What's one unexpected acquisition channel that worked for you?
I did a lot of research for Zero To Users on what acquisition channels have PREVIOUSLY worked for founders, sorting them by how often they get mentioned.
I've noticed, however, there's a "long tail" of unexpected channels with plenty of interesting stories.
Let me start first: TikTok. Was surprised at how many developer/marketing mini-influencers are there.
What was your unexpected channel?
I got some client by sending a hand written letter
I did similar, but we used an online service to automate the process. Sent out like 400 Christmas cards with a personalized message and a freebie. We got roughly ~250 signups.
We love it the old-fashioned way haha
Hahaha sometimes to compete in the modern-day, we need an old-fashioned way
Wow 😂
😅
That's a really interesting story to hear haha
Yes, my logic is the gatekeeper will not open the envelope and the main target can read my message
I try it a couple of times, but I stopped doing that because I already get clients online.
Do you have a screenshot of a sample letter? Curious to see what you wrote.
No, it’s like 6-7 years ago. it’s like a normal email
First I introduce myself, what my offer is, and the benefits. Then if they are interested, they can reply to my email which I wrote in the footer of the letter
Twitter DMs for my first 10 paying customers for Zlappo
Isn't Twitter blocking you after X DMs?
Yes, it's rate-limited.
I rarely did more than 20 a day.
Just handpicked the most likely prospects who I felt would turn into leads/customers.
How many DM are you sending to get 10 customers?
~20/day personalized
My most surprising acquisition channel was giving out indie hacker invite codes lol.
I'd use Social Listening to find people on Reddit asking for invite codes, drop a comment saying I have a bunch and to DM me on Twitter for one. They'd strike up a conversation, follow me, get a code, and I'd pitch them on my product's benefits if it made sense.
Met some really cool people this way! And I think I must have been the first person to notice when IH deployed the change to not require invite codes haha. The gig is up now, I guess I'll have to find another sneaky acquisition channel....
That's funny & smart at the same time :D
ProductHunt generated more traffic than we expected at first. However, it dropped quite a lot over time. Any ideas/ tips on how to keep the traffic flowing?
Was it paying users though?
Linkedin without having an audience
outreach? ads? content? :D
organic posting the content from the database + some engagement pods
ads are working less and less on Linkedin, they've completely messed up an already crazy expensive platform
When I built 300Editors (an Uber for proofreading, now sold and closed) I got most of the users via Google Docs Addon store (don't confuse with Google Chrome Extensions).
Originally the whole idea was to build an addon for Google Docs, but what was surprising is how much organic traffic I've gotten and the audience profile.
Surprise 1: First of all, at best times, I've been getting 1000+ organic installations per month.
Surprise 2: most of the users were mid and high school students from all over the US. It turned out that in the US kids get Google Chromebooks at schools for free. They were desperately searching for free proofreading/grammar-checking tools online.
replying to tweets of large accounts drove traffic to my site and inbound leads
Did you try to be one of the first ones to reply?
yes
Facebook groups :)
what are you selling/promoting? :-D
We have SaaS product to automate the screening process
Do you just post a link in the group, or?
I have created a short post offering to try out our software, and people responded in the comments asking for more info and how to connect. I'm actually thinking to do a short tutorial about it on IH
Can you make a mini guide on how you push / make TikTok show up for others?
Like I understand how I can push a button and make content, but the distribution is super dark to me... Is it all based on hashtags
Planning to do a tutorial on this soon.
thanks!
Indie Hackers :)
Great comments here.