When launching your startup here are the top 9 ways to gain your initial customers
Congratulations,
You have beaten all odds and now you have launched your startup into the market.
“How will I get my first customer?” This question is constantly on the founder’s mind and probably the most burning question.
You cannot wait for your customer to fly in while you sleep.
Fortunately, with little hard work, you can start getting traction for your startup sooner than you expect.
We will be laying out a few strategies for you to try, from basic to advance, here is the list.
Reach out to your inner network
Start with people who are close to you. Your friends, their friends. Share words about your startup on your personal social media network.
Share a simple message and try not to be too pushy. Here is a simple message as an example.
Hey [Friend’s Name]
I was working on this [APP/SERVICE NAME] for quite a sometime and I am glad that the app is finally launched.
[Description about your app]
If you think this is useful, you can start using it right now, I would be grateful if you can post about this on your social media.
[Link to app/service]
Thank You
One of the advantages of this strategy is that you can get direct feedback. This will be your chance to squash any early bugs, and eventually become perfect.
Take their feedback and act upon it as required before launching it in front of a larger audience.
2. Reddit
The front page of the internet, this is probably one of the best tools to get your initial customers. Hunt subreddits that are related to your startup.
Do not start spamming the posts with your links everywhere. This is probably the worst thing you could do there.
Try to be helpful and suggest people how your startup can solve their problems
People are asking questions all the time
What are the top productivity tools?
How can I find a travel guide?
Find questions that you startup can solve and answer appropriately, with your link for them to learn more.
3. Quora
The one-stop solution for all the questions. Quora provides high-quality content and a community of experts on all the domains. This is a great way to get in touch with early customers. Be active on this site and dig down high-quality questions that your startup can provide value to. Answer the questions in detail and try to cover everything.
If your answer is valuable enough, this can eventually drive your startup thousands of users in the long run.
4. Product Hunt
Product Hunt is the community of tech enthusiasts, who are constantly looking for the best tech in the stack. Getting featured on Product Hunt will surely boost your traffic.
Be sure to follow these guides for best results: –
5. Give free offers, Build a referral program
People love free stuff all the time. This can be a keystone for getting lots of buzz in a short amount of time. Give your initial customer some benefit, if they share some good words about your product on social media.
Post about your offer in all the relevant forums.
7. Communicate and expand your network –
Leverage online communities, it is a great way to team up with other startups and share good words for each other, for mutually beneficial relationship.
Few places to network –
Facebook Groups
Product Hunt
8. Guest post –
Guest posting is generally writing your content on other people’s blogs, to leverage their audience. This is a tried and tested method.
According to the Co-Founder of Buffer Leo Widrich, he wrote about 150 articles in nine months to get over 100,000 customers. This method requires too much hard work but has a huge return over time.
Many websites accept guest posts. You can easily find related websites for your audience with a simple Google Search hack.
If your startup is about fitness
Go to google and search for fitness + title:“Write for us”
You will see tons of websites related to your interest who are accepting guest posts.
Write a good article as per their criteria and submit it.
You can also use websites like Medium and Quora, where you can directly post your content.
9. Be patient
Never lose hope, we wish we could just say there is a shortcut for success. The methods listed in this article if followed would surely give you the result you want.