95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products _ Jason Evanish
22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale 11 August 2013 ₁₈ C You can have the best idea in the world, but until you find someone besides yourself that wants it, it’s not really a business To find those people, as Paul Graham wrote in a recent essay, you have to “Do Things That Don’t Scale (h p://paulgraham.com/ds.html).” The problem is, it is often unclear what those “Things” are Fortunately, the internet is full of help In particular, I was inspired by recent posts on someone going from zero to revenue in weeks using customer development (h p://notes.casualcorp.com/post/55805301226/how-to-go-from-zero-to-revenue-in-under-five-weeks) and validation by Melissa Tsang (h p://melissatsang.com/2013/07/21/week-1-choosing-an-ideavalidating-a-market-need-and-bridging-focus/) for her new startup Cusoy (h p://cusoy.com) I’ve also found the advice for Joel of Buffer about his start (h p://joel.is/post/6687368692/startup-bootstrapping) and the advice from this post by Jason Cohen of ASmartBear blog (h p://blog.asmartbear.com/get-firstcustomers.html) to be spot on With all that advice though I still hadn’t seen anyone tell you where to look How to use this post: Before we get into the massive list of tactics below, I want to be clear on what to with this list and what to expect when you find a few tactics you want to follow: Your initial goal should be learning In the immortal words of Lean Godfather, Steve Blank, “No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers.” (h p://id8ireland.wordpress.com/tag/steve-blank/) With that in mind, the last thing you want to is be hard selling your idea to them Instead, you want to interview your customers to understand their problems You can learn how to customer development interviews here (h ps://jasonevanish.com/2012/01/18/how-to-structure-and-get-the-most-out-of-customerdevelopment-interviews/) Understand you’re going to have a low success rate There is no silver bullet for finding users for your startup, just tactics like the ones below that work to varying degrees depending on your idea and market Even for good channels, a 10-20% response rate is normal, so don’t get discouraged Don’t worry about scaling! None of the ideas below are really scalable when taken literally However, like Paul Graham said in his essay (h p://paulgraham.com/ds.html): don’t worry about scaling right now Just whatever it https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 1/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… takes to find people and the scalable methods will emerge later If you have a cofounder worried about scaling early, have them read the Paul Graham essay Remember your manners and personalize You’re likely asking people to talk to you when you have nothing but an idea and maybe a prototype of some sort Be respectful in communicating with them Also realize that no one likes a form note, so the more you personalize it and make it feel like they’re special, the be er chance you have of a response Elizabeth Yin (h ps://twi er.com/launchbit) of Launchbit (launchbit.com) has an awesome slideshare with advice on reaching out to customers effectively (h p://www.slideshare.net/dunkhippo33/lean-startup-circle-boston-april-28-2011) Don’t get banned If you abuse any of the tactics below, many of the sites and groups will ban or block you Pay a ention to restrictions to how often you can certain things (like Meetup.com allows you to message 12 users per day) Realize the more times you break a terms of service, the more likely you are to get noticed and banned On the flip side, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission Just don’t be egregious A special thanks to these people that helped edit & provide ideas for this post: Thomas Schranz (h ps://twi er.com/ tosh), Cofounder of Blossom.io (h p://blossom.io) Eric Jorgenson (h ps://twi er.com/EricJorgenson), Marketplace Manager at Zaarly (h p://zaarly.com) I’m writing a book on How to Build Customer Driven Products (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9) You can sign up (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9) for updates and early access to chapters that will help you build product customers will love by signing up here (h p://eepurl.com/RZoO9) 95 Ways to Find Your First Customers for Customer Development and Sales Linkedin: 1) Use Linkedin Answers: Look for people asking questions around your problem and market or ask your own 2) Join Linkedin Groups: Join Linkedin Groups for your target market Engage in discussions there, reach out to people that post relevant ideas or questions, or post looking for help 3) Use Search + InMail: If you know the kind of person you want to talk to, try searching for them (like VP Marketing at companies between 25-200 employees) and using InMail to message them https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 2/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/gabriel-prat-inmail-example1.jpg) 4) Check your existing connections: People change careers a lot more than you may expect You may have also lost touch with an old classmate that is now in just the right market Either way, your existing connects are very likely to respond and you’ll have access to their email address, which is be er than their LinkedIn inbox 5) Ask your connections for intros: It’s quite possible the perfect people to talk to aren’t already a connection, but they may be one degree away Don’t be afraid to ask connections you have a good relationship with for an intro 6) Post to the Linkedin Social Network: Linkedin now has status updates you can post It’s a lot less active than other networks, but it can’t hurt to