🗞 What's New: Top marketing insights across all platforms

What marketing insights do indie hackers need the most?

• From Pinterest's new algorithm, to Facebook's Holiday Marketing Guide, to LinkedIn's B2B report, we've taken all the top marketing insights across platforms and compiled them into one easy-to-read guide.
• Reddit can be a great channel to gain traction, but it has a learning curve...every subreddit has its own separate culture. These tips can help you kick off your Reddit marketing strategy!
• Serial founder Farokh Shahabi hit $500,000 in monthly revenue with his no-code collaboration platform, Formaloo. Below, he shares what he believes all successful startups must have, and how he makes the most out of customer feedback.

Want to share something with over 100,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🧐 Top Marketing Insights for Founders

by Jaskaran Saini

I've read over 25 new marketing reports, and put them together in this guide for indie hackers. Hope it helps!

Pinterest’s new algorithm

Pinterest recently announced new algorithm changes.

The home feed of an average Pinterest user is curated based on the last 100 Pins you engaged with, coupled with your actions (repinning, save, hide, etc.). The Pins are promoted to a different section on your home feed.

The algorithm also shows content based on the amount of time you spend on the platform, and how much time you spend on one Pin. Based on the time spent, individual user engagement fluctuates a lot.

Pinterest is turning its focus onto repins and saves; these two categories will have the most impact when it comes to ranking Pins on the home feed. Why? Because, to encourage in-app engagement, Pinterest is wanting to show the best content to the users who aren't active as much. Social Media Today outlines it here:

For marketers, the important thing is to create visuals and CTAs that make people stay on your Pins. You want users to repin or save your content as often as possible!

TikTok’s e-commerce consumer report

Consumers on TikTok take a bit of time to make decisions. Here's the overview:

1. 46% of consumers don't buy on the same day they encounter their first touchpoint with a brand.
2. 63% of users need to see content at least 3-4 times before making the decision to buy.
3. 34% of consumers are skeptical about branded content.
4. 41% do not purchase due to missing information.
5. TikTok is now the fastest-growing channel for discovery, with 15% of all product discoveries occurring on the platform, a jump from last year’s 4%.

LinkedIn’s B2B marketing report

Insights from LinkedIn's recent report:

1. Video ads that are 15 seconds or shorter have a 43% higher engagement rate than longer videos.
2. Brand and demand: The study shows optimal balance between brand and demand. 60% branding and 40% direct response is what most successful B2B brands do in their campaigns.
3. 47% of buyers say that, most of the time, the thought leadership content from B2B founders doesn’t resonate with their specific needs.
4. LinkedIn’s users watch 79% of the in-feed video content with the sound off. LinkedIn says:

How people are planning for holiday shopping

1. 74% of US consumers across all ages and demographics are trimming down their holiday budgets due to inflation.
2. 42% of consumers are willing to browse stores in-person this year, compared to 39% last year.
3. 40% of consumers intend to splurge for themselves, with millennials and Gen Z leading the pack. Buy Now, Pay Later options will also be very popular, with nearly half of millennials and Gen Z consumers planning to take advantage of flexible payment options.
4. 44% of consumers are seeking coupons and discounts, while 43% are looking to move to a new retailer to secure a lower price this season.

Google’s insights on SEO practices

1. For a better approach to SEO, ensure that you don’t miss important sections of your website. Add alt texts to all of your images, and describe the content within it.
2. AI-generated text content is considered spam by Google's standards. But Google doesn't ban AI content across the board, just in certain situations. There's still a ton of gray area on this, so be careful.

Social media insights

1. 61% of weekly Instagram users say that ads with product tags help make buying more convenient, and help them make faster decisions.
2. Snapchat’s consumer report shows that its users plan to start shopping early this year. To reach 75% of its audience, the platform plans to highlight multi-product campaigns with dynamic auto-bidding and A/B testing.
3. Facebook's Holiday Marketing Guide advises launching your holiday campaigns early to get the most out of the holiday season. Focus on broad targeting and awareness in your campaigns.
4. TikTok highlights using lead generation ads along with its collective ads format to capture early shoppers.

For complete sources and more insights, subscribe to my newsletter for free!

Which marketing insight is most relevant for you? Share below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🎁 The most popular shopping apps this holiday season.

