How I got the first 45 signups to my SaaS app in one day with zero marketing spend
One of many experiments that paid off quicker than expected
The Problem
It is relatively easy to build things, and relatively hard to convince other people to use them. This is a common problem, and often it is the very first customers that are harder to attract. There is no word-of-mouth you can rely upon from an existing customer base so you need to somehow get those first customers on board. I’ll explain below how I did this for my SaaS app at RosterBuddy.app
The Value
I decided to make signup as frictionless as possible.
I created a FREE plan first, and launched that even before I had built the features of a paid plan. My costs are static no matter how many customers I have since I’m on a Bubble.io paid plan. This means that adding 45 new users is the same cost that I currently have when I’m just using the app in my household. The benefit though is that 45 customers will surface any bugs I hadn’t identified; any strange paths they might take within the UI; any feature requests I hadn’t thought of.. So it’s all up-side.
Options
If you follow makers/builders/nocoders/marketers on social media you’ll notice them talking about many different marketing channels, but a common theme is identifying where your customers are hanging out.
Twitter can be a bit of a bubble, in that you may only interact with other makers, and less so with potential customers. It is important to go looking for active online communities where your potential customers hang out.
Channel Selection
I selected Facebook for my initial launch. Even though I’m not an active Facebook user, there are currently 2.8 BILLION users of that platform. At least 400 million of these people are members of Facebook Groups. I know that groups are already niche focussed, and that many people are actively contributing to, and reading, the content there.
In my case, my app is household focussed, rather than tech focussed, so Facebook seemed like a good initial focus, compared to something like IndieHackers, or Product Hunt.
Group Selection
I needed to select some groups. My app is related to the subject area of people who live in homes with other people [families / students / roommates] who have regular cleaning jobs they want done and are interested in making the allocation of work easier.
So.. I logged into Facebook, and clicked the Groups icon
In there you can start searching for any words that relate to the topic of your app.
In my case it was about Cleaning.
You can also fine tune with some of their filtering controls
The search results pane then lists possibly hundreds of groups that relate to your topic. Also listed is the total membership count, and some of these can be massive.. Literally hundreds of thousands.
Once you have selected which groups you are interested in, there is a Join button you need to click
You can’t post to groups you aren’t a member of.
Wait
After joining a group, you’ll probably need to wait to be approved. Part of joining a group will often involve agreeing to the ‘Rules of the Group’. Make sure you read these, and be aware that many groups prohibit promoting your products or external sites.
WHAT!? Then why am I reading this doc? I’m here to promote my product.. Read on...
Permission
Groups on many platforms have Moderators and Facebook is no different. There can be one or several, and most likely they are unpaid and overworked. They are humans like us and we should treat them and their group with respect.
It is important to note that potential customers don’t owe us anything.
Our job is to create amazing value products that will help people out, and if we are lucky they’ll reward us with some of their cash, but to start with we should plan on giving lots and receiving nothing.
My approach was to offer a Free product, to many people, and make it clear that this would make their lives easier. To make any progress in groups I wanted the permission of the moderator to post messages.
Technically once your membership is approved you can post straight away with a ‘sign up now to my website’ kind of message, but I think this is counter productive. What I did instead was to identify who the moderator was, and send them a direct message using Facebook Messenger, asking them for permission.
Here is what I wrote for my product:
"Hi {Moderator Name},
I have a question about the Facebook group ‘{the facebook group name}, and I see you are an admin on the site.
I’m a dad in New Zealand who manages the household cleaning schedule for the family, and found it frustrating enough that I created a website to automatically allocate tasks to family members. I’d like to mention this in your group but don’t want to fall foul of rules regarding promotion so I thought I’d check in with you first.
The app is in it’s beta testing phase currently and is totally free, with plans for a paid plan down the track.
Ideally I’d mention it somehow to your membership so they could sign up and get some benefit from it, and I’d get some useful feedback about how to make it better.
If you are interested, the app is at https://RosterBuddy.app and it allows login via Facebook.
Anyway, thanks for your time, and I hope that facebook messenger was an ok method to ask :)
..Marty"
Wait
Now you wait.
And wait some more.
And wait longer.
In my case I had contacted 3 Group owners, and heard back from 1 of them within a day, but then nothing from the others for 6 days.
