Recruiting your first beta testers is hard
At VanillaSky.ai, we’re simplifying video ad creation for small businesses. Our AI tool transforms text prompts and product URLs into video ads in minutes. While we’ve received good feedback from our peers, we’re struggling to expand our beta testing pool beyond our immediate (tech) network. Here are some strategies we’re considering to recruit more beta testers, and we’d love your input. And of course when you run video ads, we would love to invite you for our early access program on vanillasky.ai
Reach out directly
We’re considering reaching out to potential beta testers on LinkedIn and via email. This BDR approach can be effective but is also time-consuming and requires the right messaging to avoid coming off as spammy.
Engage with Reddit communities
We’re looking to engage with relevant Reddit communities. Becoming an active and trusted member requires consistent participation and value-adding contributions to discussions before you can start leveraging it as a channel to recruit users. This method can be highly effective for targeting specific niches but demands significant time investment.
Build a social media presence
Becoming active on social media platforms is another strategy. While this can organically build a loyal following, it’s a long-term play that requires consistent effort and content creation. Advertising on social channels might be a way to accelerate.
Start advertising
We’re considering running ads on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Google. While this can quickly increase our reach, it might be expensive and not always effective. Targeting the right audience and optimizing ad spend is crucial.
Partner with influencers
Collaborating with influencers can help us reach a larger audience quickly. Influencer endorsements build credibility but can also be costly. The key is to find influencers whose audience aligns well with our target beta testers.
I am also going through this stage:
Our idea of building originated from the difficulties encountered by the team: our team has open-sourced several software, which has brought us some traffic and attention, but also a lot of consultations. More than 80% of the questions are very basic and repetitive.
Even if our documents have already included these questions, they will still send messages to ask questions tirelessly.
So we have to develop a robot, feed it with github documents, and let it answer questions on our behalf.
Now is the early stage of building, we plan to build publicly and listen to their voices.
In the first stage, we want to invite some open source users who have used our open source software, so they trust us to a great extent. It is expected to be about 200 people.
In the second stage, in the public construction on technical forums and social platforms, a part of interested users will be linked, and it is expected to be about 100 people.
In the third stage, after the product is verified, it will be released on the producthunt platform, accumulating about 1,000 first-time formal users.
The next step is to continuously optimize the product and maintain influence.
You are also welcome to link up with the same stage and complete the difficult first stage together.
Sound like a good plan. How are you planning to invite the users?
I’m in the same process.
I would differentiate the strategies in 3 different stages: 0-10 users, 10-100 users, 100 users, and 1,000+ users.
For the first 10 users I would prioritize engaging with relevant communities (I would avoid Reddit), and then reach out personally after developing a relation.
For the next 100 users, ideally you have learned patterns on where your customers hang-out, and how to identify the ones that have the problem you are solving.
I would not invest my time on Social Media until having at least 100 users, and a strong sense of how to communicate my value proposition.
Paid channels , like collaborating with influencers would be an option after revenue, and emergent PMF.
If you do decide to start with communities please share which ones you found, and the process to find them. It would be useful for many.
Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. What about out reach on Linkedin or email? Any experience with that?
You should definitely try LinkedIn, but on my experience most folks are too busy to spend time in new products. Also, the signal-to-noise ratio is too low to determine who could be a good prospect. Personally, I plan to only try LinkedIn after investing significant time in Twitter, validating a content strategy, and building basic enterprise features. Remember, first impressions matter.
As for email, that would even go later. No need to invest in building email sequences until you know your value proposition. There’s a lot of costs, and complexity that come with selling through email (in my experience).
Thank you. Learned a lot.
Hi @Jorisdieben, I would focus on value creation, then value capture.
For example, if you're going to make a social media play, commit to 100 posts around a specific area of value that your target customer needs help with. In this case, topics like "how to acquire more customers" or "tips/tactics for making great video ads" - things that address acute problems they face - will be most effective.
I've used this to bootstrap 2x small businesses effectively.
(I'm using it right now on Indie Hackers to source great guests in fact for my solopreneurship podcast!)
Great post! For attracting beta testers, I'd recommend focusing on engaging Reddit communities and leveraging influencer partnerships. Reddit provides genuine feedback, and influencers can give you a credibility boost. Balancing these strategies could expand your reach effectively without breaking the bank. Keep pushing forward! 🚀
Thanks! How do you usually get into the Reddit communities. Do you build up some credibility/kudos first before promoting your product?
Maybe too early to start advertising I think unless you want to use CTR/sign up rate as an indicator for the idea/landing page.
Your audience are small brands and businesses, so building up on Reddit communities idea, I think you could try Facebook group (Shopify, Amazon FBA, dropshipping related groups), local meetup related to E-commerce or their organizer.
Great idea, thank you so much!
Great points, however, I didn't find Reddit communities useful. In my opinion, adding to useful directories like betalist.com & webcurate.co is more worthwhile than spending time manually growing a product.
That's great feedback, thanks!
Do you have any tips for finding the right Reddit communities that would be responsive to beta testing without feeling 'bothered'?
Give them something in return. I did Korn t shirt giveaway
No not really. I was looking at specific Reddits around digital marketing. But it seems it will take a lot of time to become part of that and have "enough kudos" to ask for beta testers.
Good insight