What's the best approach to acquire first users via Reddit?
Hey guys, I'm looking for any material/tactics on how to share a product with a reddit community consuming of ideal potential customers.
Right now I'm commenting on people's posts and sending them DMs if they are discussing the problem I'm solving:
Option 1: Post on Reddit
- Create value driven post → Use soft CTA → DM those who engage → Follow up
- AMA session post → Position myself as founder w/o promoting → DM those who engage → Follow up
- Create polls → DM those who engage → Follow up
Option 2: DM Reddit users
- Find comments/posts from those who use or struggle with logging meals → DM them → Follow up
It's ok but for the time it takes the result seem average. I got some responses and feedback too, but it's slow. Any tips, tactics, or perhaps there are ways to even automate the process?
Trending on Indie Hackers
I just happened to study indiehackers that had success promoting on Reddit.
Here are some tips:
Pat Walls from Starter Story set up an automation to repost his articles. He posted over 120 posts each month, with some tweaks to fit the Reddit format. His posts got to the best of the r/Entrepreneur subreddit. You need to be careful though because the subreddit users raised a petition to get him banned. I don't know if they made it happened. Here he explains how he did it https://hackernoon.com/how-i-automated-my-reddit-posts-and-got-millions-of-views-wh55h3001
Avoid adding promotional links in the post. You should include them in your profile. Marc Lou made this mistake by including a link to his boilerplate on r/NextJS and it got removed. The other post he made sharing his success story on r/Entrepreneur got him 2.4k upvotes and over 2,000 visitors to his site in 12 hours.
Offer something valuable for the community. Joseph Lee from Supademo offered to make an interactive demo for free to the guys at the r/SaaS subreddit. That post got himover 11,000 views in 24 hours, and several new users and paying customers.
There's more things I found during my research but I think these are the most helpful for you.
Thank you @PoliSaez!
Yeah the main concern is getting banned with those links. Many subreddits auto remove my posts or hide my comments if I post a link as mentioned in the first bullet point. The point about posting something valuable without a link then helping them may be a better way to go. then perhaps I can share the product after the conversation. What do you think?
Gee, thanks for this!
I think this is a great idea! This is exactly what Marc Lou did, look at the comments on his post https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/186nc6f/i_sold_my_ai_tool_for_35000/
He finds a way to add links when he mentions his projects in a non pushy way: "I live in Bali so that's about 2 years of peaceful life here haha.
Currently working on a code boilerplate to ship startups fast ShipFast and a no-code tool to avoid chargebacks on Stripe, called ByeDispute."-> here both ShipFast and ByeDispute are links.
Yeah the only thing is this community he's in doesn't have a rule against links. The communities I'm in are focused on nutrition and people losing weight and unfortunately all of them have this specific rule, but perhaps reddit isn't a great channel for all businesses.
Maybe try mentioning your product and adding the link in your bio? There's a lot of people that get curious and go to your profile. You can also set a background profile image with your company logo on it.
I used a similar approach - writing detailed, value-add posts that promoted my company subtly.
To add more to option 1: Create value-driven posts. My observation is that posts that include personal stories tend to have the best engagement.
For example, something like "I quit my high-paid job to start a startup. Do you think it's risky?", "I built this tool for only 3 weeks. Now it generates 10k/month." Or "I used to get 10 orders/month. I made these 4 simple changes and now I got >150 orders/month." "I used a tool that helps 3x my productivity. It's free."
Should use "I", "my", "you"... and turn any benefits of your product or service into a story. That's what makes people feel relevant.
I love that thank you!
Wow, thanks a bunch! So many helpful comments.
Commenting on Reddit works pretty well for me and my tool (a AI text humanizer that returns plain language).
I paste a link to it into most posts asking about humanizers, most of the time while asking for feedback. That brings in more than 30 clicks a day, with a rising tendency.
I am trying X, Quora, Indiehackers (hello! :D), and other platforms to find an audience... but Reddit has been the best so far.
Awesome. I love that. Do the communities you post on have a "no spam" "no self promo" or "no links" rule? If so, any tips on not getting banned?
They do! And some of my posts got removed. But if you find posts where people ask for tools like yours and you answer them with your tool, that's actually helpful and not spam. At least that's what I am telling myself. 😉
My answers never got removed, not even downvoted.
