#23 Weekly Dan — User acquisition 2.0
Marketing weeks, Product Hunt alternatives, and communities
Hello there
This is the #23 issue of Weekly Dan.
Welcome to 48 new people who have joined this week. You are nice.
Personal Insight 🤯
We launched Marketing Week Challenge on 15 August.
The results were mixed.
We got fewer paying customers than we expected
We still get sign-ups with 0 promotion efforts
Usually, it is called a failed experiment.
But I think you should give a second chance to some marketing ideas. Because maybe it’s not the idea, but poor execution and bad timing. Who knows?
That’s why we will launch Marketing Week Challenge 2.0 on Monday.
The worst thing that can happen — I will know for sure that this is a bad idea.
Do you have a failed idea worth a second try?
Marketing Tactic 🧭
Product Hunt is the Holy Grail of Indie Hackers.
But is there life beyond it? Absolutely.
Launch your product on these alternative platforms.
You will get traffic, backlinks, and social proof for your landing page.
All of them have a free listing option. Perfection.
Long-term Trend 🛸
Communities, but not Slack
Community-led growth is the sexiest marketing strategy right now.
And there is no doubt why:
Word of mouth is cheaper than paid advertising
Communities are more resilient to crisis
Everyone buys cool brand swag
But here is the problem — community as a Slack server is a dead end.
We all have dozens of channels that were opened only once. The same goes for Discord servers and Telegram chats.
Of course, some of them are active and thriving. But the current proportion doesn’t sound like a working marketing channel.
And huge community-led companies like Notion, Product Hunt, and Figma don’t have a Slack channel either. They know the community is bigger than #general.
Start with these questions if you are serious about community.
Why would people associate themselves with your brand?
How can they share their community belongingness on social media and offline?
How will people from your community connect?
How can they provide value for the community?
It’s a high-effort high-reward marketing tactic.
Thought-provoking Question 🔋
What is your complementary product?
We talk a lot about competitors.
But not everyone competes with you.
There are complementary goods that customers buy together with your product.
For Twitter coaching, it can be a scheduling tool for Twitter
For a website builder, it can be a testimonial tool
For a to-do app, it can be a social media blocker
Two products work better together than alone.
1+1 = 3
So, do you know what customers buy with your product?
If yes, a new partnership awaits you.
Great Resource 🏈
Imagine a call with a $5000 per hour coach for CEOs.
The amount of value should be (at least) insane.
Well, you can check for yourself.
Matt Mochary shared his entire “Mochary Method” for free. This is a 10-page document with links to other documents that cover every possible topic.
And the best part — it’s just a Google Document. No landing page or sign-up form.
Legend.
That’s it!
Mind to give me some feedback?
See you on Tuesday 👋
Absolutely not a CTA 🗿
No pressure. Whenever you are ready.
1) Get 50 actionable marketing models in MakerBox Frameworks
Level up your marketing. Stress-free.
2) Let me roast your landing page.
It will be painful. You will get more paying customers from it.
3) Sponsor the next issue and get high-quality traffic
Let’s promote your product in Weekly Dan.