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Ask HN: I Have No Idea How to Get to my Target Market

5 points by aashaykumar92 ↗ HN
We perform searches to help people get the product they want for the price they want. People just have to submit a link to the product and the price they want to pay for it, we take care of the rest.

My issue is not a matter of who I am targeting but how to get to them. I am initially targeting shoe-buyers and electronics-buyers. These people usually don't need that product RIGHT AWAY but still want it. They generally experience a ton of frustration trying to find a good deal because there are simply too many websites to search through, and they must do this everyday to get the price they want. We want to solve this frustration and perform the searches for people over a pre-determined period of time. I just finished building it yesterday and though rough, it's ready to go.

So now the big question, how do I get to more of these users so I can ask them to try us out? Any and all suggestions/feedback would be greatly appreciated.

http://skanout.com/

7 comments

[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 38.5 ms ] thread
vitovito
This is the purpose of marketing, and advertising in particular: informing your (unaware) market that you exist. Lots of marketing and advertising 101 texts out there.

Find places where your target market congregates, and find ways to target them individually.

I'd imagine your target market is generally deal-savvy. I also assume you've done research and determined that there's a portion of the market that is deal-savvy but doesn't like the "hunt" or the "chase" of tracking down the best deal themselves, and that that segment was worth making a product for. I'd advertise on sites which attract deal-savvy shoppers, like Woot and Slickdeals, both of which have their own advertising offerings and don't just use AdWords/DoubleClick.

You can't find a person when they're in the mood to go electronics shopping, but you can find the product they're looking for. I'd take out Google Adwords ads for brand names, product names and model numbers. Amazon and eBay affiliates do this in bulk already. Maybe don't choose the best sellers in a category, since those might be expensive spots, but maybe the second-tier products to start?

aashaykumar92
Do you know how much the mentioned advertising would cost?
vitovito
Sites with their own advertising units, like Woot and Slickdeals, generally price it as a function of their audience demographics, unique visitors, and total views over the length of your ad campaign. Sometimes they'll have a standard rate card. Sometimes it's only available on request, or negotiated.

Google AdWords are pay-per-click, and are priced based on the competition for that particular search term your ad appeared for. You'd have to sign up to be an advertiser and test brand names, product names and model numbers to find out.

ASquare
Maybe what you you need to do is ad retargeting. See this post on how to spend money effectively on this http://okdork.com/2014/05/21/how-to-spend-your-first-100-on-...
aashaykumar92
Thanks for the advice/link. Spending money effectively is key because I'm a poor college student. I really hate ads but after reading through several blogs/articles, it seems like it could be a good start to getting some more initial users.
ASquare
I'd argue that everyone should be spending money effectively - poor college student or not :)
kris-jagasia
Have you thought about re-evaluating which product verticals you go after first, based on cost of Adwords (or similar PPC) clicks? Sounds like your site/search solution can be targeted to any product bought over the web, so maybe you should re-consider which product searches to focus on as a matrix between the overall attractiveness and the marketing cost to get your initial users. I haven't looked at the cost of PPC for different verticals in a long time, but I'm pretty sure electronics is a very competitive vertical.