To promote an app with no audience, borrow someone else’s. Newsletter writers, podcast hosts, community organizers and the makers of tools your users already pay for have spent years gathering the people you want to reach. They need things to share: useful pieces, good guests, real deals, better integrations. Give them one of those, aimed at their readers rather than at your launch, and you reach a room you could not have filled yourself. This guide shows how to find those rooms, what to offer each kind of host, and one worked example.
Why borrowed audiences beat broadcasting
With no followers, a post about your app reaches almost no one. One r/SaaS thread on solo marketing said it plainly: “shipping your SaaS is only half the battle”. The other half is attention, and building it from zero takes months.
A borrowed audience comes with two things you don’t have yet: reach and trust. When a newsletter editor your users read every week mentions your app, the mention carries the editor’s standing, not yours. The cost is effort: you have to give the host something their audience values.
Other posts here cover the neighboring work. If you want to write to buyers one at a time, read how to get your first customers. If you want to answer questions in subreddits yourself, read Reddit marketing for SaaS without getting banned. This guide is about the hosts.
The four kinds of borrowed audience
Niche newsletters. Look for newsletters written for your users’ job, not for founders. Smaller ones, with a few hundred to a few thousand readers, are often written by one person who answers email. Offer one of:
- a short guest piece that teaches one thing, with your app mentioned once at the end;
- a tip or template their readers can use the same day;
- a reader-only deal, such as a longer trial.
Podcasts and YouTube channels. Shows in your users’ field need guests with a story about the problem, not about the startup. Pitch a topic, not yourself: “Three ways small studios lose money on late invoices” is easier to say yes to than “I’d love to come on and talk about my app.”
Communities run by someone. Slack and Discord groups, forums, membership sites and meetups all have an organizer. Instead of posting into the community, write to the organizer and offer something for the members: a live workshop, a Q&A session, a free resource. Ask what they allow before you mention your app at all.
Partners. Tools your users already use may want what you have: an integration, a co-written guide, a case study, a spot in their app directory or changelog. Start where your app connects to theirs, because that gives their users a reason to care.
How to find the hosts
- Ask your users. “Which newsletters, podcasts or groups do you actually read?” Three answers from real users beat a long list from a search engine.
- Search for the problem, not the product. Look up your users’ job plus “newsletter”, “podcast” or “community”.
- Follow the guests. Find one relevant podcast episode, then see where that guest has also appeared.
- Look at your integrations. Every tool you connect to has a user forum, a blog or a marketplace.
Keep a sheet with the host, the audience, how big it seems, how to reach them, what you offered and the reply.
What a good pitch looks like
Keep it under 120 words and make it about their audience:
Hi Dana, I read your newsletter for studio owners every week; last month’s piece on deposits was useful. I build a small invoicing app, and I’ve written a short guide on chasing late payments without souring the client. Would your readers want it as a guest piece? No link needed beyond a line at the end. Happy to change the angle if something else fits better.
One clear offer, a reason it fits, and an easy way to say no.
A worked example: an invoicing app with no audience
This is a made-up example to show the steps. The app, the hosts and every number are illustrative, not results.
Say you run a small invoicing app for freelance designers. You have a working product, a handful of trial users and no followers anywhere.
Week 1: list the rooms. You ask your trial users what they read and get three answers: a newsletter for freelance designers, a podcast about running a design studio, and a Slack group for independent designers. Searching adds a few more. Your sheet ends up with, say, eight newsletters, five podcasts, three communities and two partners: a contract tool and a time tracker your users already pay for.
Week 2: send the first pitches. You pitch three newsletters with a guest guide on late payments, two podcasts with the topic “How freelancers get paid on time”, the Slack organizer with a free 30-minute session on invoicing terms, and the time tracker with an idea for a co-written guide on billing tracked hours.
Week 3 and 4: deliver and follow up. Suppose one newsletter says yes, the Slack organizer agrees to the session, and one podcast books you for next month. You write the guide, run the session and give each host its own tracked link. You follow up once with the hosts who didn’t reply.
After the month: count and narrow. For each host, you note sign-ups and payments from its link. Imagine the Slack session brought more sign-ups than the newsletter, and that the session attendees paid more often. You would then look for more organizer-run communities and offer the same session, and send the newsletter pitch to a few more editors to see whether the first result holds.
The point is the order: list, pitch, deliver, count, then do more of what paid.
How to keep hosts saying yes
- Deliver on time and in the format they asked for.
- Make it about their audience. The app gets one honest line, never the whole piece.
- Share the result with the host when it went well. Hosts remember guests who report back.
- Offer something back: a mention in your own newsletter later, a useful intro, or a second piece.
- Disclose that you built the app, every time.
When ads and launch sites come in
Borrowed audiences work before you can afford ads. When people who try the app start paying, a small ads test under a hard cap can add reach, as in Google Ads budget for micro SaaS. When a few users can say what they like about it, a launch site is worth the prep; the Product Hunt launch checklist covers it.
Where Tamarind fits
Tamarind plans the week, so pitches and guest pieces get a place in it, and drafts them from your product data. You edit and approve each one before it goes anywhere. Tamarind is in early access; join the early list to hear when it opens.