see if anyone notices 7) Run Linkedin Ads: Linkedin is the network for professionals and their careers If your startup idea has them as the target customer (say marketers or executives), then an alternative to the high maintenance of Linkedin Groups can be to run ads Linkedin also has a partner network for a lot of business content sites which can further the reach There’s a great guide on KISSmetrics for Linkedin Ads here (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-linkedin-ads1/) Facebook: 8) Look up your friends: For most people, their closest people in their life now and in the past are on Facebook If you haven’t already exhausted your existing network on Linkedin, definitely look to see if any of your friends are in the market and worth talking to 9) Ask your friends: There’s also a lot of random people you met in college and other times You never know who knows who so you have to ask I just got introduced to another person in tech through someone I was in a beirut league with in college https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 3/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… 10) Look for Fan Pages: There’s fan pages for just about anything you can think of People that run those pages in your market are great people to talk to both as potential customers and to see if they’ll post something on your behalf on their page Friends who have leveraged this have found it cheaper than Facebook ads, even when they pay the Fan Page owner Just click the “message” bu on on the fan page (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/fan-page-message-bu on.jpg) 11) Run Targeted Facebook Ads: If you think you really know your audience demographics, then running a small set of Facebook ads to a landing page, can be a great way to garner interest 12) Try the new Graph Search: I haven’t had a lot of success using it, but it’s worth searching for things related to your market to see if anything else turns up, especially now that you can message people you aren’t friends with In particular, Facebook has a great geographic filtering ability you won’t find on Twi er or otherwise Twitter: (My personal favorite) 13) Ask your followers: If you have any kind of follower base at all, you should definitely tweet about who you want to talk to If you don’t have a big follower base, ask the people with bigger followings you’re friends with to ReTweet you As you develop your idea, you may want to tweet different requests, which may be seen by different people since no one sees every tweet of their followers 14) Ask your followers for referrals: It’s not just about who you know The bigger benefit is who your network knows so be sure to not just ask people you follow or follow you if they’re a fit, but ask others for referrals 15) Run Twi er Ads: Twi er ads can be a cheap way to reach people you’d never know otherwise We got thousands of sign ups for MyAnalytics App (h p://www.myanalyticsapp.com/) at KISSmetrics using them Like any channel, the more mature it gets, the more expensive it will become (h p://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shi y-clickthroughs/), so by 2015, this may not be nearly as economical (like many Adwords today) https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 4/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… 16) Ask Twi er Accounts to tweet on your behalf: Just like you can ask Fan Pages on Facebook to talk about you, you can reach out to Twi er accounts in your target market to see if they’ll tweet something for you or ReTweet you If it makes sense for your business, you can also ask some celebrities via tools like BuySellAds (h p://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/by/tweets) and Sponsored Tweets (h ps://app.sponsoredtweets.com/tweeters) 17) Search for relevant Hashtags: Hashtags are a big part of Twi er for many markets For example, in the analytics market, there’s #Measure (h ps://twi er.com/search?q=%23measure&src=typd) Find accounts using the hashtag and reach out to them and join the conversations happening Find relevant hashtags by asking others or checking out sites like Hashtags.org (h p://www.hashtags.org/) (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-10-at-4-01-48-pm.png) 18) Join a Twi er Chat: Many groups have regular chats that can be found based on the group’s hashtag they use A great example is the Community Manager chat, #cmgrchat (h ps://twi er.com/search? q=%23cmgrchat&src=hash) This is a great way to ask questions and engage your target audience if they’re holding Twi er chats 19) Search Twi er for People Talking about your Problem: Remember that time you were really annoyed at a company? What did you probably do? You tweeted about it Try searching different ways for people talking about frustrations and you’re bound to find people happy to talk because they’re excited someone is going to make things be er I’ve successfully used this to talk to people about, of all things, email migration (h ps://twi er.com/search?q=email%20migration%20hate&src=typd) https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 5/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… Email: 20) Email relevant friends/contacts: There’s a right way and wrong way to this Yes, you can spam all your contacts in one big dump asking for help What will yield a be er result is if you invest the time to be more targeted in who you reach out to Close friends and family won’t mind and those actually related to your target industry 21) Start a personal newsle er: I’ve known some people to start a personal newsle er to have their contacts *opt into* that then regularly updates them on your startup journey and can ask for specific help then repeatedly in the newsle