What to do if you don’t get a reply? Wait longer
Do you just post anyway? Nope, Wait longer.
If you just go ahead and push your message at people you are likely to burn bridges and get removed from the group.
There are so many groups on Facebook, that you can always try more groups rather than forcing your way into the first group you try.
Approved!
After 6 days I heard back from a moderator in a group that contained over 170 thousand members.
That kind of reach is pretty useful. Even if 1 in 100 users see your post, that’s still 1700 people that see it. Even if only 1 in 100 of these sign up to your app, that’s still 17 people. 17 isn’t a large number, but it could be just the start you need in order for them to start talking about your app to their friends.
Important to note that this very group was one that specifically did not allow promotion of products, yet I was still allowed to post, which shows how important it is to get permission.
The post
So, now I have the ‘blessing’ of the moderator, I can post my pitch.
Here you just explain to the membership the nature of the problem and how your thing will make their lives easier. Also highlight the ways that is easy for them to try [ i.e free, no credit card, no limits etc].
I tried to pitch it in a way that makes me part of their team [ which in fact I am, i.e I actually do need to automate household chore schedules.. That’s why I built the app :) ]
Hi Everyone,
I’m a dad in New Zealand who manages the household cleaning schedule for the family, and found that I was going through the same tasks every week:
Making a list
Allocating cleaning jobs to people
Printing the list
Telling people where the list is
Asking people if they had done their jobs
Reminding people to do their jobs
I found it frustrating enough that I created a website to automatically allocate tasks to household members. I’ve been using this recently and it is solving the above problems, so I’ve opened it up to others. I’d be interested to hear if it's useful for you too.
It is currently FREE and doesn’t have any limits on job count, or team size. I have plans for a more feature rich paid version later but that’s still being developed.
My main goal from this post is to get it in front of more eyes so I can improve the product to make it more useful. And the main goal of the app itself is for us to get more of our time back, by doing less boring and repetitive work
If you are interested it is available at https://RosterBuddy.app
After signup the setup process is to:
Invite team members by email
Add Tasks - they can be small, medium, large
Click Create Roster
That’s it.
The site will generate a weekly cleaning schedule where the workload is allocated as evenly as possible, taking into account the sizing of the tasks. Each person receives an email telling them a new schedule has been created. The same data is viewable on desktop, or mobile, and no installs are required.
Each person sees a default view listing their own chores list, where they can mark them as 'Done'.
Ps, I chatted with the moderator before posting this message as I didn’t want to come across as a sales pitch.
Hopefully this can be a win win in that you get a free product to help you out, and I get some useful feedback about how to make it better.
Thanks for your time.. Marty
Note how I mentioned in the text that the Moderator already knows about my post, i.e I’m surfacing this is ‘allowed’ content.
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Wait again
What! Again!?
Yep, posts go into a pending queue which the Moderator works through. To speed this up, I messaged the Moderator again politely informing them that I had posted. Since we had recently chatted, the context was fresh in their mind and they approved fairly quickly.
The results
Ok, here is what resulted from this process:
Facebook Likes : 37
Facebook Shares : 3
Facebook Comments : 9 including a bug report and some feature requests
New users sign ups in my app : 45
Unique visits : 203
Users inviting other people into ‘teams’ within my app: 18
Tasks created within my app: 60
I also got a lot of useful information:
I found there was a bug in my facebook signup process, which I fixed
I viewed recorded sessions using Statcounter and saw firsthand how users navigate through the onboarding process, which resulted in me improving it
I have returning users :)
Real user data is priceless, and can easily highlight gaps in your app logic that are hard to locate with only test users.
This is a process I intend to repeat with more Facebook groups, and then move on to other channels
Next Steps
So, as you can see, this one mini launch took my app from zero users to 45 users, in one day, and cost me $0.
I didn’t burn any bridges with moderators, I managed to stay respectful and polite through the ‘sales’ pitch, and now there are 45 people who are able to manage their household chores more quickly and easily.
Seeing people actually use the product that I had previously ‘assumed’ they would use is also motivating to continue down this path.
Note: I would recommend posting to one group at a time, so you have a chance at recording which Marketing Actions result in which Outcomes. You want to do more of what works, and it can be hard to assess this if you target 50 things at once.
Thanks for your time and I hope this was helpful. If you want more info like this, please follow me on Twitter @MartyLindsay_NZ