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

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

#21

Post by murph37 »

mindhash wrote: post #7

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.

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!

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

#22

Post by murph37 »

nickkline wrote: post #5

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…

"...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.

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

#23

Post by kennymeyers »

murph37 wrote: post #17
ffpip wrote: post #3

You just marketed Hacky to us. Congrats! Or was that your intention all along? :)

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

This is good marketing!

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

#24

Post by semicolonandson »

Like video content?

I'm a programmer/marketer with a YouTube channel teaching the SEO, copywriting, and marketing techniques I used to earn a cumulative 7 figures with my Rails app (2—sided marketplace for college notes).

https://youtube.com/channel/UC17mJJnvzAa_e9qQqLIfIeQ

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

#25

Post by lmiller1990 »

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/

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

#26

Post by semicolonandson »

semicolonandson wrote: post #24

Like video content? I'm a programmer/marketer with a YouTube channel teaching the SEO, copywriting, and marketing techniques I used to earn a cumulative 7 figures with my Rails app (2—sided marketplace for college notes). https://youtube.com/channel/UC17mJJnvzAa_e9qQqLIfIeQ

Best place to start is the Get Your First 1000 Users playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpkoC9yJXDKlGz7SPwofn...

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

#27

Post by ApolloRising »

murph37 wrote: post #14
redsymbol wrote: post #6

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.

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

After you read the first one that was mentioned - Read this one, same author, buy both: The Halbert Copywriting Method Part III

Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DYP3MMU

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

#28

Post by redsymbol »

murph37 wrote: post #14
redsymbol wrote: post #6

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.

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

You are thinking about it wrong.

This is not just "a good read". And what is my favorite part does not matter.

Because you don't even know how to ask the right questions yet. Think back before you learned anything about coding; back then, how could you have asked anything but naive questions about how you built Hacky? You're in that situation now, with marketing.

Read this book with the intention of letting it rewire your fundamental assumptions about what marketing is and how it works. If you do that, you will finish a very different person than when you started.

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

#30

Post by sergiomattei »

ollerac wrote: post #4

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 developme…

Founder of Makerlog here. Thanks for plugging the platform!
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