Tell me your way marketing your app to get first paid user

Step 1. Provide genuine value.

yes, if you want to take the build-in-public approach to growth. but it can take a long time, and you need to enjoy the creator/content part of it, so if you want to grow something today, i would start in cold outreach + existing network, and then just share your journey as you go to build that MOAT over time

im building a scrapper for founders who are struggling with marketing. You deploy and agent and it scraps the web for people who are already looking for your product, so that you can wake up to hundreds of leads. i dediced to build it after i failed at ~5 SaaS products over the last year, happy to discuss or share my experience over DM

My product works on top of databases to help keep the data maintained. So, my starting place was any company with a database. But my background is in nonprofits, specificially associations, so I am focused there. So just from that perspective, I've narrowed the market from tens of millions of potential customers to about 100,000, or so. Since I have more than 23 years in the industry, I knew what my ICP was - anyone with respnsibility to maintain the data. Unfortunately, that's difficult to ascertain, becuase nonprofits are all different sizes, so anyone from the CEO to a coordinator could be responsible. Add to that, it could be someone in Operations, Membership, Events, Marketing, IT, or any combination of the above. With 100,000 target companies and potentially 10 different people responsible at a mid-size org, targeting associations directly is difficult. That's when I landed on data consultants, database providers, etc. Many of these orgs have built-in partnership opportunities and I've taken advantage of that already. There is also an upcoming conference that is specifically for association executives, so I'm using that as an opportunity to reach out to potential partners. One positive about my situation is that it's a tight-knit industry. There is almost nobody I want to talk to that isn't a second-level connection on LinkedIn. The people I already knew introduced me to others, who have introduced me to others, etc. I'm not shying away from the end user, because ultimately they have to be the one to decide to use my service. But I'm a little more passive about that right now. My main focus is developing strategic parters.

I’m beating the pavement, 2026 style. I started marketing to end users, but realized there are just too many of them. I know the industry really well, even so it’s an ocean of people. I have shifted my focus to strategic partners. People that already have deep relationships and have complimentary technology. Their customers need my solution, and they will benefit from their customers using it. It’s going really well so far. A lot more meetings than reaching out to my end user.

the most important thing is to have conversations before building your product. after you know what people want and what you are doing, cold outreach is the best for early stage products. Every one of us have the same problem distribution. cold outreach beats trying yo go viral though posts that algorithm doesn't care about. People treat launch posts like jsut ads and scroll away. So when you find people who are alredy looking for your tool, complaining about the problem you are solving, your Dm or e mail stops getting seeing as just another spam ad, instead people feel heard, making it way easier to close the deal

I think the first paid user comes from relationships, not reach. I'd rather have 20 meaningful conversations than 2,000 random visitors. Those conversations improve your product, your messaging, and eventually your conversions.

own distribution first, grind your way there, or run cold outreach/paid ads. trustmrr would be nowhere without marc's existing following

Just create videos in ig and TikTok with demo