5 Ways to Attract 100+ Beta Users in 1 Week

Before a product sees the light of day for the first time, it is very important that the manufacturer is sure that the target group will really like it.

It must first and foremost meet their expectations, solve their problem, and bring great success to the business owners. 

That’s why beta testing, that is, validating a certain product in regard to its functionality, usability, and reliability, has become one of the strongest strategies to check how the product works before it actually gets launched. 

The ultimate point of this is that the product is used in a ‘natural environment’ by beta testers, after which a certain realistic picture is obtained of how much a product is ready for release or whether it still needs to be invested and worked on.

This is important for several reasons, such as helping product makers access the overall quality of their products, collecting valuable feedback that they can later use to improve their products, and more.

Today, there are numerous ways to collect feedback, and we have selected the best 5 ways to attract 100+ beta users in 1 week for you, so check them out.

1. Launch Your Product on Product Hunt 

Product Hunt is a popular website where product owners can share new products and present them with slideshows, GIFs, a short overview, and there is also a possibility for visitors to leave a comment, vote, or recommend the product.

This website is highly recommended for online marketers who are in the early stages of starting a startup and want to gather feedback from people who would be interested and would like to try their product.

In order for a launch to be successful, you need to find your place in the top 3 that day, and the most favourable day to launch the product is, as many users say, on Wednesday around 12 AM PST, but there are no strict rules.

For example, the Contra Product Hunt launch looks like this:

Visitors are able to enter a discussion, read a brief summary below clips, tweet or share on Facebook, but also vote which is very important for those who have launched a product because it creates a small community of upvoters and helps their business.

A successful product hunt launch is crucial for getting nice early traction and users.

Nifty launched on Product Hunt and, with a strong promoter, was able to attract more than a hundred users after a couple of hours.

The launched product needs to be a solution to their problems, convincing, and telling a story in order for users to connect with it.

When people see that other people have already tried a certain product, they gain trust and credibility within a community and on the market.

Constructive feedback is always welcome, and Product Hunt offers a great opportunity to reach a large number of users every day.  

This website is very easy to navigate, too. 

On top, there is a search box where you can search for anything of interest, then the 3 best products and the numbers of their upvotes follow, the rest of the products are listed below, and there is also a section on hiring opportunities on the side.

There are several benefits this website brings to product owners:

• It is free
• It provides you with honest opinions
• It allows you to collect valuable feedback from real users
• It tests your products even in MVP stages
• It helps you engage with the users by replying to comments, answering uncleared questions, and more

It is especially important to be ready to answer any questions and to be in communication with the users because they will appreciate it and you will be able to create a good first impression easily.

Initial research is not enough. Your competition is always evolving and changing their strategy. Neal Taparia, who runs Mahjong Challenge, explains, “We use monitoring tools to regularly track our other Mahjong gaming sites. We even sign up to their newsletters. This gives us regular insight on how they’re approaching the market, and if it has any implications for our strategy.”

It does not stop here.

As we have talked before, competition analysis is not something that you can ignore.

Every step of your marketing for startups must include the competition.

Legend says, “knowing is half the battle won.”

2. Share Your Offers for Beta Testers in Relevant Communities

Many IT companies today are using a lean software development strategy while developing their products that require a beta testing approach that is both responsive and impactful. Finding beta testers in relevant communities is another great option to quickly and efficiently collect interested users for your products. 

Building a community around a product is not an easy task, but if you aim to gather valuable feedback and inspire loyalty and trust, you need to dedicate yourself to it as much as you dedicate yourself to creating a product.

You need to understand your target group’s needs, what they are looking for, how can you help them, and so on.

One of the ways to inspire cooperation is to offer them something of value in return for their precious feedback.

An excellent example of a post whose purpose is to motivate users to agree to be beta testers by using certain special offers is the post of Will Cannon in a public group on Facebook.

Source: Facebook

People like to think that some of their actions will pay off, so it is important to offer them something in return and write clearly what it is.

There are many things that you can consider, and some of these valuable offers can be:

• A free account that includes even the most expensive plans
• Discounts
• Gift cards
• Various special offers

It can basically be anything that they might see as useful.

Be specific about your offers and put them only in relevant places, that is, in groups that abound with people who might be interested in what you have to offer and who deal with similar types of work.

Use Facebook groups, forums, and similar to encourage people to participate in beta testing of your software and to offer them something valuable and reward their efforts.

Explain everything in a couple of sentences, be direct and clear, and try to interest readers as much as possible as this kind of influence reaches far.

3. Reach Out to Your Existing Network 

Sometimes the easiest way to get more interested users is by reaching out to already existing clients and checking if maybe they find your product useful.

As we have already said, collecting feedback and finding adequate testers is not an easy task, so you shouldn’t go into it without first checking to see if there are any interested ones among the already existing network.

This option will save you money, time, and effort.

