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Ask HN: What are your best tips or resources when it comes to marketing?

79 points| murph37 | 5 years ago

I want to get better at marketing my side projects when I finish them so more people can use them. For example, I built Hacky, a free iOS Hacker News app, and I'd love to get it in front of more people.

Outside of posting on HN, Indie Hackers, Reddit, or paying for Ads, I'm not sure where to get started on marketing.

What are your best tips or resources when it comes to marketing? How did you learn how to market?

Link to Hacky for those interested: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dark-hacker-news/id1459946382

31 comments

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redsymbol|5 years ago

Before you do anything else, read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484825985

Don't rush through it. Read slowly, if needed, to get full understanding.

Source: I'm a software engineer whose marketing skills have so far generated multiple 6 figures in pretax profit, closing on 7.

kidgorgeous|5 years ago

I never comment on hn posts, but I had to login to a long dormant account just to back up what this guy is saying.

OP, if you're actually reading these comments, you need this book. It's a great primer on Copywriting and Direct Response Marketing, which imo is the best form of marketing.

Allright, I'll log back out now.

supersrdjan|5 years ago

I was hoping the link would be for Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, which is actually on Gary Halbert's (the author of the linked book) list of essential reads. The more advertising/copywriting books I read, the more I discover how much out there is derivative of Eugene Schwartz, who wrote Breakthrough Advertising in the sixties. Although you might not want to get it from Amazon.

andrei_says_|5 years ago

I tried but it’s basically drivel.

A guy in jail discovers the benefits of regular exercise and writes instructional letters to his son with the enthusiasm of someone discovering that adding salt to your food makes it taste better and shouting it from the rooftops as if it wasn’t something everybody knows already.

Honestly, what made you recommend this book? What concrete advice in it did you find valuable?

murph37|5 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm always game for a good read. What is favorite thing about this book in particular?

nickkline|5 years ago

Aside from identifying your audience, determining what distinguishes the side project from competing or similar apps, turning those distinctions into decent sounding value propositions & getting those out in front of your potential users... getting a spot on HN's front page is always a good start :-) (but it helps if you have all the other work done first so the visitors understand what the app does when you get the resulting traffic)

You could also try and find people whose input/feedback would be helpful to the project & beg them to try the app...this is usually only effective if you've earned their trust by engaging with them for a while...so it helps to be active with your potential customers ahead of time)

murph37|5 years ago

"...determining what distinguishes the side project from competing or similar apps..."

I think this is a simple point, but an important one. For the Hacker News App example, I really need to try and show why someone would download 'Hacky' as opposed to all of the other Hacker News reader apps of there. Ultimately, that's what captures users, especially when the apps are similar.

kthejoker2|5 years ago

I'll give a shout out to Ries and Trout's 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/d...

It's a quick read, well-written, and the points it makes are as true now as ever, especially I think in terms of true "marketing" - that is, identifying the subsegment among the total addressable market for your particular product that you have the best shot of converting into paid customers, and some approaches for doing so.

murph37|5 years ago

Never heard of this one, but I'll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation!

calicruisin|5 years ago

You could list Hacky on Product Hunt if you haven't already. Also some people seem to like Triberr (I'm not one of them).

murph37|5 years ago

You're right I should give ProductHunt another go. I listed Hacky on ProductHunt a long-time ago by it's former name 'Dark Hacker News'. It's a much different and better app now so it'd be worth listing it again.

Do you have any tips for listing it on ProductHunt?

ffpip|5 years ago

You just marketed Hacky to us. Congrats!

Or was that your intention all along? :)

murph37|5 years ago

Thanks! :) I figured if I could market and learn about marketing at the same time then why not go for it?

DeanWormer|5 years ago

I enjoyed Traction https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...

It's written by the founder of DuckDuckGo and he talks through all the different potential marketing channels and how to choose what's best for your company.

I thought it was pretty actionable and there wasn't much "fluff".

murph37|5 years ago

I've heard this one brought up before, but I've never read it. I didn't realize it was the founder of DuckDuckGo either so that's pretty cool. I'll add it to the list!

ollerac|5 years ago

I've been learning more about marketing over the past 5 years. Here's what I've learned so far:

1. Pick one strategy to test at a time and commit to it

2. Pick one platform/audience and commit

3. Have a newsletter and funnel people to it

These steps are mostly because I'm a solo founder and don't have a lot of time. If I experimented with multiple strategies at the same time, I'd quickly run out of time for development.

And building a newsletter is just the most reliable way of contacting people en mass these days. Twitter/Facebook/etc. all have algorithms that can filter you out. Email is a more reliable way of connecting.

As far as marketing strategies go, as a dev, I'd highly recommend the "indie maker / build in public" strategy. This is perfect for devs because it means a lot of your effort is duplicated as marketing.

Here's how it works:

1. Sign up for Makerlog/Twitter/WIP.chat or another community that lets you build in public

2. Post what you're working on before, during, and after it's done

3. Ask for advice and feedback when you need it

This will let people get involved in your product's development and give them a reason to cheer you on when you launch your product or get a new customer. My most popular tweet of the past year (other than my launch post) was getting my first customer. It was also responsible for me getting my second and third customers.

