The reason your marketing is failing is simpler than what you thought
If you're wondering how marketing works, or why your marketing strategy is working or (more likely) not, the answer is right in front of you.
On the IH website's main page there are four tabs. Which tab's contents do you read the most?
I believe it's on Popular in 95+% of the cases, which reflects the human nature and the strategy of the platforms as well, and if you ignore this simple fact your marketing strategies are doomed to failure.
This is why I'm shifting the direction of my marketing strategies for DoTenX to a completely different approach which I'll write about in a few weeks time.
Do you know any way to put yourself in front of the already popular solutions that suck up all the oxygen?
The "Popular" tab is also the default tab, which makes it the first one you see. You have to deliberately click on the "Newest" tab to see it. As a result, people are much more likely to see those even if they're not looking for "what's popular." That's the power of the default option.
One downside of IndieHackers becoming more popular, is that topics in "Newest" can drop off its front page so fast that very few people see it, giving them very little chance of a reply let alone hitting the "Popular" section.
That's true and exactly why I said "...which reflects the human nature and the strategy of the platforms ".
The platforms promote the popular contents and unless you find a way around it, you'll have a hard time promoting your content.
I think you'll have to keep on interacting with people on IH and basically put yourself out there for them to know about your product.
Every comment or post that you make should be value driven rather than a sales pitch and try to solve problems on this platform, in this way you'll develop a decent following/community which would give you the boost that you require.
Also launching on Product Hunt is a good idea though I do realise a lot of big companies launch their products on it as well. When we started out with our SaaS tool ruttl we also launched it on product hunt and managed to become product of the day so, if you're interested you can read our post here and hopefully this would help.
All the best!
Fair point. I'm a huge fan of genuine engagement as it makes the whole experience as an entrepreneur much more appealing anyway.
I'll check your post, thanks for sharing.
@mohsenkamrani had a quick look at the top of the home page
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All the best
Manoj
manoj@skilledup.life
Thanks Manoj for the feedback. Definitely need to improve the messaging and DoTenX provides much more than templates. You can think of it as an alternative for Webflow, bubble, softer + airtable, or carrd.
The updated version of the landing page will be deployed today and fortunately I'm not working on this alone.
Well, the most straightforward way would be paying for it ¯\(ツ)/¯. That's quite often how it works, startups get investment, and then use some parts of it for a big marketing push.
Fair point. But that's not an option for everyone.
Actually only a tiny fraction of the entire spectrum of founders/entrepreneurs have access to funds. I believe we should come up with marketing strategies all around the fact that some voices are much louder.
Vg
Ah the age old issue of being able to get attention.
Problem is that most founders have been told the best way to get attention is to promote their products. But that's a terribly flawed strategy today. Wrote an article about it earlier today on here - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/without-this-1-thing-your-startup-will-fail-guaranteed-heres-what-it-is-and-how-to-get-it-1ebe2eb199
Ggx
I think launching on platforms like Producthunt, Betalist can be a good start?
That definitely helps and that's what I'm trying to do with DoTenX as well, but again similar scenario happens there. Funnily enough even billion dollar companies launch their products on PH.
A successful launch on those platforms requires good preparation.
funny thing, I recently did a challenge to start a product from 0 to launching on PH in 2 days!! 😅
Context: https://twitter.com/ariflogs/status/1598614977408946176
haha, that's quite a challenge!
Hf
Good