🏛 US crypto regulation is coming in 2023.

💰 Black Friday online sales are expected to top $9B this year.

📱 Twitter has launched new ad targeting options.

🛩 Here are the types of passengers that flight attendants hate the most.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

💻 Kicking Off Your Reddit Marketing Strategy

by Nick Kimel

Most Reddit threads have very strict rules. Have any founders ever managed to find an audience there?

How can indie hackers get the most out of Reddit?

The right subs

Fed says that posting your product on Reddit can be hit or miss, depending on the self-promotion rules in the sub:

When in doubt, post to these subs, where self-promotion is allowed and encouraged.

What works consistently is tracking keywords related to your product, and adding your link in the comments when someone mentions a pain point that you can help with. Here's a blog post on how to do this well. It includes tips on commenting with empathy to ensure you don't get downvoted for self-promotion!

Jkjkjk agrees:

I use Reddit to promote my blog posts. I just picked about 5-7 subreddits, initially. After trying a few times, I found my way around.

I don’t have a lot of time to be a part of a Reddit community. I needed to find spaces where I could post with little effort. I just want to link to the post. I don’t want to create a separate write-up specifically for the subreddit. I also don’t want to establish some kind of track record with the mod for the sake of staying in their good graces. Now, I know which ones work for my approach, and I also know which ones are hostile to this kind of approach.

One works because they have a magazine tag. If I link my blog post with the magazine tag, the subreddit doesn’t mind at all.

The other is just very loosely moderated. They don’t care if I post links to my blog. There just aren't a lot of posts. It also has an extremely low user count compared to the others, but it actually drives decent engagement. The people who watch that sub are invested in my niche, so they’ll actually click and read.

Perhaps this approach can help you, especially if you don't have the time or energy to truly immerse yourself in Reddit. Just identify the right subreddits, and you'll be fine!

Become a user

Mike Newt says that people seem to fear Reddit, and not without reason:

Here's my suggestion: The best way to figure out whether Reddit can work for you is to become a user first. In my opinion, creation and contribution of value before extraction of value is always the path to success whenever you're using a community or social-based approach. This actually applies to marketing as a whole.

Wael agrees:

I have been a Reddit user for years, and have used it multiple times to get my initial traction. Here's my latest Reddit post!

The thing is, Reddit has a learning curve. It takes time to understand how to use it properly for your niche. The main point is to understand that every subreddit has a personality and culture that is guarded and enforced by its community. You need to take the time to understand it before trying to do any kind of promotion, or you will have a hard time.

One of the best things about Reddit is the quick exposure you can get if you manage to engage users. Another is the brutally honest feedback that you will get from Redditors. One of the cons, however, is that the traffic is not sticky, and the conversion rate is quite low.

Manibatra adds:

I recently created a post on Reddit introducing my web extension, and the response was fairly good.

I have around 40 people on the waitlist, and have had some great conversations. Being active on Reddit helps. Not only will some subreddits not allow you to post if you are not active, but you will also develop an intuitive sense on how to market to the communities.

Clearly explain why you are building the product. Be genuine. Imagine you are talking to a friend personally, rather than pitching a product.

The more niche the subreddit, the easier it will be to get some traction!

Is it the right channel?

Mohsen Kamrani reminds founders that Reddit may not be the right channel for everyone:

I've tried for a while. All I can say is that, if you don't know what you're doing, you'll waste a lot of time.

It's definitely a valuable source of quality traffic, but it needs to be properly studied before approaching it fully.

Eduard Metzger chimes in:

I once tried to post something in r/productivity. The post didn’t even contain any product names or advertising, no links, nothing. It was a genuine post, but was rejected right away.

I then tried in some business subreddits, and it worked much better. You need to find the right subreddit and keep trying. However, you also need to consider that Reddit might not be the right channel for you.

What are your best Reddit hacks? Share in the comments below!

Discuss this story.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

What does your product or service do? Keep it simple:

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

🛠 Farokh Shahabi Hit $500K MRR With No-Code

from the Growth & Founder Opportunities newsletter by Darko

Hi! I’m Farokh Shahabi, cofounder and CEO of Formaloo, a powerful no-code collaboration platform where teams can collect, organize, and understand their data. With Formaloo, you can build custom apps for your business without any code!