er This works great for ge ing mentors and early supporters engage in a small ask (just opt in) and later help more as you have different needs (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-05-at-3-27-26-pm.png) 22) Use Rapportive to find emails & cold email: Somehow you may have stumbled upon someone you’d *love* to talk to, but you don’t know them You can use tools like Rapportive to guess the email address and send them a personal note asking to speak with them about what you’re working on You can find more advice on this tactic here (h p://www.slideshare.net/dunkhippo33/lean-startup-circleboston-april-28-2011) and here (h p://lifehacker.com/use-rapportive-to-find-anyone-on-the-internetsreal-em-570745575) https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 6/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/finding-zuck-with-rapportive.jpg) 23) Make your GChat status a call for help/intros: This may seem simple and passive, but you’d be surprised who reads your GChat statuses Adding a note of what you’re looking for and leave it up for a few days and you might just get a few people to help you out This works for other chat tools as well, of course 24) Make your signature a call for help/intros: Just like your GChat status is a long tail way to get people’s a ention, you can use your email signature the same way Below your name in your signature is the perfect place to let people know Don’t forget to update your mobile app’s signature as well as your computer’s Meetup.com: 25) Join & A end Meetups in your category: Meetup has become an amazing hub of groups around just about any topic you can think of Whether you’re making an app for LARPers or a hardware startup, there’s a meetup group likely in your area you should join to meet and talk with group members in your target market https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 7/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-03-at-9-16-31-pm.png) 26) Ask organizers to message the group: Organizers have unique privileges to send messages to their groups You don’t get what you don’t ask for (h p://quotationsbook.com/quote/3313/#sthash.EmQ0oVoz.dpbs), so don’t be afraid to reach out to group organizers to talk to them (they may be a great target user) and see if they’ll message the group They often make no money in running their groups, so you can think of them like the Facebook Fan Page owners previously mentioned 27) Ask the organizer to allow you to address the audience at a Meetup: Potentially even be er than ge ing into everyone’s clu ered inbox is the opportunity to address the whole group at one of their events This allows people most interested to immediately approach you This can be a great consolation ask if they don’t want to message their whole group since this requires no work on their part 28) Mention in your Meetup profile what you’re looking for: Like the GChat status, this is a passive move that alone won’t get you everyone to talk to, but you’d be surprised how often people read the profiles of other new members in a group Be sure to include your desired contact method if you want Meetup members to reach out to you 29) Message users on Meetup.com: Not every member of a Meetup group a ends every event and if there’s no upcoming meetups or it’s a group outside your area, you can still reach users by sending them individual messages Per a great write up by Melissa Tsang (h p://melissatsang.com/2013/07/21/week-1choosing-an-idea-validating-a-market-need-and-bridging-focus/), Meetup has a limit of 12 messages per day, which is still enough to get some quality responses as she writes in detail about 30) Create a Meetup group: Just because a group doesn’t exist, does not mean there would not be interest Countless people have launched successful businesses based on the idea of organizing a high value group Just remember that if you this, not only will you build trust and relationships with all the a endees, you’ll be the organizer who can send all those messages, decide who addresses the audience, etc https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 8/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… Your Blog: 31) Write a blog post about the problem you’re solving: If you feel you know some of the key problems that users are facing in your target market, write about it (h ps://medium.com/onstartups/968ebef44a56)! If it resonates with them, they will share, upvote, tweet, etc it and some will even sign up as long as you remember to have a call to action to sign up at the end You can see an example here (h ps://jasonevanish.com/2011/11/27/the-lean-product-life-cycle/), where 1,000 reads turned into 10 sign ups and a look at some famous companies that started with a blog here (h ps://medium.com/on-startups/968ebef44a56) 32) Post your blog to discussion sites in appropriate categories: Sites like Reddit (h p://www.reddit.com/) and HackerNews (h p://news.ycombinator.com/) are awesome to access established audiences for your market Before posting, your homework so you actually post it somewhere it’s welcome; a baker would not be well served to post their baking innovation on HackerNews, but a marketing startup would very well posting to Inbound.org (h p://www.inbound.org/) By posting it to these sites you’ll significantly increase the reach of #31 and might also get some interesting commenters there you can reach out to like this example from Vero (h ps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4129228) (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/getvero-hackernews.jpg) 33) Update your About Page for what you’re looking for: Just like #23 and #28, it is always beneficial to list what your looking for on your About page (h