Already existing users are qualified to evaluate the usefulness of your products as they have experience working with you and you have already built relationships with them.

For example, one of the most popular media companies which deal with important information and trends from the business world ‘The Hustle’ has launched in the form of an announcement on their website their new subscription product Trends intended for startups and it looks like this:

Source: TheHustle

They addressed their readers and shared with them this amazing news and even offered them the opportunity to try Trends for two weeks for only $1.

It sounds great, doesn’t it?

Their readers thought so, too.

The Hustle launched the whole campaign in the form of newsletters, coverage on various channels and on the website itself, and put it out there for their already existing readers to check it out and evaluate.

As this subscription product has proven to be very useful and successful with the audience, HubSpot announced on February 3rd they acquired both Trends and The Hustle whose value is estimated around $27 million.

Having an already existing community is a great advantage if used to the maximum and in the right way.

4. Submit Your Product on Beta Testing Websites and Platforms

There are many useful beta testing websites and platforms where you can launch your product and reach a large number of beta users.

If you want to collect valuable feedback from the users and do it easier than ever, then using beta testing websites is surely the right solution for you.

You can do it wherever you are, from both desktop and mobile devices.

With platforms such as Indie Hackers, Betalist, Betabound, and more you can share your story and present your startup in order to introduce your product to other business founders and to the audience.

Indie Hackers is an interactive community intended for like-minded people to share their ideas via the forum, but also through interesting podcasts and Q&A-type interviews.

You can see popular and new stories easily, and to post yours you just have to sign up and create a new post.

Source: IndieHackers

The various podcasts are posted once a week, and the users can also leave reviews and comments. 

Being a part of this community also enables you to join relevant groups according to your interests and preferences, host meetups, and more.

When it comes to Betalist and Betabound, these are the beta testing websites where you need to meet certain requirements to join your product.

Betalist is a place where you can get feedback from other startup-founders the moment they sign up on your website.

This platform is free to use, but in order to be accepted, you need to create a custom-designed landing page if you don’t have one, and it’s better if it is mobile responsive for more effectiveness.

Also, it supports private betas only, and you can sign in with Twitter.

Source: Betalist

If you want to speed up the process of getting more beta users, you can place your product higher on a list by paying additionally.

Betabound focuses on listing all the beta testing opportunities in one place and you only need to create your profile to list your own product.

They keep it all organized, and you have two options offered – either to submit a tip on a beta opportunity that you deem useful or to announce that you are looking for beta testers to help you test your new product.

Source: Betabound

You can personalize your beta testing campaign, find qualified testers, and more.

Collecting feedback and getting valuable tips at the same time has never been easier, so don’t forget to check these websites among others of а similar purpose.

5. Work on Your PR Strategies

While you are developing your MVP, you need to work on your PR, that is, you need to advertise your new product in interesting ways.

It is a segment that needs some additional investment, but it’s worth it.

As feedbacks are the quickest way to give your product positive reinforcement, they are important for marketing strategies, too.

You need to find ways to advertise your products, and some of these ways are:

• Use the power of guest blog posts (GBPs)
• Create podcasts
• Write a compelling story
• Follow trends
• Search for influencers and partner up with them

Besides that, you can create a gamified waitlist for your testers.

For example, you can give points for each share of your product and, in that way, motivate and encourage them to collect these points and later accept the first 100 people who collected the most points as beta users.

With its easily-manageable waitlist, Bridge Payments got more than 500 early-adopters in less than a month, which is an amazing result.

Creating waitlists for beta users provides a sense of exclusivity, and it’s always a great PR strategy to incorporate when developing a new product.

If you’re looking for extra help & advice from SaaS owners read Chanty’s article for how to find beta testers.

The Bonus Tip:

Once you have validated your MVP with the help of beta users, you can launch a product with lifetime deals (LTD) to get even more early-adopters and collect more valuable feedback.

One of the tools that you can use to create LTDs is called AppSumo. It is the hottest software deals website that sends the best deals straight to your inbox.

Another useful tool is an email outreach platform called lemlist that helps you create personalized emails for your cold email campaigns. 

As these campaigns help you get more sales, they are highly recommendable as long as you customize them and make them more personalized for your users.

You can edit a specific email, or personalize text and images to make your emails more appealing.

To Sum up

Although attracting beta users is not always easy, it is actually one of the most important tasks if you want to improve your new product and increase sales.

Beta testing is crucial to collect valuable feedback, and you need to incorporate several different strategies to reach as many early-users as possible.

When it comes to conversions, there are certain tools that can help with that by using triggered pop-ups, and Poptin is one of them. With this tool, you can create beautiful engaging pop-ups with unique offers for your website.

If your goal is to attract a great number of beta users in a very short period of time, try these 5 ways to do it and see the results soon!

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This post was written by Ugi Djuric. He is the Founder of Contenthorse – an all-inclusive content marketing agency for B2B SaaS companies, and founder of Podino – podcast booking agency.