How We Got Mentioned to 500k+ Readers in One Week

With the recent launch of our autonomous AI coach for creators, "Heights AI Coach", we got mentioned in multiple newsletters totaling more than 500,000 readers in the week surrounding our launch. This included popular AI newsletters like Ben's Bites, The Rundown, AI Valley, and more. What is interesting is how we did it. In preparing for our launch, we did hope to get mentions from these newsletters and were already well aware of them. We made a list of different newsletters we'd want to reach out to, and then contacted them all leading up to the launch. We contacted some of them ahead of time once we started the marketing for our launch by offering a waitlist and putting up a webpage about what the product was. We then followed up with them during the actual launch when the waitlist was removed, and the product became officially available to everyone. The result of this strategy? It didn't work! One of two things happened: The newsletter responded to us asking us to purchase a sponsorship. Our outreach emails were ignored completely. So how did we end up getting featured by these major newsletters? During the big release, we also created some content and sent our own newsletters announcing the launch to our audience. We also launched on Product Hunt for the first time on the day that we removed the waitlist. The first part got us noticed by Ben's Bites, where we were the top tool mentioned in that day's newsletter. This had a chain reaction of a number of AI tool sites adding our product (some of which we had already contacted, and they requested hundreds or thousands of dollars for inclusion just days before). The Product Hunt launch got the attention of The Rundown and others, and this got us more trial signups than the Product Hunt launch itself. At first, it was a bit surprising to us that we were mostly ignored except for being asked for money, only to later be shared by almost everyone we wanted and to have many who asked for money initially share us for free. It makes sense though, if you think about it from the perspective of the newsletters and sites: They likely get so many inquiries that they just ignore them and then instead mention what is talked about enough for them to notice naturally. For those asking for us to sponsor their site or newsletter, it's how they make money, so it makes sense that they would first find out who is willing to pay because why mention someone for free if they were ready to pay you? Final Lesson - Be so good they can't ignore you.