Cool I'll give it a shot and more time. So far, I've sent 50 DMs and out of those 4 replied (8%), 5 signed up (not always the people that replied which is why it's above 4), 0 customers, 2 feedback.
Just curious, what do the numbers look like for you? It'd be cool to get a good sense of benchmarks for this.
Yesterday I had 116 clicks from Reddit. I just plant my link everywhere, where it's relevant as comment - not via DM.
My case looks like this:
I search for keywords like "Humanize AI", "Bypass AI detectors", or "Humanizer", and comment on the top posts that appear in the search. Others will click the top posts, too, and will find my link. Maybe the AI humanizer thing is a hot topic right now? That's my project BTW: https://ai-text-humanizer.com/
In comparison: I don't get a single click from X. I can do what I want there. Maybe because I have a quite fresh X account. Not sure.
Nice love that I can quickly access it without sign in. Are you monetizing? Not sure if we can dm but send me a dm on x if it works https://x.com/arshiagm
I followed you and wrote you a tweet. DMs only work when you follow me, I guess. ;)
And yes I will monetize. Just today I launched the first paywalls. Exciting times ahead. ;)
I'm taking the long-term strategy. I'm trying to unbundle Reddit, targeting specific subreddits.
My strategy: Create value driven post + solve user's pain points + get them on my platform.
I usually don't paste the link directly in my posts. Either users DM me, or just find via my profile.
My goal is to become "famous" in my target subreddit. So much, that if user X asks something about they pain point and where to solve it, user Y will suggest them to check out my platform.
I consider it the best strategy: authentic word-of-mouth on Reddit. If your brand can achieve that, you are 100% set!
Obviously, that takes a lot off time.
Gotcha, is that Greg Isenberg's Unbundle reddit approach? I know he's all about creating a close nit community and solving their problem
I recommend looking up highly searched keywords that make sense with your product and also finding niche subreddits. In my opinion, high traffic is not as important as "high market fit". I recommend "startup_resources", "startup_promotion" or "StartupsHelpStartups", which don't have a lot of traffic, but are a good way of getting some users.
Moreover, think about who could use your product and find relevant subreddits. For example, for my project InContact, I'm posting on subreddits about working abroad, startup founders, or freelance devs, all people who care about having a large and organized LinkedIn network.
Hope this helps!
Thank you! Yeah I have several potential customer profiles in mind for my app and different communities that fit the criteria. My product is for people to track calories though so slightly more challenging than targeting b2b founders I feel because they've already been targeted by so many products and are more often not interested in spending money
Yeah, you indeed chose a tough market haha. However, if your value proposition is interesting, you could target influencer subreddits (like mpmd or team3dalpha, which are very interested in tracking micronutrients) or other niche subreddits. Best of luck!
Thanks for your share
My pleasure thanks for checking it out!
I'm not offering advice, but I've heard a few words of automatic Reddit replies. They work by scanning for comments with specific keywords and sending a reply with your promotion, or something like that. Anyway, it might be worth looking into. I haven't used one myself, but perhaps someone with experience could provide more details.
Do you have a specific list of Reddit communities where you promote your product, or do you focus on finding niche communities and engaging there?
That would be awesome. Sort of like a ai agent that engages a community?
I think the biggest problem that comes to mind though is that I may get banned because almost all communities have a rule set on "no spam or self promotion"
I do have a list, for example I'm targeting https://www.reddit.com/r/CICO/, https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/ and I don't want to get banned because i'd lose access to all of these potential customers
Yeah, a rule "to not self promo" might be a problem. If you really care to not be banned, I'd genuinely write to moderators and ask them to define a "self promo" and understand the line I should not cross to not get banned. Like, can I engage users in comments and post a link there? Can I tell people that I have a product that might help them and ask them to write to DMs? In general, can I really do a not aggressive, soft self promo if it suits user's post and might actually be helpful for the user?
The other way might be to try to write to DMs directly. Advice users to try your product, as you think it might be helpful for them, ask for their feedback.
But no spam surely means no spam, it has to be definitely not aggressive promotions, but rather targeted promotions where you really think it is appropriate the most.