you select male, invalid audience size will warn you.
I still like this perspective.
thanks aabreu :)
This might be one of the very best ideas I have heard! Doing it this way not only you save money on advertising but also making sure you target the right audience :)
:) absolutely duledaffy.
this is a loop.
niche + low cost + high engagement.
trigger each other
Absolutely great!
thanks Juan :)
I think this is a valid idea. Yet, it may work for some people, and may not work for some others. It sounds valuable, especially if you think that Twitter is not good at targeting users. The success of ads is not only about which users you reach but also about how you reach them. An ad that is not appealing enough will not work no matter which people it reaches. If Twitter is allowing ad publishers to specify which users they want to target, this tool may come really handy.
Hey merta.
It's absolutely true to what you said.
Targeting the right audience and messaging are two different things.
Both are important.
There are three elements in this context.
1- Who is your target audience?
2- Where are they?
3- Messaging - How you communicate with them
The core value proposition of this post is about 1 and 2.
Messaging is another subject as important as they are.
One day I will write about this subject.
Thanks your comment :)
This is a great tip for advertising with Twitter, thank you!
I've often heard the advice to do sales before advertising/marketing. Is it worth doing advertising like this for a startup that's still getting its first users, or should a startup prioritize messaging sales leads individually instead?
Hey rentaflop
It would not be right to speak clearly on this matter. Both can work. Or one.
Testing is therefore important.
The suggestion of this post is to do a test. Because it's a low cost way
This is super cool! Not sure how dynamic the audiences are on Twitter. Most people I know are either not on Twitter or not very active. But of course there has to be a large user base for everyone on there. It's the first time I've got practical steps to open up twitter as traffic channel via ads so huge thanks and awesome tool! <3
Thanks Omar. Good luck on your journey with Glorify. I reviewed and Glorify looks useful.
You can try some keywords for your audience. this tool can suitable for you
I agree with you, Deniz. I tried the platform and it works very well!
Thanks Umut. You know :)
Thanks! Its so useful!
Thanks Henry. Enjoy!
This has to be classed as a hot tip!
Thanks firebeard, maybe :)
Mate I'm going to be trying it just have to figure out what my key customer is :) Maybe that's the problem!
absolutely . If it's for Cadrelo, targeting like this might be considered.
Founder, Owner, C suite, VP, Head, Director, Manager
Just a suggest :)
Friday night drinks here :) Trying it Monday!
hahah thanks firebeard :) good luck
If you have questions, I'm here
Whoa that sounds incredible. I tend to avoid PPC, but I'll give this a shot. Thanks!
Thanks Ben, good luck for your journey
That's an awesome tip, thank you!
you're welcome Dario, I hope, will be useful for you
Love this idea! :) I am myself about to launch a product and all I have so far is a landing page and a buy me a coffee page, both linked.
Not sure if this is the best approach! I am pretty newbie on this :)
Thanks for sharing.
Hey jestfer,
I'm a behavioral marketer. I'm working about landing page and pricing.
if you can share your product to me, I can help this subject to you. and also about growth tactics.
For sure! Thank you :) This is my landing page: https://pairingbuddy.mailchimpsites.com/
My product is an iOS app to connect developers that would like to pair on tasks with other developers, based on tasks posted on the feed, others can select which ones they'd like to join. Straight and simple.
I thought to have it free on the App Store, but I'd need to control the amount of spam tasks from bots, so maybe minimum price on App Store of 0.49 or 0.99, but not sure how that'd impact the results. And then anyone can buy me a coffee :)
Good product.
My suggestion for Landing;
explain the product more clearly.
Problems and pain points of the people who will use the product (developers).
You can agitate it.
And then how you solve these problems. So the benefits of the product.
If possible, you can use images, gifs or videos.
Pricing includes a lot of elements. You can offer scarcity for this product. Free and limited version. Upgrade if you like it.
I suggest you consider a fee. Price is the perception of quality.
This is effective.
https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/landing-pages
Thanks a lot for these tips and the resource! Going to check it out and do some work on it :) Much appreciated.
Good luck jestfer :)
I've actioned on the feedback given and followed some recommendations from the site you linked, hopefully this looks better now! https://pairingbuddy.mailchimpsites.com/
Hey Jestfer
If you are a developer, this is a great improvement. Now, its have very clean and good value prop.
congrats.
I hope I want to publish a behavioral newsletter about marketing. There will be these subjects. :)
Thank you! I am in fact a developer :) Looking forward to reading your newsletter!
Thanks jestfer. Good luck :)
Wow. This is helpful.
Thanks James, i hope
In a good way, Twitter has a lot of traffic and users are very active. In our web3 field, Twitter is also an important marketing tool and user communication platform, and Twitter has many useful plugins.
You are right. eg, you can target for who write web3 in their bio with this method
Like the "low cost way" in the title, this triggered for me entering the post.
Quite a targeted marketing strategy, it seems worth a try. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks julia, It's effective to know who you're showing ads to and how much to spend.
If you have a question, feel free to write. I can give my knowledge about this subject
Brilliant , awesome content
Thanks ccjk, I hope, it will be useful for you
It seems great!!!!
thanks nocoderefe !!
Very nice solution, congratulations. It looks very useful 👏🚀👏👏👏
Thanks filinta
made for you
I tried and got 20 profiles. It's useful, especially for digital marketers.
I think I can filter and sort by followers in the paid version, right?
That's great!
I am not familiar with Twitter, but doesn't their Ad tool have a way to target specific keywords?
I use my own product to find audience for my products - https://birdsearch.carrd.co
Hey
You can improve your value proposition on landing page.
thanks for the feedback...like what?
things written on landing. most twitter can be done with advanced search.
As a behavioral marketer, I can say that;
I should get more benefits for downloading a new app on my phone.
Is it a big enough problem to find the tweets I'm looking for with one click?
With min fav and username I can already do this on Twitter.
yes this app can do some different things. but are they really needed?
You can make it more prominent by addressing the pain points.
It looks absolutely perfect!! I'm looking forward to using it
Thanks idilsu for your feedback
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