Need more users for my internet startup (Growthhacking) (Already live for a while)

If you're just starting out, then naturally you're going to focus on getting users in the first place, and not how to retain them. That's fine.

However, quite soon after you've launched and first users join start thinking about retention. Retention is just too important to ignore. If you have a hole in your bucket, what do you do? Run faster so that less water leaks? No. You fix the hole.

Maybe below video makes clear how important retention really is:

If you try to serve everybody, you end up serving nobody. Therefore, review the client segments you're targeting. Are they sharply defined? If you approach your prospects, do they clearly feel you offer value to them?

Imagine the following two fitness trainers: 

A) Fitness trainer A advertises his services to everybody - "as everybody needs fitness" (and he's right!)

B) Fitness trainer B offers his services to women who recently gave birth, promising to help them to get their prematernal weight back. He develops a tailored fitness & nourishment plan for this segment, and advertises in magazines read by pregnant women or those who gave birth recently. 

Which fitness trainer will get traction more quickly? Whose clients are more likely to recommend him to their friends (who are in the same situation)? 

Note: Starting out with a niche doesn't mean that you have to stick to it for life. Even Facebook started out with a niche (college students). The power of focusing on a niche is that it gives you initial momentum. Once the ball is rolling you can successively widen your scope. 

They don't say for nothing  "The riches are in the niches"!

Think how you could grow on a platform which already managed to get a significant audience.

Airbnb's growth hack on Craigslist is legendary, however also a bit grey hat as it violated Craigslist's terms of services (which you shouldn't do, obviously). Make a longlist of platforms which are somewhat related to what you do, and think carefully for everyone of them how you could leverage off of their success. 

Note: although large and established platforms should be your focus, don't forget to look at emerging platforms as it might be easier to get your foot in the door with them (enabling you to grow with them). 

Email is one of the most powerful marketing tools available. Many people use their inbox as their "to do"-list, so this means once you have their email you can put yourself on that to do list - whenever you want. 

Therefore, think about every possible opportunity to get people's emails, think thoroughly when there are opportunities to email them, and observe & optimize your campaigns (opens & clicks) as you go along. It's one of the most effective marketing strategies out there. 

Become an expert on growth hacking (= the art of getting many users quickly). Read everything about it. Great resources are growthhackers.com and growthhackertv. 

There are many channels and techniques for you to get users for your startup (see all the other solutions). However, you don't have to apply them all. You only need to find the one or two channels which make the difference. 

Therefore, first brainstorm which channels may make sense to you. Test them thoroughly, and if they don't work for you, move on to the next. 

However, if you find a channel which works then don't just be happy with it, and continue testing many other channels, but focus on it: why did it work? What can you do to optimize it further? 

In most cases, startups get their growth by identifying one or two channels which work for them - not more. Therefore find yours, and double down. 

If your site contains content, then search engines can be crucial to get traffic and users. Have a look at solutions to make your website rank higher in search engines. 

Quick growth mainly comes from sharing. And how do you make people share your product? There are many techniques however they are all second to this one: pick a product which is inherently viral.

Some services only make sense for users if they share it. For example, a new chat application or community website (which the world may need, or not) is inherently viral: for it to make sense for users (i.e. add value) they need to share it with their friends. Facebook, Twitter and many others only grew so quickly because of this principle.

The reason for this is that you don't need to do a lot of convincing to make people invite their friends - once they bought into the concept (at least partially) it's just logical to them to invite their friends as next step.

Therefore consider carefully which product you want to put your energy into. Your original idea may provide good value - but if it's not inherently viral your path to growth will be much more difficult. 

Asking people to share your product (a main driver of growth) is asking for a big leap of faith. 

Even if they like your product, sharing it with friends and therefore recommending it could potentially backfire (e.g. as some products do dodgy stuff which is not obvious at first). It doesn't matter if your product falls into that category or not - all products are affected because this is a perceived risk for users - and they don't share.

Therefore don't give them the idea that they're sharing you. Make them think they share themselves. The Facebook user who invites her friends to join facebook to check out her pictures she uploaded doesn't primarily think about sharing facebook, but her pictures. This makes sharing much smoother (and more likely). 

Small, nifty & free tools can be a great way to generate interest & traffic which you can then leverage for your main (paid) product. 

For example, Freckle, a paid time-tracking app, launched a cool tool which easily allows you to check the current time in any location in the world. It got press coverage from several high-profile news sites despite (or maybe because) being a very simple tool.

Another example for a free tool is HowMuchToMakeAnApp, a tool which tells visitors how much they can expect it will cost to create a mobile app. Users get taken step by step through the process and asked which features they want in the app, which will define the final price. And, incidentally, at the end users get asked if they need somebody to build the app for them...

Large events (i.e. many people attending) can be your stage to present your business and do networking.

Have a look at this case study.

Your existing userbase can be your storngest sales force. Create a product which they love, and then don't be shy about asking them to refer you. If they feel you deserved it, they may even enjoy it because it feels good doing somebody a favor who deserves it. 

For most startup it proved to be much more valuable to have 100 people who love the product, than 1000 who just like it so-so.

Why passionate users are crucial:

1. They are much more willing to spread the word ("Evangelists")
2. They are much more willing to spend time and effort to give constructive feedback
3. They are much more willing to pay
4. You will get a much closer connection with them, and really understand their needs

An example for the last point is Airbnb: when they were still small, most of their clients were in New York. So they flew over (they're based in San Francisco) to not only meet their clients, but actually live with them! This gave them unique insight, e.g. they realized that many Airbnb hosts didn't have an easy way to make professional pictures (and the better the picture, the easier to find guests), so they helped them with that and knew they have to give tips to future users how to do this easily.

It's rarely the "one big idea" which brings tons of users, but the process of trying out a lot of different things and seeing if it works. Therefore, you need to increase your "failing speed" so that you find out what works more quickly. 

Important: Don't just fail, but ensure you have the processes in place to learn from your failures. 

Morgan Brown from Growthhackers.com explains this very well in below presentation. 

Building up a presence on social media can be beneficial in several ways: 

1. People become aware about you and visit your site & sign up
2. Once you have a good number of followers: you are showing that people follow you, which makes it more like that others take you seriously also 
3. It can be a good tool to reach out to influencers

If you don't know how to go about, have a look at how to build up followership on social media.