How I used advertising to acquire 3k registered users for our new product PackPack at low price.AMA

Hi, I'm Owen. Today I want to share some experiences related to product cold start, so that early-stage entrepreneurs can acquire their initial users at a relatively low cost. First, let me introduce the product we are working on. This product is called PackPack.AI. PackPack is an AI-driven bookmark management tool tailored for saving content from online resources like news and social media. It utilizes AI to clean and save content. With PackPack, transform the way you manage bookmarks and handle your collections more intelligently. 💯 Customized Support: Tailored saving experience for social media (e.g., Twitter, YouTube), lifestyle and shopping platforms (e.g., Amazon, Walmart), and news sites (e.g., TechCrunch, ProductHunt, Reddit, HackerNews), ensuring saved content is clean and visually appealing. ⚡ AI-Driven: Enhance content collection and retrieval with AI, making the experience seamless and efficient. 📱 Cross-Platform (Coming Soon): Available on Chrome, Android, and iOS, ensuring a unified experience across all devices. 🏖️ Selective Saving: Allows users to selectively save specific posts or content from social media feeds. This is an AI bookmark tool, so it is aimed at users who have an interest in productivity tools. The Essence of Growth is Calculating Costs I believe the fundamental way to calculate the essence of all advertising is by considering the cost. Whether it's a YouTube video, a Reddit post, or a meticulously prepared PH Launch, their final ROI calculation method will always be about costs. Your time is a cost, your salary is a cost, and the time you spend playing games on weekends is also a cost. Therefore, if you can acquire users at a low cost and scale it, that is a very good solution. Early-stage company founders should not resist advertising. It should not be viewed merely as a scalable tool. Don't Use Advertising Systems Blindly If you read half of this post and start blindly advertising, then let me tell you, you're definitely going to lose all your money. You'll find out after spending a few hundred dollars that you got nothing, and then you'll come back to the post to call me a fraud (Trust Me). You absolutely need to be well-prepared before starting any advertising. Otherwise, you'll definitely lose all your money, Otherwise, you'll definitely lose all your money, Otherwise, you'll definitely lose all your money—Three Times! Today, all advertising systems are driven by advancing algorithms. So the most important thing is that you need to coordinate well between your product and the advertising recommendation system to get the corresponding results. Important Preparations First, you need to select a few platforms. Here are some recommended platforms with comparatively high traffic: Reddit Twitter Instagram Quora ... Most platforms have similar ad configurations. First, you need to install Google Tag Manager, which is the prerequisite for everything. Then you must use Google Tag Manager to install the corresponding platform’s Pixel SDK. Be careful not to just install them on your official site; most products' official sites and products are two separate projects, so you must use the same Pixel SDK. Simply install Google Tag Manager in all your products, and then install the Pixel SDK within Google Tag Manager. It’s simple and stable. Next, you need to use the platform's SDK to configure the triggers for purchasing (e.g., Register, Purchase, etc.). This step requires you to configure the corresponding trigger in Google Tag Manager. Once the trigger is correct, the platform's advertising system can accurately track your goals and recommend your ads to users who are more likely to perform the configured actions. For example, if you configure Purchase and successfully coordinate with the platform, the platform will recommend your ads to users who are more likely to make a purchase in your product, creating a positive cycle. If you neglect to configure these settings, your advertising effectiveness will certainly be poor, so make sure to configure them. Tips to Lower Costs The next question is how to control costs according to your budget. Here are some key suggestions. First, determine your product's target audience. I’ll use our product as an example: PackPack's main users are 18-35 years old, living in the U.S., and interested in keywords like "Productivity" and "Productivity Tools." These users follow a lot of productivity tools. There are many dimensions in the above sentence, and you need to dynamically expand your dimensions according to the ad system’s configuration. If your ad budget is low (say, only $1,500), you need to set it very detailed because the more detailed it is, the easier it is for interested users to convert. If you set it very broadly, the advertising cost will rise. It all depends on your ad budget. Secondly, it’s crucial to set your CPC (Cost Per Click) well. The ad system will provide you with a recommended CPC budget. I personally suggest setting a relatively low value, such as $0.1. The higher this number is, the larger your ad exposure might be, but it could actually be smaller. Here's an important issue: as a founder of an early-stage company, we might each have a daily budget of only $50 (for example, me). So I need to consider how many clicks will convert into a user that I am comfortable with. Suppose I set it to $0.05, then I might think that 10 clicks converting into one registration is comfortable for me. Since my bid is too low, the ad system won't give me much exposure. Therefore, you need to use multiple ad systems to find the cheapest exposure within 24 hours (your bid can get exposure). So multiple platforms are effective because a single platform can only provide limited ad exposure, but the small increments add up, right? Note that cheap exposure doesn’t mean it's bad, as your filter settings are very detailed, so the exposure is still of high quality and won’t affect your product retention. This exposure actually comes from gaps in the bidding rankings. Finally Things you must do: Set up the Pixel SDK and Goal Configure your audience in detail Set a reasonable CPC Use multiple platforms to reduce costs (if a single platform isn’t enough) As for configuring ad materials, it should be adjusted according to your product, which is hard to give good advice on. But be sure to clearly express the message without making the ad material hard to understand. “AI-driven bookmark manager” works far better than “Save everything you love.” If you have any related questions, feel free to post them in the comments. Also, if you are interested in my product, you can give it a try—it’s really quite good!