How to get beta users for your startup

Posted on September 19, 2022  (Last modified on February 27, 2024 )

7 minutes  • 1430 words

How to get beta users for your startup?

Collecting feedback is the most crucial step in making your product successful. Getting to know your potential users, what they need, and what they expect from your product is a critical step in the first days of a startup. Getting first users with no marketing budget can be highly challenging. That’s why I highly recommend starting with a beta. When users signup for a startup product in beta, they’re most incline to give feedback, churn less and be bug tolerant. Here are the steps to get beta users for your startup:

Add a beta landing page.

Why?

A beta landing page is the first step to getting your startup’s beta users. You can use this page to collect email addresses and other data from users who want to be notified when your product launches. This helps you build a list of potential customers ready to buy on launch day.

Even better, try to pre-sell your product if you can!

Benefits of adding a beta landing page include: Beta users will be the base of your community in the future. Start building relationships with them from day 1.

They will help you find bugs and errors before launching publicly, so they’re an essential part of any software development process.

By getting email addresses during the public beta period, you’ll build an audience of people interested in the problem you’re trying to solve. This is super valuable on launch days (Check this post about how to launch on ProductHunt )

How to build it

To build your landing page, I highly recommend using Carrd , a NoCode tool. It has lovely designs and allows you to create the perfect landing page in 30 minutes. Coding it yourself will only waste your time, don’t do this!

If you want more tips about landing page, you can check this newsletter issue I made, or ping me on Twitter

Now that we have a landing page, let’s get some traffic!

Use online communities

You can easily reach out to potential product users on communities like Reddit and Quora, where you’re likely to find professionals in your area of interest. I wrote a complete guide if you want to learn how to use Reddit

There are also other platforms where you can find beta testers. For example, Discord or FaceBook groups are popular places for startup enthusiasts who are always looking for new products that they can test and review. With one quick search, you’ll get a list of people interested in testing your product! I created a list of more than 400+ places to promote your startup

Use Social media (use organic & ads).

Organic reach

Don’t underestimate social media, even when you’re just getting started. You should start sharing your journey and your expertise there as soon as possible. It takes time, but in a few months, you’ll have a small audience that can really make a difference. The more people you can talk with, the better, and social media are the best way to create connections!

I love using Twitter, as my customers are mostly startup founders and developers. Maybe you should use another social media, though. As I said, for the online communities, you should start by looking at where your potential users are and push content there!

If you want to build an audience on Twitter, you can download this FREE playbook

Try Ads!

You can also run ads on social media networks to promote your app.

Social media advertising is a powerful way to get the attention of your target audience and drive them to your landing page or app store page. For example, if you have an Instagram account for the product, you can advertise it by running ads on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn — this is going to be much more efficient than just advertising on Instagram itself because people won’t feel like they are being bombarded with too many messages from one source.

Check this to learn how to make Twitter ads profitabe

You must also experiment with different targeting options and varying ad formats (e.g., video/photo). For example, if your target customer is a female between 25-34 years old who likes skiing and snowboarding, then try targeting those users specifically on some platforms but not others — that way, you don’t waste money on irrelevant audiences who won’t convert into customers anyway!

Finally, don’t forget about other social media platforms such as Facebook Analytics, where there’s even more data available about how well certain types of posts perform compared to others - so make sure that whatever platform(s) work best for this purpose before making any decisions about where else might be good sources of traffic too!

Reach out to influencers

Influencers can be a great way to get your startup off the ground and boost your reach. You may not have a large audience or following, but if you find some like-minded people who have the same ideas and passions as you, they will be willing to help spread the word about your product.

It would be best if you first researched influencers in your industry who are already interested in the problem you’re solving. Reach out to them via email or via social media and offer them access to an early version of your product as a thank-you for helping grow awareness for it.

It’s essential that when reaching out, try not to come across as too desperate or needy—this will only turn away potential users who might otherwise have been interested in contributing their own time and energy to helping out with beta testing efforts.

If possible, offer them big discounts even after beta testing is over so they can continue using something valuable from their experience with early development trials (which hopefully went smoothly) and talk about your product.

Post on forums that are related to your target audience.

Forums are still a good place to get feedback on your product and find beta users. You can also use forums to promote your startup by posting in the right subgroups and forums.

Forums are great because they’re full of people who are passionate about what you’re trying to create. They will be able to give you honest feedback on what they like and don’t like about your product, which is so much more helpful than just asking family or friends who may not know how to critique something properly with such a high level of detail.

Another reason why forums are so useful is that they allow you to find potential beta users that might end up helping out later down the road once your project is ready for launch or when something new is added to it!

But please don’t spam forums with your startup pitch. Start by participating genuinely in the community and helping people.

Pitch to startup media sites

There are a few types of sites that are perfect for this. The first one is startup directories specialized in beta-staged startups:

• BetaList
• Beta Bound
• Beta Page
• Betafy

Then you can reach out to startup media, which will usually be very focused on your niche and have contributors who write about your space regularly. These have large followings on social media and having a post on their publication (like a blog) can be super powerful while helping your SEO.

And finally, there are traditional news outlets with an editorial team covering specific topics related to what you do (e.g., Reuters covering financial startups). It’s hard to get, but not impossible. Just pitch your startup and try a super personalized cold outreach.

100 beta users for your startup is not hard!

I know you may be overwhelmed by all the work and the things to do to get these beta users for your startup, but it’s not that hard!

Try to do it step by step and don’t focus on building. I advise spending 50% of your time on your product and the other 50% talking with people and doing marketing. This way, you’ll make progress every week, and you’ll progress in the right direction.

At the beginning of a very early stage startup, asking for feedback from early adopters and enthusiasts can provide motivation and help to make decisions on features. Feedback from users can also be useful when launching a new product to the public. This feedback helps build customer trust, which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.

If you have difficulty getting beta users for your startup, use these tips in this article. You will find it easier than you think!