My second marketing week - all my actions and results
by MacksLast Friday I wrote about my first marketing week here.
I got so much helpful feedback and ideas from it, so thank you everybody first of all!
Here's what I did since them. This time I actually got a few nice results!
Friday, Jan 6
Ported another template
I ported another template "Riverside" to Cakedesk and made a comment on the Figma community file.
This is the third template I have now ported and I'm hardly getting traffic from Figma.com. At least it's not attributed in my Analytics. I'm not sure if the direct hits I see could also be from there
Saturday, Jan 7
Posted on Reddit for Showoff Saturday
I posted my app on the webdev Subreddit for Showoff Saturday.
Added testimonials to my site
I added some testimonials from early access users to my site. This should improve conversion rates.
Wrote an article
This is kind of a longer term SEO measure, I wrote an article called Don’t use Word to write invoices for your freelance business and published it on the Cakedesk website.
Sunday, Jan 8
Time for a break
I took a break that day but woke up to find so many comments on my Indie Hackers post from Friday and it was at the top of the homepage. So nice!
Monday, Jan 9
Cold-tweeted some users
I found and reached out to 20 potential users on Twitter. I casted the net fairly wide. This took approximately 4 hours. 😵💫
I got one helpful response from somebody who isn't interested in becoming a user himself, but he pointed me to a Tweet of somebody looking for an invoicing app.
This made me discover some relevant search query that would bring up a few freelancers looking for invoicing software. For example, I got to reply in this thread:
I need to get better at reaching these kinds of people organically (I'm not spending money on ads at the moment).
Tuesday, Jan 10
Posted a video to Reddit
I had already made a video called How to write a web development proposal for YouTube a few months ago that didn't reach many people.
I posted this same video to the webdev-subreddit and it was received pretty well there.
This is the the marketing effort that has gotten me the most visitors and downloads so far. Users from Reddit were downloading the app at about 10-15% conversion rate.
Thanks to @fstanev for giving me some insight on how to use Reddit to get users.
I need to find more communities that I can post similar content to.
Submitted Cakedesk to AlternativeTo
I submitted Cakedesk to AlternativeTo.
This by itself hasn't done much (yet) but I'm hoping to send users there at some point to leave a review.
Wednesday, Jan 11
Wrote another article
I put my how-to-video from the day before into article format and posted it to the Cakedesk website: How to write a web development proposal
This is mostly an SEO effort although I should try to find people looking for advice on this subject and link it to them directly as well.
Translated an article to German
I translated my article about using Word for invoicing to German. Translation is so easy these days with Google Translate and the GPT tools, it feels like a very productive thing to do.
Published article to Medium
I published my how-to-article to Medium.
So far it's hardly getting views but there must be a lot of people reading on Medium, so I wonder how these articles can be made to reach more people on there. I need to read up on that!
Cakedesk is 5/5 😎
I saw that Cakedesk got reviewed 5/5 on Softpedia. I don't think this site is a big deal. It isn't driving much traffic but it feels like a nice pat on the back and I can use it to build trust on my landing page.
Thursday, Jan 12
Time for TikTok
I made a vertical video and posted it to YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
This was a lot of fun to make even though my video editing process at the moment is painfully slow.
Thanks to @IMPixel for suggesting TikTok to me!
I don't have many results from this yet but I'm excited to learn more about how to make these videos so that they reach a wider audience and convert into users.
Week in review
I tried a lot of things and it feels good to get the word out more. It's still not enough to have an impact but I'm starting to see quite a bit more traffic and downloads.
With my efforts on Reddit, I feel like I really reached some people. Unfortunately the visitors stop coming after ~2 days when the post is gone from the front page of the subreddit.
It really helped me to focus completely on marketing this week and not building any more features.
If anybody has feedback or suggestions, I would love to hear from you in the comments!
Have a nice weekend, everybody!
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Super interesting post, definitely going to try out some of these ideas for myself.
As for your cold tweeting experiment: I'd suggest using a social listening tool to find leads that way. Shameless plug: I built one myself and you can probably use the search query you already made in here as well. The major benefit being that it's totally passive, also includes Reddit and HN, and you won't have to spend 4 hours doing it manually again 😛
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Thanks Amos! Interesting tool, I've signed up to try it out. I really like that you already have "freelancers" as an audience. The only thing I didn't quite understand was the Twitter integration. Is it enabled or not for the audience I've selected?
Thanks,
Max
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It's looking good. You can increase response if there is a call to action that is also tied to a specific date. Keep up the great work.
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Thanks! Yeah, I'm trying to keep a balance between providing useful content and advertising the app. Will definitely experiment more with CTAs :)
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Great job! When posting on tiktok and instagram have you used your personal account or created a new account for your app?
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Really liking these marketing focussed articles, keep it up!
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It's really helpful and motivating to see everything you did while advertising your startup this week -- coming from someone who has been doing the same for the past 2 or 3 weeks :)
Out of curiosity, what CMS do you use for your blog posts? I use a pretty convoluted method of Wordpress -> Zapier -> Airtable haha
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Thanks, I'm glad you find it helpful!
