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Ask HN: How to drive non-paid traffic to an app landing page?

20 points by fookyong 16y ago

This question has probably been asked in other ways or answered in part in other threads, but I thought it would be useful to have a definite thread. Scenario: You have an SaaS app that isn't inherently sexy by nature. You have a good conversion rate on your landing page, but you have a top-of-funnel problem; not enough people are seeing your landing page. You could pay for some CPC ads, but you're more interested in somehow getting 50,000 organic/free prospects into the top of the funnel, rather than a trickle of (albeit more qualified) prospects from expensive CPC campaigns. How can you do this? Lets pool ideas. - Get dugg or redditted. Thus, write some content that provokes or excites that demographic. - Get blogged by big blogs. This could be done with some hustle, by cold-emailing bloggers and presenting an interesting story. - Make a landing page with such an interesting design that people just want to pass it round for the hell of it, e.g. http://www.mailchimp.com/v5-2/ - Launch a new feature, tweet it and get others to retweet it. - SEO that mofo - Offer a downloadable freebie (PDF etc) and hope that others will link to you because of it. - Promote your site on relevant forums (thin line between this and spamming) - Put something helpful up on Slideshare.net and put your link in each slide (not sure if this will work, but a presentation I put up a while back seems to get a ton of traffic) - Offer free accounts to blogs to give away in competitions. There's tons more ideas than this - I'm just brain dumping right now. I'll come back to this and submit more later. But for now... over to you!

coryl 16y ago
Youtube videos...not sure how well they work with SaaS apps though.
- fookyong 16y ago
  I would imagine the friction level is too high. Getting people out of watching a video and into your app is a big hurdle. It could have some nice viral potential for awareness, but then again "making a kick ass viral video" is probably easier said than done!
  - coryl 16y ago
    Might just take some creative thinking. Ie. promoting videos to sell blenders = Blendtech!
petercooper 16y ago
This (old) HN post is for you: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=341138 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=341138
- fookyong 16y ago
  nice. almost 2 years old! I hope there are some new ideas we can think of :) This point was really good from the top-voted answer: "Build ancillary "fun" services that tie into your main web app. Something fun, free, perhaps something that you can relate to sites people find interesting, such as Twitter. Let's say your main service is an online graphics editor. Perhaps you could create a separate site where people can create avatars for Twitter / Facebook from a small set of templates.. separate project but promoting the first." I love that idea - and I see it all the time. In fact I just saw one yesterday: http://everytimezone.com http://everytimezone.com
  - petercooper 16y ago
    nice. almost 2 years old! I hope there are some new ideas we can think of :) I'm sure! I wrote that top comment, btw ;-) I was tempted to copy and paste it here for the karma but thought I'd be good. As you highlight, some of the things I mentioned have become mainstream rather than the edgy ideas they were at the time. If I had to extend the list based on my gut feelings now, I'd add video, in-person "touring", tumblelogging, and guest posting on third party blogs.
honopu 16y ago
bingo. "but you're more interested in somehow getting 50,000 organic/free prospects into the top of the funnel" who isn't?! that's the million(10s or 100s even) dollar business question, depending on your interval. Go build that.
albahk 16y ago
You could piggyback off a popular meme doing the rounds and turn it into a one-off mini-site. For your product GoodGecko (I assume this is why you are asking) you could put up a one-page site and ask which old-spice guy video they liked the most. Then once they vote, you can break down the results and show them which country prefers which video. Or setup a time-waster site where each questionaire is like a Trivial Pursuit/Pub quiz question and people can gain points and then they post their score to twitter or something. That was a brainfart - may not make much sense outside my head. edit: and its already been suggested - 2 years ago - D'oh
- fookyong 16y ago
  hehe. it's a good point though. I think for me, one big way to virally spread would be to make it so survey results get shown after someone responds, make sure the design of those public results looks awesome, and then piggy back on some meme like you said.
  - albahk 16y ago
    Perhaps a Wordpress/Drupal plugin.
hotmind 16y ago
Befriend a superconnector. A superconnector is someone who knows everyone. You can identify a superconnector from a mile away. They are the ones who are usually talking on their Blackberrys - talking with contacts and setting up deals. They love playing the role of connector and introducing people to other people. It's their raison d'être. When I first started my business, I was lucky enough to find a superconnector client. He was very happy with the results of my marketing work and proceeded to talk up my book and introduce me to influencial people and business owners in his network. Years later, I'm still benefiting from it. Find a superconnector. Befriend him or her (and be a good friend) and deploy the "first, ten" marketing strategy by Seth Godin as your newly expanded network unfolds: http://3.ly/firstten http://3.ly/firstten I promise you that the exposure you get this way will be a lot more salient than anything an online strategy can give you.
hardline 16y ago
You need to start collecting leads and driving them down a path to convert. Convert them through teleseminars, webinars, online videos, email marketing, and more. If your just reliant on "hoping" someone signs up and then finally gives you money - you fail.