Promote your SaaS using AI wrappers

I was analyzing recent founder interviews from the Stories database, and I recently found one interesting growth tactic.

While reading this interview with the founders of multiple products targeting solopreneurs, they shared an interesting take on side-project marketing.

Side-project what? Side-project marketing is a tactic for promoting your product where, instead of writing content, you code a small tool that does something useful. Some examples:

• If you have a project management tool, you could create a free Pomodoro timer to attract productivity-focused users.

• If you have a data analytics SaaS, you could create a free, web-based tool to generate charts from CSV files

• If your company is in the cyber security space, you could create an online password strength checker

...you get the idea.

Side-project marketing with a twist

Now, these founders did side-project marketing with a twist; they built free tools which were essentially AI wrappers.

Some examples of what they built:

• A value proposition generator; you enter your business and target audience, and get a value proposition in return.

• An idea validator; you enter your business idea and audience; AI evaluates it and gives you feedback.

• A slogan generator; enter your business/audience and get 30 slogans.

Notice how these tools received hundreds of upvotes on Product Hunt; they all ended up in the top 3 "Product of the Day" on Product Hunt.

Many of those tools also ended up getting featured by TikTok and Instagram influencer. Apparently, many TikTok/IG influencers LOVE talking about free tools.

There are also many AI directories (like this one) which regularly feature new AI tools. These directories get quite a lot of traffic too; "There's an AI for that" gets 4 million visitors each month (according to SimilarWeb):

Combined, the AI wrappers we mentioned above got hundreds of thousands of web visitors; a certain % of them converted to paid customers.

Many also started to rank on Google as a result; for example, if you type "business idea validator", FounderPal ranks as the 4th result.

How to get started

Now that you've realised the power of this tactic, you might be wondering: How do you get started? What should you create? Here are some tips to get you started:

• Choose a tool providing a quick win: Generators are great tools for this. With a generator, you ask the user for something short (input) and provide something longer/more comprehensive in return

• Promote it: Product Hunt, AI directories and software influencers on TikTok/IG talking about free tools are your best friends here.

• Repeat: The nice thing with AI wrappers is that you could create as many of them as you want.

How to come up with an AI wrapper idea

Ask yourself: What jobs-to-be-done (JTBDs) are people in this niche looking to acomplish?

Solopreneurs are looking to create slogans, want to see if their idea is worth pursing and also want to create succint value propositions for their products (all 3 tools above address those needs).

Things might be different for e-commerce owners, for example. E-commerce owners might be looking to choose a product that has potential to bring them good margins, they might be looking to create a good product description for the products they already promote, etc.

Hope you found this article to be useful!