How to acquire your first 100 customers digitally on a Budget.
Building and starting a business is a lot of work — product development, early hiring, client pitches and all take a good amount of time from you while you build and scale your business, however, when Launch Day finally comes, and you push your product out there, and all you get is a bunch of crickets chirping, that is definitely a horrible experience. The purpose of this piece is to guide you on how to gain your first set of users for almost free (no clear marketing cost), so that on Launch Day, the problem you have isn’t crickets, the problem you’ll have is the risk of your site crashing due to high demand for your product.
In this piece we’ll be working with the assumption that your product is ideally a software product, and you’re trying to scale it pre-launch while working on (or less than) a shoestring budget. We’re also going to assume you haven’t built it yet, which will be great at helping us communicate the points we’re trying to hammer at, and is going to inform the angle we come at this from.
Here we go;
Step 1
Sell the Problem
The first step in scaling and building a successful product is to realize that people do not necessarily buy products, what they buy are solutions to problems wrapped up in little cute boxes called products.
In other words, what you really sell to your users is not your product, what you’re actually selling to them is the solution to the problem your product is attempting to solve. If that’s the case, your first goal then shouldn’t be to sell your product, but to sell the problem your product is being positioned to solve.
To execute this well — make a huge emphasis on the problem you’re trying to solve. This will ideally be easier if it’s a problem specific to your industry and you already have a good following on social media. If you don’t, you may have to start from scratch (we didn’t say this was going to be a get users quick scheme).
Find out where the unique users of this specific (or intended) product are and begin to make huge emphasis on the problem (without necessarily talking about the solution outright) on that platform. As you keep talking about this problem, more people will begin to pay attention, and those who think a solution to the problem you’re outlining will be meaningful to them will ideally begin to engage more frequently with your posts (if you’re using social media).
Step 2
Reach Out
When you feel you’ve gotten some good degree of traction (people consistently engaging with your pieces), reach out to these people individually. Try and find out how serious the problem they’re trying to solve is and what their picture of an ideal solution may look like.
At this point, you’re not trying to sell a product just yet — you’re trying to find out what really bothers your intended users, and how valuable a solution to that problem will be to them. The core essence of this stage is to try and gain two things — one is stories; finding out how your users are trying to solve this problem and their user interactions will go a long way in helping you craft out your user journey maps, and two is understanding value; your goal is to find out how much your potential users are willing to pay for a solution of this magnitude. Performing step 2 will play a large role in determining how your business model is designed, whether you chose to employ an SaaS model, one-time payment plan, pay per usage model, or monetize through ads and what pricing point will be reasonable enough to create the balance between profits for your business, and being affordable to your audience.
Step 3
Consolidation
When you’re done with step 3, your next line of action is to make your first ask — tell them you’re presently working on a solution to solve that problem, and ask them if they’d be willing to join an email list or any other platform that will allow you keep them posted on the development of the product you’re building. Ideally, if you did the first two steps well, you’ll get an affirmative answer that will allow you onboard them to an email list or whatever platform you intend to use for this purpose.
The goal of this stage is to create a specific platform that makes reaching out to them in the future easier and more personal.
Step 4
Follow Up
From step 1 to 3, you would have gained two things; one is valuable insights about the problem you’re trying to solve that will properly inform your product development process and two is potential users already in the queue for your solution.
By step 4, you’re most likely doing the technical part of actually building out your solution based on the insights you’ve gotten from potential users.
However, if you keep your potential users in the dark all through the product development process (which could take months), you could be shooting yourself in the foot and be at risk of them forgetting you (considering they have their own lives too).
One way to avoid this is to follow up regularly and inform them of the phases you’re in in your product development cycle. Following up doesn’t necessarily mean reaching out all the time, but it helps that you can inform them at certain intervals what stage you are in your product development, give them some info on what the product is looking like, and get their feedback.
The more people feel they have a contribution into what you’re building, the more attached they are to that product, and the more willing they are to not just use it, but to sell it and recommend it to someone else.
Step 5
Scale and Launch
We want to assume you’re done with product development — you’re doing final testing (ideally with your potential customers) and preparing for launch day.
Make sure these your potential users are aware of launch day and if you’ve been able to build a good relationship with them, try and encourage them to promote the product on their social media, and/or in their social circles. If you carried them along from step 1 to 5, chances are, a majority of them will be more than willing to actually push and promote your product for you.
By the time you eventually launch your product without spending a dime on marketing, you’ll have two things from the onset — one is a good number of users (depending on how well you performed steps 1 & 2) already signed up to use your product, and two is a dedicated number of users who already consider themselves a fan of your solution and are more than willing to not just promote it for you, but to do it authentically, for free and at no cost simply because they believe in what you’ve built and they had an input in it.
Points to Note
As much as this pattern is a great way to get your solution outside the door and into the market without spending any serious money on marketing, you also have to realize that there is a tradeoff for following this route. You may spend less money getting your product out and getting people to willingly promote it for you, however, executing this strategy takes time, and is really only an ideal solution if you’re genuinely bootstrapped.
One key advantage of this pattern however is that regardless of how much time you’ll spend to finish this up, if you do it well, you’ll have a somewhat loyal base of potential users more than willing to push and promote your product for you.
In other words, this method of marketing will more likely than not help you turn your first and original users into fans.
Conclusion
Marketing and acquiring customers is one of the most challenging and important things almost every founder has to deal with while they both build and launch their products. The right resources could make this process a lot easier and seamless, however, in the absence of any reasonable amount of capital. Startups and businesses can opt to follow these key steps outlined from step 1 to step 5.
