3 Word-of-Mouth tactics that work [with founder examples]

I've analyzed all 497 Indie Hackers interviews and discovered several acquisition channels that worked consistently for founders (see Zero to Users for more details).

Over 19 founders used various active word-of-mouth strategies to get customers. Today I'll be talking about 3 of them, which you can also take and apply to your own product.

1. Find a Segment of Users With an Audience That is Also Your Audience

This is what Blender Market ($232k/mo), a marketplace for artists to sell 3D models, did. Blender Market focused on attracting sellers with an audience as their early adopters:

Most of these early sellers were freelancers and prominent artists in the community.

Our pitch was help them generate some passive side income and let us handle the infrastructure.

This approach paid off because those artists themselves had an audience that wanted to learn and buy from them:

The advantage of attracting sellers that already had an audience was that they multiplied our initial customer reach dramatically by sharing their products.

How to use this strategy: You don't have to be a marketplace to use this strategy. Just ask yourself: Is there a segment of my users that has an audience which happens to be my audience as well?

Examples:

• You have a product that targets bloggers. A part of those those people write to other bloggers (on things like increasing their audience, having a better blog, etc.) Can you get in touch with the bloggers and get them to promote you to your audience?

• You have a product that connects teachers and students. Should you focus first on teachers or students? Using this approach, teachers would be the right answer because the teacher's audience (students) are also your audience.

• You have a product that targets developers. Some of those developers may be influential in their industry with many other developers following them on Twitter.

Of course, the other part is getting your users to spread the word about you. With marketplaces like Blender Market, the value is implicit (we'll help you monetize your followers). But with a SaaS for bloggers, for example, you may need to include some other incentive (like getting access to a higher tier, or an exclusive, private feature).

2. Expand Within the Company's Network

This is a pretty common strategy, called "land and expand", used by companies that sell enterprise-level SaaS.

What I found is you can use this no matter who you're selling to. Take Dependabot ($14k/mo, acquired by Github), which is a tool to keep your software dependencies up-to-date. They found that having a personal, open-source free tier helped them with getting their foot in the door of companies:

We've kept personal and open-source accounts free, and we'll always continue doing this since those users are great advertisements for us and unlikely to use the service if asked to pay.

Our costs are relatively low so that model works well, and we've already had reports of people using Dependabot on their own projects, enjoying it, and then encouraging their employer to do the same.

Thankbox ($6k/mo) is a tool to help you send group gift cards online. They found a lot of office teams were using their product, and once a person signed up, they recommended Thankbox to their team:

In those first few months I also noticed the network effects kicking in. That buddy of mine at Ubisoft who bought the first Thankbox? Since he introduced it in his team I've had over 20 different sales just from their company alone. Or I'd noticed someone would get a Thankbox when they left their company, and then suggest it as the group card tool to use in their new place of work.

How to use this strategy: There are a lot of things you can try here:

• Introduce a free tier (like Dependabot). Then monitor if people within a company sign up, and then encourage them to introduce your product to other colleagues.
• Do a proactive outreach. Set up triggers like seeing 2 people with the same domain sign up, or 2 people from the same company's IP address sign up. Try to learn the story and get even more people within that company to use you.

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3. Influence the Influencers

This is what Anchor Hosting ($20k/mo), a Wordpress hosting provider, did. Instead of focusing on targeting the end user (small businesses), they focused on targeting people who influence them:

Anchor Hosting has grown through word of mouth. Nearly all new hosting customers come through existing relationships with web designers, web developers, and agencies. I've found that most people host their WordPress website with whichever web host was recommended by the one who built them their website. Because of this, I haven’t spent any time or energy on marketing or advertising to customers, but have instead focused on attracting the web designers, web developers, and agencies who will organically refer customers my way.

How to use this strategy: Analyze the process your audience goes through before they buy your product/service. Are there any people/companies involved in that process?

Examples:

• If you're targeting people building a home, they're probably in touch with architects. Can you get architects to recommend your product as the "next step" after buying the home?
• If you're providing done-for-you digital SEO services, your audience was probably reading information on SEO and/or working with a company that defined their digital marketing strategy. Can you find firms that work on digital marketing in general (but don't specialize in a particular marketing channel) and pitch them?

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