ps://jasonevanish.com/about/) The most engaged people on your blog are likely to click to your about page to see who you are and if they see this, they can help even if they don’t read your specific blog post about your idea 34) Make a page on your blog just about your market: Depending on your blogging platform, this could be easy or hard, but it can never hurt to organize your information in a way that people can easily navigate it If you’re writing a whole series of items or have already created a lot of related content, this can be a great way to assert your expertise and act as a honeypot to draw in interested potential customers 35) Start a blog just to talk about your industry: Don’t already have a blog or don’t want to talk about your startup on your existing blog? Then start a new one It helps to have more content than just one post, so if you go this route, try to have a few posts you can post over a few weeks If you know your startup’s domain, you can make this the start of your company’s blog (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/ultimate-guide-startup-marketing/) Especially for blogs like this, try to get users to either sign up for an email list or to explicitly sign up for customer interviews https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 9/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… Other Blogs: 36) Reach out to other bloggers for interviews: Chances are, there are other people writing about the market and potentially even the problem you’re interested in solving These people are generally very knowledgable on the market and so they make great customer interview candidates and can also shed a light on more places to look for people in your market 37) Ask other bloggers to run an ad for you: Many bloggers, like those fan page owners, don’t make a lot of money, so they may be willing to run an ad for you for very cheap or mention you in a relevant post just because they’re nice or like you 38) Ask other bloggers to write about you: Going beyond an ad (which may be seen on multiple posts) you can see if a blogger is willing to write a whole post about you If you’ve already interviewed them and they’re excited about your idea, this may be an easier ask than you think (and thus it for free) 39) Ask to write a guest blog post: If your own blog has no audience, the best thing you can is get a post you’d write on your market/problem on a blog that does have your desired audience Bloggers love having more content to share, so if it’s a good post, they’re very likely to be willing to publish it Look for guidelines and advice on guest blogging (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/guest-blogging-forkissmetrics/) on sites you want to write for like on KISSmetrics’s blog (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/guest-blog-post-image.jpg) 40) Use Blog lists to find the right blogs: Not sure who to reach out to? Sites like Technorati, Blog Catalog (h p://blogcatalog.com)and AllTop (h p://alltop.com/) are great for finding out top blogs for things like Top Fashion Blogs (h p://technorati.com/blogs/directory/living/fashion/) or just about any other category You can also look for other influencers on sites like Klout (h p://klout.com) and PeerIndex (h p://www.peerindex.com/) 41) Reach out to commenters: If you see passionate comments on someone else’s blog, follow the link and the profile/name from the comment to find out who they are and reach out to them People usually will include a link back to their own blog, About.me profile or Twi er account from such a comment This will give you a more direct, personal way to reach them, and avoid writing a bunch of comments, which the blog owner may then mark as spam and never be seen https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 10/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… 57) Make your own post: Just like you can respond to posters, you can also make your own posting in the appropriate category and filter the ensuing responses to find the right people to talk to A friend working on a startup recently used this to success by making a basic post and then sending all respondents a qualifying survey to make sure they were a match A small cash incentive in the posting will generally drive a solid response rate Forums, Micro Networks & Communities on the web 58) Join in the conversations on the sites: Just about any community exists on the web today Many of them are in places you would have no idea exists until you dig in If you can’t find them initially, ask some of the early users you meet using some of the other tactics listed in this post Once there, look around for people already talking about your problem you’re solving and join that conversation to learn more You can also post new discussions specifically on your target subject to see who is interested https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 14/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/slashdot-comments.jpg) 59) Message individual users of interest: If you see someone talking a lot about the problems or opportunities you’re working on, see if you can send a private message to them on the forum or at worst just reply to one of their comments asking to speak with them Anyone sufficiently passionate will be excited to share their thoughts 60) Reach out to moderators: If this is truly a community site (and not another company’s forums) then the moderators are often the most passionate people of all Reach out to them as great people to talk to and learn from As a moderator, they’ll be spending as much time as anyone following all the conversations there so they could provide valuable insight beyond their own experiences If it is a company’s