The 5 marketing channels I used to grow from $0 to $4k/mo in 3 months
TL;DR
I made $0 in the previous 18 months. But in May, I started seriously do marketing and stopped shipping new stuff. Here’s my results so far:
- In past 3 months, I got 135k+ visit to my 2 projects (128k to my mobile app project, and a 5k to the other B2B SaaS project)
- ~$7.5k revenue made
- ~$4k monthly revenue in June
- ~$1.2k spent marketing budget spent
- Running ads with US$0.09 CPC
- Grew from 300 to 5000 followers on Twitter/X
The story
I started building startups back in 2022.
I launched 4 projects and none of them made any money. Just 3 months ago, I was still making $0 with my SaaS.
I felt like a failure and did not know how to further grow my project.
I was stuck in the loop of adding features and iterating for the sake of iterating. Now on hindsight I realise that I was procrastinating and avoiding marketing (developer mindset)
I did only one thing that changed everything:
I started seriously and actually doing marketing.
Below are the 5 marketing channels I used that brought me results, with detail examples.
1. Instagram Reels ($0 spent, 130k+ visits)
Mobile app + short-form videos are a killer combo.
I started making Instagram Reels consistently in May, basically posting 1 reel per day. And the traffic is insane.
The instagram account for my app (a habit tracker app) got more than 15 million views and now have almost 25k followers.
Some tips if you want to make Reels:
- Short-form videos work best for B2C. If you’re making B2B products, don’t consider making Reels.
- Make sure your UI design is good. A good UI like my app Rise will instantly grab the attention and interest of the viewer.
- You don’t really need to show your face.
- Either make memes or POV videos. Easiest to go viral + to produce.
- Add some bait to invite the viewer to comment (e.g. an inside joke/a typo on the video)
- Get a better camera. Video quality matters. I used to make videos with iPhone but the video quality was horrible. Then I bought a Lumix G85 to make the Reels and it paid off.
I shared more on how to make viral reels in this youtube video. It’s 30 mins long, but be patient and finish the course and you can take away lots of value.
Note: I didn’t run a TikTok account because TT is banned in Hong Kong, and most of my Instagram content don’t work well in TikTok.
2. Meta Ads (~$800 spent, ~9k clicks)
I also ran Meta Ad campaign for Rise. I spent almost US$800 (the currency shown in the picture is HKD) running ads on Facebook and Instagram.
I tried both web traffic campaign (i.e. the call to action of the campaign is visit Rise’s landing page) and app install campaign (the CTA will be app install). I ended up investing most of the money to web traffic because the cost per result is 50% cheaper.
I managed to reach around US$0.09 per click. That’s very low for industry standard (usually for mobile app ad campaign, we’re talking about anywhere between $0.5 to even $2 per click.
And my secret to a very low CPC: steal VC funded companies’ ads on Meta Ad Library.
Search a product in your niche that’s VC backed and running ads.
The secret is to filter ads that are only active, and find ads that have been active for the longest.
You can’t see how their ad is performing. But if their ads have been running for a long time, we have very good reason to believe that the ad is high performing.
That’s trickle-down economics in the SaaS world.
Thank you Meta for building Meta Ad Library (very smart decision, Zuck).
3. Twitter/X personal brand ($0 spent, ~10k clicks)
Twitter (I’m still used to calling it Twitter. I don’t like the naming X) is still a very underrated SaaS marketing channel.
It’s not just a channel to get more top of funnel traffic to your product, because sometimes you don’t get users that fits your customer persona. But I would still invest time in Twitter because you’re not just building a channel for your current project. You’re building a channel for all your past and future projects.
For my growth, I started recording my #buildinpublic (a sub community in Twitter where people share their indie startup/bootstrapping story) journey in January 2024. I started sharing stories about building and growing Rise first, although the people I engage with on X are not my target audience.
But as I share the continuous growth of users base and revenue about Rise, I started to get more following. I was at around 300 in January, and grew to around 800 in May.
Then the compound interest started to pay off. I launched a demo for my B2B SaaS project MarketingAI (an AI to research and generate a 25 page marketing proposal for your SaaS product), showing how the app can gets you channel analysis, content sample and ROI projection just with one link. The video went viral and is still the most viewed post on my account today. It also got me 400+ beta testers to iterate the idea.
My account then started to grow much faster. From 800 followers in May 2024, I now have more than 5000 followers in August.
And since most of my followers are indie hackers and SaaS builders, they are the perfect audience for MarketingAI too. I managed to drive 5k+ clicks to my landing page and around 300 sign ups, making around $1k revenue from MarketingAI so far.
4. UGC creator sponsorship ($300 spent, ~2k clicks)
In the beginning of growing Rise, before making organic reels, I reached out to Instagram theme pages in the self improvement niche so sponsored reels.
There’s a lot of ‘motivational reels’ account nowadays on Instagram, so it’s easy to find them. I managed to find 6 accounts that agreed to make 1 sponsored reel for me. Their price ranged from $50 to $100 per reel. Some asked me to make it and some will make it for me.
The content performance varies a lot, the best one got me 1k+ sign ups with one $50 video. The worst one got almost 0.
A common thing about the best ones are that they all ran a DM automation, which means in the video they invited viewers to comment a keyword, and they will send a download link to them via DM.
I stopped doing sponsorship because I notice that most traffic (like 70%) through this channel are Android devices. But Rise only have iOS right now (Android launching soon later this month). Will be back investing in this channel soon.
5. Directory & product launch websites ($0 spent, ~500 clicks)
The last channel is posting your product on directory or product launch website like Product Hunt, Mircolaunch and 1000 tools.
I posted MarketingAI on Mircolaunch, 1000.tools and Product Hunt. Also Rise on Mircolaunch. They brought in around 500 quality clicks for MarketingAI. I haven’t track the conversion but I don’t think there’s any purchase from those platforms.
Note: Product Hunt didn’t feature my MarketingAI launch because they see my product as ‘not good enough’. While some silly tool like meme generator are featured. So my Product Hunt launch basically got 0 organic clicks. They are a rotten platform to me now. Very disappointing.
My lesson learned
- Take marketing seriously. After shipping your MVP, spend at least 2 weeks seriously doing marketing.
- If you’re not good at marketing, ask AI for marketing advices. I got the above channel ideas all from asking GPT and Perplexity for similar product’s strategy. With the right prompt, you can get some amazing marketing action plan and content sample ready. That’s why I made MarketingAI.co as well. Give it a try if marketing has been a problem to you.
- Some channel works better for your product. Find those channels. Like for Rise, short form videos is a much better channel than cold email. To find those channels, you can ask GPT for references on similar products or use MarketingAI.co.
- Optimise for conversion. Not matter how many clicks you got, it’s conversion that matters. You can optimise conversion through hacks like adding social proof on onboarding/landing page, abandoned cart email etc.
- If your app is only in one platform (iOS/Android), don’t do UGC sponsorship.
That’s it — marketing is really hard, but as long as you don’t give up and invest in the correct channel, result will come. Good luck! Happy to answer any questions.
