I launched a tool for short form video creators. How do I get it in users' hands?

[oneluv]

Hey, I am Nikhil, an 18 y/o indie hacker from India. I launched my first product 'FastCut' (https://fastcutai.co) in December with a friend of mine.

Since then, we've pushed quite a lot of updates and made the product much better but we can't seem to get the product to new users no matter whatever we try.

Right now, we get roughly 100 page views a day organically. Around 10% of those sign up. (Not sure if this is a good %). Right now, I try to market it on Linkedin & Twitter, but it doesn't seem to get me anywhere?

Any advice on how we can market it better to get it into the hands of relevant users?

 

[dustytoast]

@oneluv Well, do short form videos and post them to tt and IG.

 

[oneluv]

@dustytoast Tried doing some but the traction is very low/negligible. Have some suggestions on how can I persuade more users to try out the tool?

For reference, this is one of the videos i posted some time ago:

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

 

[shreddster]

@oneluv This looks pretty impressive. I have been looking for something like this. I sent it to my team, and they told me your competition would be Descript. It looks like you would actually be more expensive than Descript, which probably is not great given you presumably have fewer features. Your pricing page is a bit confusing with the most expensive category in the middle (that confused one of my team too).

To get some traction I think you maybe need to approach people making videos and offer them your product free for a limited period. Maybe even offer to do some video editing for them as long as you get to include the watermark somewhere or they promote you. Maybe the person with the video gets to promote a special code for a discount (every Youtuber does this now, right?).

If you do direct approach then you should design a very tight Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) e.g. TikTok video creators, in the US, who have 250k+ followers, who post 5 times a week.

That should be sufficiently small to give you a few hundred people you can approach directly.

Just give your pricing and feature distribution a rethink vs Descript.

I am pretty confident you have a product where you can get hundreds or thousands of users.

For vaguely related context, while most of the tech startup world (I am CEO or a tech startup in Germany) uses Webflow for their marketing websites, I use a company from Bangladesh called Dorik - just because I think it is better. They have had success with multiple Product Hunt launches. I know you have done one, which looked like it worked quite well.

 

[oneluv]

@shreddster I've worked on the pricing page to make it less confusing and more straightforward.

Yeah, I'll work on direct approach method as well.

Regarding descript, we've never really considered them a direct competitor but when you said it, it makes more sense now. I'll work on how we can offer something better/unique than descript.

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. I'll make another post after I implement all the feedback and hopefully get more traction.

 

[sen_]

@oneluv this is really impressive! Everyone talks about the long tail at the beginning so don't lose hope.

I've bookmarked it and wlll try it out -- i have a few video short i wanted to try making so it's good timing

 

[oneluv]

@sen_ Thanks, I appreciate. Do you have any suggestions on how can we get the initial flywheel to spin?

 

[sen_]

@oneluv keep promoting your tools and sharing with others in your network.

getting momentum is the hardest thing but you've got a good product here!

 

[oneluv]

@sen_ sure.

 

[groll2000]

@oneluv Looks super legit! How many users do you have?

 

[oneluv]

@groll2000 We have around 2000 total registered users and roughly 250 monthly active users, but most are free plan users.

3-4 paid users. Btw, I recently made a video about our metrics in case you're interested:

What can I do to increase this conversion rate though? Seems like most people just make one or two videos to try it out but then a large majority of them never open the website again.

 

[dayleezy]

@oneluv Pretty sure the best way is to pay a YouTuber if you have cash and have the guy record som ad that you can run on other YouTube videos. This looks honestly good.

Or you could focus on another niche like podcasters who do short form content on reels TikTok and shorts to get the discoverability and try to own that niche

 

[oneluv]

@dayleezy I agree, I even thought about doing performance marketing. 2 issues though:

1) We don't have much cash to dispose.

2) As I said, since we have some traction (100 page views/day rn) I expected users to tell about the product to others if they found it good, but the organic traffic doesn't seem to grow so I feel they are not doing it. I tried emailing quite a few of them to ask about what the problem is or how we can improve or how has their experience been but almost all of them just ignore my emails. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Everyone advices to 'talk to your users' but the users aren't talking back, I'm so confused.

 

[dayleezy]

@oneluv Man you are in a very good position. 100 page views per day is really good and hard to attain for most indie hackers. Just keep tweaking your landing page to get more conversion to free plan and limit your free plan more to get more conversions to paid. You got this man I swear you have everything in place to start making a living with this.

 

[shreddster]

@dayleezy agree. This product has real potential. Don't give up!

 

[oneluv]

@dayleezy Cool, I'll work on that. Thanks a lot.

 

[oneluv]

@fmc4auburn You mean like a fan page? Seems like an interesting idea, also we can add a CTA at the end something like 'This video was created in one click using FastCut' and that could maybe drive users.

I'll implement this and get back after some time. Thanks!

 

[fmc4auburn]

@oneluv Yeah that could be beneficial as well.

 

[noothername]

@oneluv bro，I'm currently in charge of user growth at an AI startup company. I suggest you focus on customer acquisition through SEO and social media. Especially for social media, pay attention to what kind of videos similar products have posted that gained viewership. I hope you can be successful.