forum, then tread a bit more carefully depending on if your idea is competitive or complimentary 61) Ask Moderators to post on your behalf or run an ad: Many forums on the web are run with very li le revenue and more as a passion project Therefore, much like some of the previously mentioned Fan Pages, etc, they may be open to posting on your behalf or running an ad for a very small fee They’ll know the ins and outs of the site, which will give you a be er chance of reaching the maximum audience Google Adwords & other ad networks 62) Run Adwords with a landing page: An efficient (though at times costly) way to build an early user list is to run a quick, targeted Adwords campaign linking to a sign up landing page You can learn how to set that up here (h p://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demandfor-your.html) There’s also good advice on evaluating the success or failure of such a campaign here (h p://answers.onstartups.com/questions/44163/lean-startup-landing-page-test-how-do-i-measuresuccess) and here (h ps://www.quora.com/How-does-one-validate-a-startup-idea-with-GoogleAdWords) Realize that paying to get a bunch of people on a list doesn’t validate much on its own It’s then using that list to reach out to users and talk to them and ask them to pay for something that does https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 15/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/cusoy-landing-page.jpg) 63) Run ads on lesser known networks: Google may have the largest audience, but not the cheapest or best targeted Consider your market and think about if other ad networks would work be er There’s everything to consider from Yahoo and Bing to mobile ad networks or blogger ad networks You can find a list of alternatives here (h p://www.webconfs.com/google-adwords-alternatives-article-46.php) 64) Have your SEO basics in order: What’s be er than the perfect Adwords campaign? Showing up organically for searches on your problem Great SEO takes time, but you can make sure to have the basics right from day so that you can at least get a trickle of interested users to your blog or site There are a lot of great tips on the KISSmetrics blog (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/?s=SEO+basics) including this great SEO Guide for Beginners (h ps://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/) Newsletters 65) Talk to newsle er owners: Just like passionate people often run forums simply for the love of it, others will run newsle ers If you already subscribe to them, don’t be afraid to just reply to the newsle er and ask for a few minutes to talk to them Most people are excited to hear from people who read their work! 66) Buy Ads using a newsle er ad tool: There’s a great newsle er ad network (h p://www.launchbit.com/) called Launchbit It can be a great help in both finding out what newsle ers exist in a category and allowing you to quickly set up an ad campaign across multiple such newsle ers 67) Ask for mentions in a newsle er: In addition to talking to newsle er owners as potential early adopters, you can also ask them for exposure Many newsle ers have no formal advertising system like Launchbit (h p://launchbit.com), so often you can just go direct to them to ask for a mention for li le or no cost The more excited they are for what you’re doing, the less likely it will cost you anything https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 16/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/newsle er-ad.jpg) 68) Start your own industry newsle er: If you don’t find any newsle ers in your category or are think there’s room for another one, then don’t be afraid to start your own! (h p://www.quora.com/Startups/When-is-the-best-time-for-a-startup-company-to-start-sending-amonthly-newsle er) It will take time to build up an audience, but it’s a great way to put to work all those signups you’ve been driving to your landing page Often times, it’s easier to first get people on a newsle er and then later convert them to a paying customer Complimentary Startups 69) Reach out to complimentary startups: No ma er your industry or idea, there will be others in the market you compliment At KISSmetrics, there were many other SaaS tools we were happy to integrate with (h p://support.kissmetrics.com/integrations/) and swap customer/mailing lists In most cases, our analytics was something their users needed and many of our customers could use a support tool, call tracking metrics or track a MailChimp email campaign The best case for success with this method is to target companies of similar size (ie- mailing lists and user bases are of similar size) as that assures an equally mutually beneficial relationship https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 17/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-10-at-8-06-55-pm.png) 70) Ask to guest post on their blog: Just like there are industry blogs run by volunteers and people just generally passionate about the space, there are also companies with prominent blogs One of the biggest challenges they often have is having enough content Reach out to someone on the marketing team or any contact info you see on the blog and propose topics that allow you to naturally link to what you’re doing 71) Find their users and reach out to them directly: If you think your idea would be helpful to that company’s audience, look for people actively engaging and discussing the company on all the platforms I’ve been writing about throughout this post While it’s be er to ask for forgiveness than permission, remember again to use tact so as to not be spammy or offend the company Your Competition 72) Watch what they do: As the saying goes, “When in Rome, as the Romans do.” Chances