Once you've gotten comfortable on these platforms, you can try this more full process (which I outlined for myself yesterday):

1. Post a rough idea for an article/product/ebook/course to your social network of choice and get a feel for what people like or don't like about the idea. This doesn't have to be a fancy post, just a sentence or two. E.g. "I'm thinking of making a beginner JS course, what do you think?"

2. A few days later, ask a question about how to proceed with your idea or if anyone has done it before. E.g. "Which course platform for releasing paid courses do you like the best?"

3. Again, a few days later, post an outline of your approach for tackling this idea or talk about the content/features you're thinking about including in it. This will again help you measure interest and see where the real value of your idea is. E.g. "Here's what I plan on covering in my course: ___. Would this be useful for beginners to JS?"

4. Work for a few days. Then post a preview of the progress you've made so far. This could be a few lines of code, a blurry screenshot of the final design, or even a picture of you working on your laptop. Just show people that you're actively working on this and give them something to get excited by. Remember: they're probably just as interested in your journey as the final product. Don't focus on the product too much — you're also telling a story about what it takes to build a product.

5. Offer a taste of the final product. Make a thread or post with some of the actual content/features of the ebook/post/product. This could be a 5 minute video from the first lesson of your course. A screencast of you using your app. Or a the first page or two from your eBook.

6. Post a beta tester sign up form that gives people early (or instant) access to the MVP version of your idea. People who sign up are your true fans and will probably give you the best feedback over time. This form can be made with any email marketing software.

7. A week or two later, post a few quotes from early users showing what people said about their first experience of your product. E.g. "I wish I had this when I was first learning JS. I'm learning new things every 2 minutes!"

8. Finally, plan your launch! A few weeks or days before your big launch day, tell people you're launching. Tell them your goals, your hopes, and what your product will let people do (that they couldn't do before) once it's out in the world.

9. Post on Product Hunt, Hacker News, as well as on your social platform of choice. Make sure the product doesn't feel done yet. You want it to be a little rough around the edges. But it should solve a problem and that problem should be clearly stated on the home page.

10. After the launch, post about a piece of feedback you got from a user who signed up during the launch. It could be negative or positive piece of feedback, as long as it was useful to you.

11. Post about an update you made because of user feedback. This will show that your audience is important to you and are active participants in your journey.

12. Don't stop posting. Repeat the last two step (gathering feedback and making improvements to the product) over and over again until your product really starts to get good.

12. After you've improved the product enough that it can be considered a 2.0, launch it again.

The nice thing about this process is that it's symbiotic. Your audience benefits just as much as you do: for every idea of theirs you implement, they benefit by a) seeing their opinions matter and b) getting a final product that's more useful to them.

And, to top it off, you and your audience get to create a story together. It's the story of a fledgling idea coming into reality and finding its way. And they get to help it grow and help it along. It's a pretty magical process when it's done with intention and the desire to make people's lives better.

chrisweekly|5 years ago

Like most good advice, this risks being dismissed as obvious and simple; thanks for posting it anyway. Good stuff.

sergiomattei|5 years ago

Founder of Makerlog here. Thanks for plugging the platform!

mindhash|5 years ago

The best channel imo for side projects is word of mouth virality.

You need to design wom mostly through features. I spent a lot of time learning what makes people talk about products.

You need to use triggers like a special feature that your user will talk to friends about or a cue to enable user to share a story through app with others.

murph37|5 years ago

I agree! I think 'word of mouth' marketing is very powerful. Although, I don't think I've ever thought about building product features with it in mind. Thanks for the input!

lmiller1990|5 years ago

The main thing that worked for me is giving away good stuff for free. I wrote a book [0] which has tons of free info about Vue testing, then I put a small advertisement in the corner. I was able to get around 1.1k emails over the period of a year, and I occasionally send them out info on my new products.

I always ensure to include free stuff in the email, so people can always have something exciting to look forward to when they see an email from me.

[0] https://lmiller1990.github.io/vue-testing-handbook/

rsoto|5 years ago

My #1 recommendation would be to read Seth Godin, he has a blog[1] and he writes daily. More often than not, each week he has a piece of advice that ends up being really valuable.

One day after reading his blog for several months, I asked myself -- if this is what he offers for free, I wonder how good his books must be! And that's how I started reading his books. I would recommend you Purple Cow, Ideavirus and Permission Marketing, but most of them are very good.

1: https://seths.blog/

murph37|5 years ago

I've heard of Seth Godin a lot and read his short blog posts here and there. However, I've never read any of his books. Which of those 3 books is your favorite?

marmot777|5 years ago

Subscribe to Total Annarchy, Ann Handley’s outstanding content marketing newsletter that comes ever two weeks. She’s the person who coined the term “content marketing.”

https://annhandley.com/newsletter/

sloshnmosh|5 years ago

The late great comedian Bill Hicks had the best advise for marketers and advertisers.