Haha wow, Wordpress, Zapier, Airtable! Why is it so complicated? ^_^
The Cakedesk site is a Next.js app, so I just use markdown/mdx to write the blog posts.
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Do you have trouble indexing those articles since you’re writing them with pure HTML? I’m doing the same thing with a few apps and having some indexing issues.
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What do you with pure HTML? Do you mean client-side rendered? In my case, everything is server-side rendered, so it should be perfect for search engines.
However, I do see that my articles aren't currently indexed. I guess Google isn't crawling the site enough, I'll try submitting a Sitemap :)
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Register your site on Google Search Console https://search.google.com/
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I've had the site registered there for a while and I've also submitted my sitemap but Google is still not indexing several pages of mine. Strange!
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you should use a social listening tool for finding leads. All this idea is very fruitful i will definitely try them for myself on my https://decortrendy.com/
project The main benefit is that you have Reddit and HN for the working and communication Thanks very much. -
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Well , I should suggest that you can use social media tools and platforms to grow your network and markleting , Reddit is no doubt very useful for creation and generating the Leads but other platforms and tools can give you the major boost and can grow the network and sales and efforts.Have anice day and thanks me later.
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I love your approach towards building in public. It's like we're all your boss here and you're reporting about your outputs. This is lovely!
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Haha I'm glad you're getting some pleasure out of my struggles ;D
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Hi Macks, you really did a great job! Yes, it really inquire a lot of time while prospecting people manually, and socials are pretty crowded like in a real jungle :D. I always remember the one thought I learnt from my marketing proffesor: if you have limited budget, first you need to experiment with few channels to check the traction and than invest all your time in just one.
I'm curious to ask how can you submit new tool on AlternativeTo?
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Yeah it's tough playing the marketing game, thanks for the encouragement! :)
You can submit tools to AlternativeTo yourself here:
https://share.cleanshot.com/n8YNJ50d
You have to be logged in though for the "suggest alternative" button to be enabled!
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Smart, I like the idea of translating your post instead of writing a new one.
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Am I the only one who cannot access this link in the post?
https://www.notion.so/Don-t-use-Word-to-write-invoices-for-your-freelance-business-834f4619f09b4af7ae6f6c6f2b69ed2eI registered and tried again and got this message:
"You do not have access to Max' Workspace. Please contact an admin to add you as a member."'-
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Oops! I linked the wrong thing, sorry. This is the correct link: https://cakedesk.app/articles/invoices-word
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Glad to hear that the Reddit posts are working!
AlternativeTo also works well for us. Curious if there is a list of similar directory sites somewhere.
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You're an inspiration, man. Please keep posting!
I've also just entered my second marketing week and would love to trade notes at some point!
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Thanks man! I plan to keep posting and I'm happy to trade notes! You can find my Twitter and email in my profile :)
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I’m in the same boat as you. Just finished week 1 of marketing - it’s a total grind.
I’m spending >4 hours a day trying to get the word out through social. But, I did generate 3 sales through Tik tok so totally worth it :)
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Awesome, congrats on the sales! Are you doing anything else on TikTok, apart from publishing the videos?
And yeah this whole marketing thing is a lot of work! But I guess as we get better and more practiced, it will go easier!
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Thanks! Right now I make 2 posts a day on Tik Tok and insta. I have 3 TT burner accounts that I use to try and hype up my videos with comments and reposts (not sure if it works tbh, but at a minimum I get 4 free likes).
I follow a ton of people. I go to my followers, pick one, go to their follower list and follow the top 20 or so. Repeat this a few time throughout the day. I get about a 30% followback rate. We will hit 1000 followers in about 12 of posting. (Unfollow those who don't follow back after a few days)
I send some sort of "Hello!" message to every new follower. No idea if this helps but I think it helps make a connection with my followers.
I reply to every comment on my videos, and like all of them.
Then the last thing I do is scroll through my "for you" feed and like and comment on every video I can. The funnier the better.
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Oh wow, that is way more than I'm doing. I just post the videos at the moment.
I should try this, thanks for sharing such actionable details! 🤓
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Thanks for this documentation! Feeling a bit like you. Released my app and now I try every marketing channel to get users and a feedback!
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Cool! What marketing channels have you tried so far?
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I have worked most with Facebook groups, TikTok, Instagram and reddit! But I must mention that I thought it will be easier. On Reddit every post from me will be deleted for spam or advertising. Its very hard...
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Yeah, Reddit is tricky! Some subreddits have very strict no-self-promo rules. Others tolerate it. I always found it helpful to write a personalized post/comment to the subreddit when promoting my own product.
Also, asking for feedback on Reddit has worked well for me in the past (instead of just asking them download an app for example).
Btw for your landing page, it's hard to see at first glance that it's an app that lets you plan a trip. I have to read the description to come to this knowledge. Maybe a screenshot of the app (with device frame) would be helpful in communicating that
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Thanks for the advice!!
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You forgot to add some hashtags for your tiktok video, would've definitely helped. Right now, literally everyone sees your video. It may be someone that isn't interested in freelancing (95% of people). Use a hashtag like #freelance to get a better audience for your video.
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That's weird because I did add hashtags at the end of the description. Did I do something wrong?
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