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269 points mtlynch | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.703s | source
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arewethereyeta ◴[] No.43953717[source]
TBH, I find it extremely hard to acquire customers. Even with a rock solid product that is NOT, in any way, below the competition. I get the visits but the signups are non existent. Probably because my audience is geared towards programmers and tech oriented businesses. I can do almost any project but marketing kills me.
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flashblaze ◴[] No.43953785[source]
Can you share your experience regarding marketing? Any specific courses you'd recommend, channels you tried and what worked or didn't? I have posted on Twitter, mentioned my product in Reddit comments and also "showcased" it in some Discord servers. All that amounted to around 30 signups in 1 week. But this is not sustainable, and I would like to try some other avenues as well.
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sebastiennight ◴[] No.43955826[source]
Not to be a buzzkill, but GP is sharing that they find marketing extremely difficult and it's not been working yet for them.

This would make them the last person to ask for recommendations (no offense intended).

It would seem preferable to seek advice/recommendations from people with a similar goal/situation to yours who are currently being successful at marketing their startup/product.

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1. arewethereyeta ◴[] No.43957324[source]
Exactly, I'm drowning here and he's asking me for swimming lessons :))
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2. sebastiennight ◴[] No.43986237[source]
I mean, there is definitely wisdom to learn from you (where did you jump in? How deep is it under your feet? Did you find anything that slowed your rate of sinking?)...

But on a more serious note - I've been where you are and the most helpful piece of advice I got at that time was to focus on one number (eg MRR or new lifetime deal sales) and focus each day on one action that could directly make it tick upwards. Indirect actions (eg "building in public on Twitter") do not count.

The other piece that was helpful for me at that time was learning what Paul Graham says about the Stripe founders [0]

> At YC we use the term "Collison installation" for the technique they invented. More diffident founders ask "Will you try our beta?" and if the answer is yes, they say "Great, we'll send you a link." But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. When anyone agreed to try Stripe they'd say "Right then, give me your laptop" and set them up on the spot.

The day after I read this, I just started doing that. Everytime someone would ask me what I did, I would whip out my phone and have this 1 minute, before-and-after "elevator pitch" ready to show what my app did, and directly ask the person if they're interested so we can set them up for a free trial. I signed up a bunch of people over a few weeks just like that, with long free trials (like 1 to 3 months free) with an auto-rebill at full price (I'm talking $299/quarter).

It made a huge difference in the 1st year of going from 0 to 100 users.

[0]: https://paulgraham.com/ds.html