Tips for early SaaS marketing?

Define your ideal buyer persona, find out what communities they live in (slack, discord, Fb groups, subreddits) and actively engage and build connections with them in those communities. Join all their community events, hop on zoom calls etc, do a lot 'giving' before expecting anything in return and just make yourself known in the right places and sales will follow.

I've actually spent 24 hours a day building a B2B marketing gallery, where I research and curate real world marketing examples, interviews and case studies and store it all in 1 archive that you can filter through(right now i have like 23 different options in there) and i've turned it into a series on Indiehackers here

Here is the list I wHere is a list to start with during the first months:

• Create company profiles on various directories to increase visibility in search results.
• Make a list of CS communities (as I see from your website, it is your target audience). These are the places where your audience interacts and seeks advice. Begin engaging in these channels.
• Start implementing SEO strategies as early as possible, focusing on long-term keywords due to the competitive nature of the niche.
• Plan launches on ProductHunt and Appsumo to gather early adopters who can provide feedback.
• Create a profile on a social media channel (such as X, LinkedIn, or any other) to regularly share updates, news, testimonials, and more. I would advise to focus on one channel first.
• Search for articles like “best tools for CS”, “top chat bots”, etc (use Ahrefs or Semrush), find emails of the writers (use Hunter) of those articles and ask them to add your tool to their lists (offer smth in exchange). This step is important for people to find alternatives to well-known tools.

Think about providing a free or subsidised trial to a select few companies in return for their input. Their advice could be quite helpful in improving your offering.

Looks good.

Here are some marketing suggestions 👇

• List in SaaS directories
• Launch in Product Hunt
• Active in Reddit, X and LinkedIn

For initials trial these 3 method for 1-2 months.

If your bot truly scrapes a website URL then do a few for free and reach out to the website owner to show them what you built based on their website. If they like the product they will either use it or tell someone about it. One or two for free and then they turn into paying customers or referrals for paying customers.

I would also do the above for people who have large distribution networks.

Scrape their website for free and ask to partner with them and leverage their distribution network.
Then they can eventually drive traffic to your website.

Hi @frankjunyulin

As a marketer, below stuff, I noticed which can help you

1.) first of all, your logo says "dear.ai", and I checked that website is different, while your original website URL is "dearai.online". So, kindly dont' confuse your customers. Indirectly you are increasing traffic for "dear.ai" website

2.) I think you should first note down your ideal customers, you said startups and to support their customers, however the question is which type startups, what's their niche, what revenue do they should have, what type audience it's helpful for those startups, is there any location specific startups, and define as specific as possible.

It's good to niche down, and start with one specific category of startups at a time, especially for starting period.

3.) Once you know target customers, then find where they hang out, and reach out to them, with email outreach. Email outreach is the best way for initial to get one-on-one response. However, offer value first before you ask anything even about joining with their tool, make email personalized. Eventually make your "WHY" stronger. Why means why you are the one who can help them, and how it will solve their problems?

With email, you can easily able to get your first 10 customers, but you need to try 100-200 emails first.

Don't message companies, find emails of real person and then email, otherwise it may not work well. People trust people, not businesses. (that's famous quote, work all the time)

These strategies will help you to move ahead for starting point, in case if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Happy for your journey.

Hi, loved it. What I would do is removing princing options, 4 are too many, I would only keep 2, as more options can provoke an choices overload. Also the pricing is a little too high, since the product itself is already in the market. Make it different from competence, you need to give customers a rational and emotional reason to buy it. Keep it up!

Following.

I think directory listing for AI product is new norm that people are saying. I am also trying to learn how to onboard first 10 customers for my product.

You need to find out where your ideal customer hangs out.

Do they use LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok?

Go from there, and become a part of the community in which your ideal customer is.

As for acquiring your first 10 customers, I recommend using direct outreach!

Hey guys, I've been involved in marketing for bootstrapped startups and for companies with up to $1M+ monthly ad budgets for the last 15 years.

The main lesson relevant to your case is to do things that are appropriate for your scale.

It's great that you mentioned your current goal is to get the first 10 customers. Getting the first 10 is different from getting the first 100, and it's very different from getting the first 1K and 1M.

The worst thing you can do at this scale is to focus on traditional "scalable" channels like paid ads, etc. I would strongly advise against any paid promotions. They will come later when you need to expand.

Now, the best thing you can do is to go selling face-to-face.

Basic funnel:

1. The internet
2. Your landing page
3. Lead
4. Sale

Your objectives:

1. Drive people from the internet to your landing page.
2. Make them sign up.
3. Convert leads into paying customers.

Some wild guesswork:

• Let's say you can convert 1 customer out of every 5. So, to get 10 customers, you need 50 leads.
• Imagine that the sign-up rate on your landing page will be 10%. This means that to get 50 leads, you need 500 visitors.

Okay, that's something. First question: how to drive 500 targeted visitors to your landing page? It's not that many. The best way is to use some self-promotion on related websites, etc.

Then, when you receive a lead, you'll need to convert them into customers. The absolute best way to do this is to hop on a call with them, demo your product, and sell directly. You are the best person to convey your passion and drive and to answer all kinds of tricky questions about the product.

Of course, the most effective way does not mean it is the easiest. It requires actually doing the selling, which might stress some people out. But it's not that hard; one just needs some practice :)

The cool bonus is even if you fail to close the deal, you will get immediate direct feedback about the product. You can move quickly, iterate, improve, and even come back to the same person to sell again.

Obviously, this approach doesn't scale. You can do 50 sales demos. You can't do 500. This is when other, less direct, less effective, but more scalable tactics come into play.

So, to get your first 10 clients, there's no better way than to go and sell directly.