Tips and tricks for product beta launches

I myself built multiple profitable products and have answered this multiple times to my 15000 subscribers at Micro SaaS Ideas

Ok. Here are quick pointers on what you need to validate your idea. There is no single way to do this. Validating a product is not just about validating the technical feasibility but also validating your reach capability. You should validate how far you can reach and get waitlist subscribers/paying subscribers with your marketing/sales. Sometimes, you don’t even have to build the full product or even build the MVP to understand your reach.

But below pointers should give you some direction without losing a lot of time.

Don’t work on the below things:

• Registering a company
• No need to outsource any dev work
• Don’t worry about making pitch decks
• Don’t worry about talking to investors
• Don’t worry about setting up email for the new domain

Work on the below things instead:

• Register a domain. Preferably look for a .com domain. But, Google SEO treats all domain extensions similarly.
• If you want to search domain names easily, go here and start searching InstantDomainSearch
• If you are not able to get good domain names, check on CunningBot for a better combination of words
• Now that you got a domain create a landing page. Don’t spend a lot of time building the world’s best landing page. Get one using any of the website builders and have a waitlist form.
• For Waitlist forms, you can use any popular form builders like TypeForm, Tally, etc., and add the form link to the webpage.
• Create a few graphics using Canva if you want for social share images or for images you need on the website.
• Submit your website to Betalist (BetaList takes six weeks to approve and publish your site)
• You will get an email from BetaList once your product is live. DM me on Twitter, and I will support your launch on your BetaList launch day. With a little support, you can stay on top of BetaList. BetaList doesn’t give any heads-up before the launch. It will just send you an email once it's live. So, keep eye on and use the launch day opportunity. Executed well and with a decent niche, you can aim to get 30-50 signups.
• A few other places you can launch your product - BetaPage, StartUpStash, StartUpBase, Launched, LaunchingNext, SideProjectors
• If you have a Facebook presence, join these Facebook groups - SaaS Mantra - 9.4K members, Scaling SaaS Founders - 6K members, SaaS Founders Network - 12.2K members. Don’t spam these groups. Genuinely build relations.
• Talk to your friends, family, and colleagues who might benefit from the product or at least talk about your product in their circles. Push for a favor to start posting about your product on their socials (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, where ever it's a good fit)
• There are many places listed earlier in the book to post about your startup. Post it in all those places where you see it's a fit. It’s a tedious job, but it is worth the effort. Ignore communities that you think won’t fit your product/use case.
• Make use of online communities like Reddit and IndieHackers. For example, Reddit pretty much has a subreddit for most topics/niches. See to post to those subreddits. The same is the case with posting to IndieHackers. Don’t just post a single line. Build a story around what made you pick this idea and what stage you are in, and ask for feedback. You may need to post multiple times (with different asks/types of questions) so that people will start recognizing your product. If you are not active on any of these platforms, start being active. Feel free to DM me on my Twitter and send me the link; I would be happy to upvote. Upvotes bring the post to the top of the home page, driving more traffic. Also, do the same with Reddit and post to multiple subreddits like crazy but be careful not to spam/cheat people with different stories. Internet audiences are fast enough to catch you.
• Other places you should start interacting - Quora, Lobsters (assuming it fits. Lobsters is more around deep tech). Quora has a lot of topics being discussed. If you have picked a decent niche, you should have hundreds of questions about your niche. Pick a tool like QAPop and see which questions you should answer. There is a free plan on QAPop that you can use.
• Use Hackernews to make a quick one or two posts. Hackersnews is almost like hit or miss. if it hits well, you get good traffic (in fact, massive traffic). If not, ignore it and move on. Don’t spam. If it goes well, make sure to reply to each comment to stay on top for a longer time.
• Write a few articles on Medium, DevTo about your product. Write much longer articles with a detailed vision and what/why you are building this. If you have a popular competitor, write an article on ‘How I am building an alternative for XYZ’ or ‘Why did I decide to build XYZ alternative’. Make sure the article is long and detailed, with at least 3000-4000 words. Having these kinds of articles will help you show your command and authority in the niche. Also, this will help you to showcase when you have a waitlist user base.
• Submit your website to the Google Search console. Helps with SEO. Instead of waiting for Google to crawl your site, this will help notify Google to crawl your site.
• Look what keywords (long tail keywords are popular in your niche or for competitors) and use those keywords on your home page or create internal pages with those keywords and link all pages. Use tools like UberSuggest that are free to see the keyword stats or the competitor stats/backlinks/traffic volume etc.
• Bet you Social Media - Use strategies like #BuildInPublic and use those hashtags. If you have a presence on social media, see if any influencers/accounts with more followers can mention or talk about your product. Grab their attention, and you can ping and ask when it's the right time. But make sure the request is polite and not spam.
• Use proper hashtags on social media to gain more traction.
• Try a little bit of cold outreach if you think a few users on social media can benefit from your product. DM them to see if they are interested. Leverage all your social networks. Ask your colleagues, friends, and family to support and share on LinkedIn.
• [Paid, not free]. You can also try to test a few ads if you have a budget. But don’t spend too much. Make sure you capture the leads with your CTA and get them signed up for the waitlist.
• Think of some viral hacks/content you can get some attention for your product and leverage that.
• Then once you have some traction and once people recognize your product, plan for ProducHunt launch. If executed well, this could give you a good number of waitlist signups. DM me when you are live on ProductHunt. I would be happy to support you. Note that every vote/comment is crucial on launch day.
• Keep posting your progress on social media and forums to drive more traction. Talk about landing page improvement, waitlist updates, your calls with the waitlist audience, show stats (traffic or anything), build a story, and make people interested to see how you are making progress. This will eventually be a big driving factor when you launch your product.
• Repurpose content/posts across platforms. Spend a crazy amount of time marketing your product (or even sales through cold outreach, LinkedIn Connections, Twitter DMs)

