How do I best reach out for customer interviews on IH?
I am slowly realizing that one of my product's target groups is a subset of the people on Indie Hackers.
I'd like to reach out to these people and their companies and offer customer interviews for free advice, or even for low monetary value (10-25 USD Amazon Gift Card or similar) to further validate my ideas & product and maybe even gain a few customers. How do I do that? At scale? Where do I post? Anybody got ideas?
How do I do this, reach enough people (say, 100+ different people/teams) and don't appear as spammy or desperate?
My current best idea is to filter through entries on https://www.indiehackers.com/products and then reach out individually, but maybe one of you has an idea that is a bit more elegant?
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Reaching 100 different people is always going to be spammy. I feel like if you go on and write 3-4 really active people on here a well-researched personal email or DM, you'd get at least 2-3 responses. Then do those interviews (they take enough energy and time as is) and repeat.
If you end up writing 100 people at once, you're spamming.
Agreed, making the effort to reach specific individuals will gather more (and better) results ultimately. As these very individuals can also introduce you to others.
Good points, thanks!
This validates my idea that researching in the products directory might be the way to go.
Not sure now if I should combine individual outreach with posts to groups on IH. Good or bad idea? Too much? 🤔
I think one of the best ways to reach your target audience is to post a discussion about the problem you're solving. If people think it's an important problem, they'll reply in the comments, and you can ask about the interview with them there.
That would work, if everyone who is in that group would see the post. We have groups with 20k+ people in it and I am pretty sure not everyone is checking & reading every post.
So, if I post, in which groups should I post my quest for customer interviews?
Yeah, agreed with you, Jan.
I’d post in relevant groups or in the biggest groups.
How about doing a review-for-review type of thing? I'd be interested in that :)
What do you mean? Like I interview you, and in exchange you interview me? Yeah, that could work. But then, this only works if you are in my target group and I am in yours.
How about making a post about it on the relevant IH communities :)
But which are the relevant communities? :)
Is it "Ideas and Validation", even if I already have a product & company up an running?
Or is there a group for this and I simply have not found it yet?