Are you just starting and looking to obtain your first 100 customers? Well, this article is for you. A business is a hobby until you receive your first 100 customers. However, don’t worry; if you are solving a problem that people have, then it’s pretty easy to get your first customers.
First, build your customer profile. That includes demographics (age, income, and gender) and psychographics (values, opinions, attitudes, lifestyles). What do customers care about? What brands or services do they use or shop at? Ensure you understand how your potential customers are currently solving the problem and how you can improve on current solutions.
Once you understand your customer, you should tweak your marketing funnel to encourage them to convert. The marketing funnel starts with awareness, consideration, and then purchase. On average, customers need to hear the marketing message seven times before they buy.
Before you try to get customers, you must understand who your target customers are and why they want to buy from you. You need to be able to solve the customer’s problem. It would help if you had a clear understanding of what that problem is. As you talk to customers, listen to what they say and use the feedback to iterate your idea.
Find people who have the problem that you’re trying to solve. Listen to how they describe the problem. Get feedback on your proposed solution and iterate on the idea.
Find out where your customers hang out and how they solve the problem. What are their current pain points? How can you improve on the current solutions? Make sure you can market to your existing group before moving to another group.
Here are some ways to get your first 100 customers:
- When starting, you should be using friend and family connections. Ask them for feedback. Ask them for referrals. Make sure you exhaust your existing network. For example, send an email to a blogger or reporter that you are acquainted with.
- Start blogging early. Provide helpful content for people. Use Google Keyword Planner to find keywords for your content.
- Get good at storytelling. Make sure you have a killer story to entice customers.
- Sponsor events – You can sponsor events your target customer will likely attend. If you need more budget to sponsor events, you can direct message users who are attending events on social media.
- Connect via LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn to join a community, participate in conversations, meet potential customers, etc. When you are given a chance, talk about your product and service. Try to get feedback from potential customers.
- Reach out to people who are experiencing the problems you’re trying to solve or are complaining about a competitor. Ask your followers for referrals. Use sites like hashtags.org to search for relevant hashtags. Use Twitter lists. Join a Twitter chat. Run ads.
- Email marketing provides one of the best ROI for getting customers. Start a newsletter that your existing network or contacts can subscribe to. Use Rapportive to look up people’s email addresses and email them about your product. Use your email signature to grab people’s attention.
- Go to Meetups in your area. Ask the organizers for permission to message the group. Send personalized messages to each member. Create a Meetup group.
- Reach out to blogs for interviews. Write guest posts. Run ads on blogs. Use sites like Klear and Klout to find influencers. Reach out to commenters.
- Look into forums and Q&A websites. Reach out to those asking relevant questions. On Quora, answer relevant questions and add a subheading below your answer, and mention something about your startup there. Mention your startup in your bio.
- Attend industry and non-industry conferences.
- Attend trade events and other potential venues.
- Run ads to your landing page using Facebook ads and Adwords
- Get SEO basics right.
- Reach out and partner with complimentary startups. For example, a gym could reach out to health food bloggers to see if they would mention the gym on their blogs.
- Make sure to watch your competition. Follow users who talk about your competition on social media and enter the conversation when appropriate. Join these conversations to entice people to your business. Use tools like SpyFu and SEMRush to see how your competitors are advertising.
- Use free trials and freemium offers to entice new customers. You should start out having your product free and then make it paid a few months later. That way, you can build a base that will convert to paid customers.
Whatever you try, ensure you can measure success using tools like Google Analytics. For example, you can measure the bounce rate to see if a change has impacted your conversion rate.
Only make changes with testing. When making changes, make sure to A/B test as much as possible. Use tools such as Optimizely to AB test changes. Google Analytics can be used to test the impact of your changes.
Congratulations on getting your first 100 customers. You’ll notice that to get your first 100 customers; you’ll need to do many things that don’t scale. You’ll have to reach out to customers personally. If you need help with the process, book a call with a mentor at mentordial.com. Mentordial.com lets you book a call with leading mentors from top companies like Amazon who will give you career or business advice.
