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Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

posthog.com

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Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#261

Post by danenania »

22289d wrote: post #191
wholinator2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for context, your responses read here as full of sarcasm and self assurance. I think your ideas might be more well received if you communicated them with a kinder and more accepting tone. For what it's worth it does sound like you spend a lot of time in toxic online communities, and i believe you have an expertise in those areas.

Man, HN has sure changed. Clearly I'm not among fellow hackers if people are worried about tone rather than truth. If someone needs their ass kissed to recognize I'm right, that's on them. Not me.

HN is one of the few places on the internet that there's even the slightest chance at having a substantive discussion that isn't full of short, mocking, casually dismissive comments ala Reddit and Twitter. Tone is crucial to HN's quality. Encouraging a sincere and charitable tone is one of HN's founding principles and is the main focus of the posting guidelines.

The poster you're replying to is 100% correct.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#262

Post by matthewowen »

gascoigne wrote: post #252
musicale wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad PR is good for awareness intuit/turbotax. Will never use them, ever. Looking forward to the day that product is eliminated from existence by regular online filing. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...

What do you use to do your taxes then?

Most people who are able to use a calculator could do their taxes using https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...

I think that TurboTax is a winner in the “TurboTax lobbies to make the tax code so complex that you have to use TurboTax” narrative because it makes people more afraid of doing their taxes through the tools the IRS provides than they should be.

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#263

Post by j4yav »

personjerry wrote: post #255
hannofcart wrote: post #13

The article has some helpful points. But as a programmer-SAAS-founder-who-took-over-ads operation, I have some tips on some insights we gleaned doing paid ads (and getting it to be profitable for us): 1. Most important tip: is your product ready for ads? - Do not do paid ads too early. - Do it once you know that your product is compelling to your target audience. - Ads are likely an expensive way of putting your prod…

> - Do it once you know that your product is compelling to your target audience. I thought a good way to test if your product is compelling is to build a landing page, put out a little bit of cash for ads, and see if you get sign ups?

I was wondering the same thing. Is there a new ad-free version of this?

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#264

Post by kromem »

dale_glass wrote: post #18

> This is why we ask all users where they heard about PostHog whenever they sign up or book a demo – it's a simple (optional) free text field. Enough of our users say 'ad on Google' or similar that we know paid ads do actually reach a large chunk of them. You have to be careful with how you word questions. If you ask how I first noticed that something exists, then yes, an ad may well be it because ads are so in your…

Paths to conversion are typically rather complex and have multiple touch points.

Awareness is a big deal and a necessary step before it's possible to even be in a consideration set.

For example, TV ads typically rank very low in any self-reported market research on influencing purchase intent.

And yet if you run a test in a DMA pulling TV ads you'll see sales decrease dramatically.

While the industry likes to pretend it has come a long way, in many cases marketing and advertising is still just as much "I know half of my ads work and half don't, I just don't know which half is which."

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#266

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

dale_glass wrote: post #139
cj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, "Word of mouth" for all services. This is one of the most difficult marketing channels for marketers to promote. It basically requires astroturfing (e.g. planting biased questions on social platforms and encourage organic engagement). I hate to admit this but this is how I got the first 10-20 paid users for my B2B SaaS. Our product is a dev tool that integrates with a bunch of other tools, so we found…

> In other words, "Word of mouth" for all services. Yup. I avoid every single ad I can on principle. Only exception I used to make was for youtube sponsors, mostly out of laziness, until I finally installed sponsorblock. I've gotten so good at it that at this time I haven't the faintest idea of what movies are there to see at the cinema. Not a single one. I'm probably a very extreme case in actually having succeeded…

Read the post again. "Word of mouth" was in scare quotes because this "word of mouth" is actually astroturfed product placement "native" advertising.

(People forget that humans invented the advertising industry precisely to shield civilization from this kind of "word of mouth".)

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#267

Post by uxcolumbo »

hannofcart wrote: post #13

The article has some helpful points. But as a programmer-SAAS-founder-who-took-over-ads operation, I have some tips on some insights we gleaned doing paid ads (and getting it to be profitable for us): 1. Most important tip: is your product ready for ads? - Do not do paid ads too early. - Do it once you know that your product is compelling to your target audience. - Ads are likely an expensive way of putting your prod…

Great tips thanks for sharing. The login button requiring a scroll to come into view, I assume this was on mobile?

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#268

Post by RegW »

joshstrange wrote: post #91

Quora being a good option is incredibly surprising to me. I never click on Quora links as 90% of the time the "answers" are just ads or people who want to pretend they are a bigger deal than they are and know more than they do. I'm a little surprised podcast ads weren't tried, mostly because I'd love to know how well those do/don't work out for a tool like this.

> Quora being a good option is incredibly surprising to me.

Me too - I'd never heard of it, so I felt compelled to go and look. Bounced off the signup page and thought "That's probably why more people don't use it".

It might be worth signing up, but as I have no clue what it is or if it's any good, why would I invest that time?

Re: Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we've learned

#270

Post by tigershark »

22289d wrote: post #112
newZWhoDis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That culture is damned effective at filtering out bullshit and bad actors and getting to the facts. Meanwhile the “inverse Reddit” investing strategy works even better than “inverse Cramer” Reddit comments are the whiskey to YouTube comment’s beer on the stupidity index.

I guess it depends at what point you buy. A lot of people on Reddit got generational fuck you money betting on GME, Bitcoin and a lot of other stuff. But if you're getting your Reddit tips from CNN then ya you're probably too late.

Yeah, right. Strangely you didn’t mention BBBY.
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