If you repeatedly follow all of these and iterate, you will have a good number of waitlist signups. Make sure you keep the signups warm. As soon as they signup, push them and see if they can get on a call with you and make notes as you discuss. For every 100 signups, a decent conversion rate should be 3% to 5% if you are targeting the right audience and have added a little friction to the signup form (Adding friction to the signup form with more questions improves the waitlist quality). If they are interested in the product, see to offer a Lifetime deal or a good discount and sign them up for payment. If not, make notes and ask them what can make it better.

Long term game

• Build relations with other founders. It will be helpful to support your launches, and also, you can learn a lot from budding founders.
• Relationships take time. It's give, give, give and take. So, you may need to spend time supporting others too.
• Be active in the communities you join. This takes time, but it is worth investing time for a long-term journey. Closed communities are sometimes better for getting faster attention. For example, I run MicroSaaSHQ community - a closed community for builders, founders, and makers.
• The SEO game - Learn about SEO basics and make sure to follow the basics. SEO takes time but helps. Learn about Programmatic SEO and see if you can apply any hacks around your keywords.

Note that throughout the process, you are validating your reach. Every person has a certain reach. You are just validating your reach with all of these steps. If you couldn't get even 10-20 signups after iterating all of this and spent a few weeks/months around this, you may need to seriously think, look back and analyze if you want to change the scope of the idea and see what went wrong.

I also wrote a book around this at Zero To Founder

You should spend some time on Indie Hackers and Twitter to build a group of 10-15 people willing to invest their time in helping you with feedback. In exchange, you can give them a lifetime license to your product.
Then make a group on Twitter, Slack, or Discord. It doesn't matter, but a place where you can keep the conversation going.

Maybe do weekly checking, keep them updated and show you prioritise their issues and ideas as they spend their time on your product. And you've chosen them because they're your target group.

Then when you reach an MVP stage, you open up to the public and run a public beta where you onboard users 1 by 1. Or you just open up. But continue with your beta group as long as it makes sense.

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