Where are these signups coming from?
Every day in Transistor's #marketing channel in Slack, we track our new trial signups:
Like most SaaS companies, our growth relies on new people finding us every day.
Whenever I see these numbers, I ask myself: "Where are these signups coming from?"
There's this idea in marketing that we'll be able to find a "silver bullet" channel that brings in thousands of customers.
But, when I look at where these signups come from, there's never one dominant source. Here's what we saw in August:
Search (40%):
Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo
AI chat tools recommending us
Word of mouth (35%):
Customer referrals
Industry partner mentions
Integration partner referrals
Content & community (25%):
Blog posts (both ours and others')
Email newsletters
Podcast listeners
Apple Podcasts Partners page
While organic search is our biggest single channel, what's striking is how many signups come from small, consistent efforts:
One email to an industry partner led to 10-15 weekly signups
Years of Reddit Q&As now influence AI recommendations
Building relationships in dev communities (Laravel, Rails) brought loyal customers
Our "build in public" podcast still brings weekly signups
Each of these wins started as a simple daily task: sending that partner email, recording a podcast episode, attending Laracon, or answering questions on Reddit.
The myth is that you need to find one magical marketing channel. The reality is that sustainable growth comes from many small, consistent efforts.
Our job (as founders, makers, marketers, and bootstrappers) is to wake up every day and do something that pushes the ball forward.
That's it.
As I was finishing writing this, I thought: "Justin, a lot of the marketing channels you mentioned play to your strengths (content, community, SEO). I wonder if readers are finding success with other channels you aren't doing yet.
I'm curious: what's your "marketing sweet spot" when it comes to channels?