Currently, 25K+ businesses are using Formaloo every month, and we’re growing at an average rate of 15% MoM. We also recently raised $2M in capital to grow Formaloo faster. We want to be the biggest no-code database tool on the planet!

Read on for more!

The background

I’m a serial founder. I've founded three successful companies so far, and previously served in key leadership or advisory roles in several startups. Some of my most noteworthy experiences are cofounding Eventbox, an international event management and organization platform for professional organizers, Hostinstall, one of the UK’s finest data and web solution providers, and Bipfa, which was MENA’s biggest micro-blogging platform.

Before Formaloo, I had a data analytics company. Our expertise was developing data-driven business applications for enterprises all over the world. It was going really well, and we had a lot of great customers, but we faced a major problem.

Our customers were frequently asking us to do a lot of customizations and modifications to their systems. This constant adding of features and customizations was very time-consuming for us, and very expensive for them.

After a while, we had an idea: What if we created a platform where they could create their own software without any coding?

We created an MVP based on this idea, and gave it to our customers. They loved it so much that they were willing to pay for it, and requested that certain features be added.

That’s how the idea of Formaloo was formed, and that’s how we got our early adopters. All of our customers became Formaloo customers!

How have you attracted users and grown Formaloo?

We developed our MVP, finally decided on our name, got the domain, and launched. We weren't sure about our business model or marketing strategies...we didn’t even have a paid version at that time.

But we were excited to launch our first version to the world and get feedback. Our product was almost embarrassingly simple, with limited functionality.

We launched, and since we were completely bootstrapped, we didn’t have any promotional budget. We initially relied on word-of-mouth to get new customers, and it was a huge success. Within a few weeks, we had thousands of beta users testing our platform and giving us constructive (and harsh!) feedback. That feedback turned out to be all the market research we needed to launch the full version of our business.

After the first year, each beta tester of Formaloo brought 11.2 additional customers to us, on average. This level of product-led growth is priceless!

Fast forward three years, and our biggest success factor is still the feedback of our clients.

Did you participate in Black Friday/Cyber Monday?

Yes, Black Friday was our biggest event of the year! Now that we've raised our new investment round, we’re on the verge of launching the next version of Formaloo, including 30 new features. This is going to be our biggest launch ever!

Formaloo has always grown from within, through our amazing community of no-code developers, agencies, and founders. We launched a big campaign on Black Friday, and we have a special offer for indie hackers: We’re offering lifetime access of Formaloo on AppSumo for as little as $99. Limited time only!

What's your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

We have monthly and annual subscriptions based on the number of team members per company and their usage. We're shooting for $3M ARR next year!

At its core, Formaloo is a database management system that allows anyone to easily add interfaces. When you create a Formaloo, a database, business logic, and the full UI connected to it are all created for you.

Since we’re big on working with scalable data, our infrastructure is built on Python. We have AI and machine learning modules that help us serve millions of people at the same time. The no-code industry has grown 10x in the past five years alone, and the rise of COVID-19 and remote work accelerated this growth tremendously.

Advice for indie hackers

Most startups die before ever reaching their first 100 active users. Getting the first customers to trust your product is one of the most difficult challenges that every startup faces in the early days.

The best time to launch your MVP is when it’s working, but you think you’re not ready to launch.

Even creating a “coming soon” website will force you to answer hard questions about your startup. Who are my customers and target audience? How should I present my product? What’s my positioning in the market?

The most important test of a good website is to see if your target audience:

1. Understands what you do at first glance, and
2. Trusts you and your approach enough to give it a try.

Always share the story of your startup. It’s not only about your startup, it’s about the story behind it. Why did you start this company? What do you do? How are you better than others?

People love to know about the history of your company, the people behind it, your challenges, and your achievements. So, tell them your story!

Talking about features becomes boring very fast! Instead, a good practice is to always state the benefit and value of the most essential features that you have. By expressing your product's benefits, people are more likely to understand them and give them a try.

Remember, all successful startups have one thing in common: They invest heavily in customer success and support. It’s not just about answering customer questions or issues, but about making sure that your customer is successfully achieving their goal by using your product!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Founder Opportunities for more.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Jaskaran Saini, Priyanka Vazirani, Nick Kimel, Harry Dry, and Darko for contributing posts. —Channing