I did it 🥹 500k users! I'll share every step:

My marketing failures & successes 🧵:

• 4 years for 0 -> 25k

• 2 years for 25k -> 250k

• 6 months for 250k -> 500k users

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1. Partnerships with incubators.

I contacted all famous startup incubators and signed deals with most to place unicorn as a "perk" there.

I thought it'd become a passive stream of users, but I don't think I got even one paying user out of this.

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2. Paid ads.

I wasted lots of cash on this with no results.

Whatever I tried on "targeting," I'd always get a completely nonrelevant audience.

Later, I learned that simply promoting your product with ads never really works. U need to create a freebie or be genius at banners.

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3. SEO.

I didn't touch it until April 2023; it was my biggest mistake.

Today, I do a mix of AI-generated blogs (using my own seobotai.com ) and human-made articles.

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4. Cross promo with partners.

I put lots of effort into this, but it turns out founders aren't that good at collaborating. I guess we all are high on EGO.

To this day, my only successful collab is with HuntedSpace(by Dan).

I'm still open for more collabs & cross promos.

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5. Social media marketing.

I hired and invested in building her brand, but a competitor headhunted her. I had to start from scratch myself, surprisingly reaching over 100k followers.

I thought I'd never pass 10k followers, but reached nearly 100 million views this year.

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6. Influencer marketing.

I tried paying influencers. Overall, it's not bad. But 90% of influencers are fake, and their followers are fake.

As long as the influencer is real, the ROI was pretty good on a small scale (below $1k)

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7. My own podcast.

It worked pretty well to build up the brand and trust.

However, I spent around $40k on it. I'd not recommend this to solo founders, but it works well if you have a team and spare hands.

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8. Conferences and speaking.

I joined lots of programs as a mentor where I promoted unicorn platform.

It drains energy, but brings users. I stopped doing it.

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9. Sponsoring.

I sponsored hackatons, teachers and web directories.

All 3 worked out pretty well. Easy to scale. I plan to do a lot more of it moving forward. Also I'm building a tool to simplify the whole process(first of all for myself): tinyadz.com

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10. Newsletter ads & Banner ads

I tried Product Hunt and many others. Feels like all of them are made for VC backed startups where the ROI isn't important and they simply wanna get clicks at any cost.

Small & tiny newsletters worked well.

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11. Internal cross promo.

At least 10% of all my users came from my other products. So, having multiple side projects isn't a bad idea. Even free projects(e.g. directories).

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12. Guest posting.

I wrote lots of blog articles on popular platforms(hackernoon, devto & the rest).

It brought traffic when the article went viral.

It brought nothing otherwise.

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13. Reddit.

It brought huge traffic. I didn't place any links in the articles. People just went on my profile and found them.

Reddit bangers bring more traffic than anything else. Even more than twitter bangers. I guess reddit users use PC, and twitter users read on the phone

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14. Linkedin.

I ignored it for a while but started using it a year ago. It's such a boring place where everyone behaves like AI bot, but it drives really good traffic and has the best conversion among all channels.

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15. Youtube.

I put decent effort into it and got nothing out of it.

Video production is really hard. Huge respect to Nicko and Marc for making viral vids. I will give it another try in a few months.

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16. Insta, Tiktok, FB.

These 3 were a waste of time. I guess their audience doesnt overlap with b2b nocode builder.

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17. Cold emails.

Hired a pro, spent money and time, no results at all.

I know someone gonna come and say "skill issue". Then when I ask "show me the proof" they will say "I can't, i had nda with my client".

I think it's similar to ads. Need to hide the product behind freebies

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18. Directories.

One of the best channels I have.

Sometimes I think I should quit marketing and just build directories. Because they bring traffic on autopilot.

Recently, I published a guide on my process of ideating, building and growing web directories

johnrush.me/directory-guide/

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19. Listings on other directories.

Another passive channel that keeps bringing traffic on autopilot.

I keep listing on new directories every month

I even built a tool that does it for me:

listingbott.com

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20. Affiliate partners.

Works pretty well for the effort I put into implementing it. Takes less than a day to implement.

I started with 15% and had no interest.

Changed to 33% and it picked up. Lesson learned. I'm using @ToltHQ for this and super happy with them.

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21. Campaigns.

I tried giveaways (my own and in partnership with others). Didn't work at all. I'd even say it damaged the brand.

The worst outcome came out of LTDs. Never doing them again.

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22. Product.

The new features, improvements, customer support, and empathy for my users helped the most with the growth.

Most users come via word of mouth, and people only recommend products they love. I put a lot of effort into making the product better.

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23. That's it.

You can try building a SaaS landing page, waitlist, web directory, job board, launchpad, or personal page.

-> unicornplatform.com

UnicornPlatform is a website builder for busy founders & small teams.

Easily create:

- SaaS/startup landing pages

- Web directories: job boards, launchpads, lists

I share everything I learn and build my 24 startups in public on x.com/johnrushx