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28 Comments

Where to find my target customers?

My biggest weakness is that I don't know how to reach new customers. I can build products but I have no marketing skills at all.

I am about to start a new blog, but can anybody tell me how and where should I start searching for my target audience?

What's the next step right after I write my blog?

#ask-ih

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    Hi Yakub, I believe in the idea and building and shipping getting feedback and based on what has adoption putting your efforts there.
    i also started writing a lot but it takes a LONG time for the blog to build - its great for SEO but that's long tail traffic.
    did you try the launch sites such as product hunt? if you do it right will get you few 1000's to site and immediate feedback - if you need help there reach out happy to help ( we launched 6 product this year ).

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      I would definitely contact you when I plan to go on IndieHacker. For now, I will stay connected on Twitter.

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      Thanks a lot!

      I just found this great blog post by a fellow indiehacker. I have been checking ProductHunt for a while and will give it a try soon.

      https://standuply.com/blog/from-7k-to-80k-usd/

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        Standuply great makers slack community

  2. 2

    You need to decide WHO is your target customer before you can find out how to reach them.

    If you have picked a target customer, share that, you will get better ideas and suggestions.

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      I am targetting self-publishing authors.

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        Do they use a certain product? Think of ways to find out who uses it. Some ideas:

        1. See who follows that company on Twitter
        2. Check sites where people share the tools they use: https://siftery.com/gitbook

        Also:

        • Look up meetups for major cities around the world and see who's a member: Meetup.com
        • Join relevant Facebook groups and start helping out
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          Along this suggestion of Facebook groups, you can explore members with public profiles as a starting point. You may find a hidden connection in there.

          Also, I've heard of people scraping public emails from groups to build out custom audiences on FB ads but I can't confirm that method's effectiveness.

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          Thanks for the idea!

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        What have you done to reach them so far? What have you tried?

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          I tried a few channels including Instagram, Facebook and Google Ads. Google Ads worked but it was expensive for a product that charged $19/month.

          On Instagram, I got good engagement, but no leads. Almost nothing on Facebook.

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            So you have tried paid. What about non paid ways?

            Do you have a website? Do you get any organic traffic?

            What groups could you reach out to?

  3. 1

    Hey Yakub! Don't call it weakness you can still overcome this weakness. Just go online to find your niche audience and your target market, Now where is your target market I hope you're familiar to social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest etc. go out there and what your product search accordingly.
    Another thing you can simply get into the group related to your product or blog and creates engagement and slowly and gradually educate them about your product. I believe you'll get visitors.

  4. 1

    reach new customers. the fastest way is to pick up the phone and call your targets. then u get immediate feedback and you can start the feedback loop. you'll be amazed at how much info you can get from a real conversation as opposed to doimng marketing and then trying to figure things out from the response, or lack of response. Call ur targets first. valid if they are even are even potential customers. Then try linkdin, google ads and other marketing to expand upon what u know will work. So for ur blog call ur audience and see if they have an interest in what you'll be writting about. If u need help makinhg these dicovery calls drop me a line. hope this helps

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      Thank you so much. This is an interesting perspective.

  5. 1

    Go on twitter and search for keywords that are revelant for your product.

    Check subreddits that could be appropriate for you.

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      Thanks for being helpful. I have learned a lot from comments like these since I made this post. :-)

  6. 1

    Imho, to start a new blog is detour. If you joined a community, you should build a product for them. Some products for hackers are listed on HackerNews or Reddit.

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      I hear the same thing. It's gonna take a long time.

      Thanks for mentioning Reddit. It wasn't in my mind.

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    Where did you go to find solutions (that didn't exist) for the product you're trying to build? Was it a forum?

    Generally the answer lies somewhere during the motivational period where you're determining what to build. For me, it was GitHub issues for an open-source project, which seems odd to be frank. But that's exactly where I found my first paying user.

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      I got the idea from a client project and noticed other similar sites.

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    So, we've been struggling with this ourselves. We're trying a few things:

    Social media. Facebook's as dud for us, and LinkedIn is mostly a network play, but Twitter makes it easy to follow relevant people in the area and engage with them. Depends on the product, of course -- since we're B2B, this seems to be working better. If you were B2C and pretty visual, B2C might work.

    Writing a blog is good, but as mentioned by tomerdi, it's long tail. We've been starting to look at guest blogging opportunities, as well as podcasting opportunities (and potentially even advertising on podcasts).

    For us, just getting in front of real actual humans helps. In my case, that means going to a lot of startup events. For you, that might mean something different.

    Do you have ideas around personas/potential target customers? I'd recommend doing some work around that, to see if you can dig into what they're doing and where they're gathering.

    1. 1

      Thank you for sharing your experience. I am targetting self-publishing authors.

      So far I tried Facebook and Instagram. It's really hard to build some initial followers without spending money on facebook. On Instagram, I got some engagement but almost none tried the product. I guess because mine is a desktop tool?

      I tried twitter a bit and LinkedIn not at all.

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        I feel like there's GOT to be some good online communities for that -- if only just because in November I don't see anything besides NaNoWriMo posts. Back in the day I would have said LiveJournal 😂but I don't know where the happening places are for that sort of thing these days. I'd probably say not social media then, since that tends to be more of a phone thing (as evidenced by your Instagram problem). You'd want to get them wherever they're taking breaks from writing.

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          Thanks. I am thinking about giving Facebook groups a try. And blogging and SEO. Though I understand its a long tail.

  9. 1

    "I can"? did you? First you need to research and Build real product than care about finding customer ... You should not waste time on problems you haven't have yet. as for blog you shouldn't care about even if nobody reads it .. blog only if you really care about writing for the subject or product you are interested in. with little marketing or link sharing people will come to your blog if they find it unique and helpful.

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      I am asking about customer discovery and distribution strategy other people have successfully used.

      In this case, I am asking for blogs to be specific.

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        I would be very honest to share my experience and knowledge .. 99% of the blog wont make any money . Even big blogs with high traffic are struggling as ad revenues are all time low.

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