are your competition has figured out at least a couple of spots where your customers exist and you can enter the conversation there as well In more modern terms, if something they works, then consider Jobs’s favorite quote, “Great artists steal.” (h p://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/) Like their Facebook page, and follow the company and key employees on Twi er for some inspiration based on what they link to 73) Look for social mentions: Especially if you’re trying to disrupt a large incumbent, there’s likely many people talking about your competition Look for especially people complaining about the product or experience These are perfect people to reach out to learn from and hopefully convert to giving you a try This also works for other startups you’re competing with https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 18/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-06-at-1-25-25-pm.png) 74) Use research tools: Tools like MixRank (mixrank.com), which shows the ads a site has been running, and Spyfu (spyfu.com), which shows you the expected ad spend and keywords purchased for competition If you’re looking for inspiration on the kinds of ads to try, those tools will help you get there Data Research Tools 75) Use Datanyze (h ps://www.datanyze.com): This tool will tell you what apps any of the top 1,000,000+ websites are using as well as what they’ve recently quit It’s transformed more than one sales team I know and provides priceless information on the state of just about any web SaaS market Their free demo (h ps://www.datanyze.com/market-share/) can help you understand market share, while the pricey version has alerts for specific tools and lets you see what any site is currently using https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 19/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://www.datanyze.com) 76) Leverage tools that tell you contact info for key roles: If you know the persona of your target customer, then a list like Hoover’s (h p://www.hoovers.com/) or Jigsaw (h p://www.data.com/Jigsaw/) can help you find some of those types of users at especially bigger companies Note that this lists they have aren’t 100% accurate, nor are they cheap Try to hustle access via a friend or advisor Your College, University or School 77) Ask your professors: Many professors live vicariously through their students, and are happy to help out current students as well as alumni If you had a professor that you had a particularly strong relationship with that is relevant to your startup, definitely reconnect with them Also realize that many professors will talk to alumni who they never taught Most professors have industry contacts they can help you with introductions as well as be a great channel to their students as potential customers or hires whether via emailing them or le ing you address the class 78) Leverage your alumni network: Whether it’s old clubs you belonged to, a fraternity or sorority or simply the alumni group for the city you’re in, you’d be amazed what people may be doing after school regardless of major or study habits Don’t be afraid to both reach out to old classmates and club members as well as reach out to the clubs themselves for help from current members Every student group I was in loved to hear from alumni 79) Use your alumni directory: Many schools have searchable alumni directories that can allow you to track down contacts at some of the most powerful positions in the world The shared experience of going to the same school is often all you need to mention to get someone who normally would be unreachable to suddenly be accessible to you for a meeting, mentorship or the right introduction https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 20/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/alumni-directories.jpg) 80) Reach out to student groups: Even if you weren’t a member of the group, student groups are usually excited to hear from alumni If any student group fits as a target customer for your startup, you should reach out to them Playing the alumni card often gets you a great response and can often lead to offers to help you in many ways They can email their list, let you address the group at a meeting or assist in recruiting help Leveraging the Physical World 81) Post an offer in public places: Bulletin boards still physically exist in many places and people still put up physical signs for all kinds of things The stereotype are things like meetings and guitar lessons, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a ention being creative If you know there are places your target audience will go to or pass by, consider posting something to get their a ention If you’re doing a Concierge MVP (h p://sco lthompson.com/lean-lesson-flashback-the-concierge-mvp/) for your idea, this is a great way to start 82) Use handouts, fliers or mailers: If hanging something up and hoping people will read it and respond doesn’t work for you, consider a more to communication through handouts you can give out or mail One person I met that had a parking ticket app would carry fliers with him and put their flier under the wiper of a car that already had a parking ticket on it as well It had a massive conversion rate Get creative! https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 21/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… (h p://www.streetsblog.org/2012/01/10/turning-a-parking-ticket-into-a-bike-purchase/) 83) Buy someone’s service: So you want to start a business serving artists, or maybe housecleaners or some other service? Try buying their service and take a few minutes before or after their service to talk to them If they care about customer service, they’ll be happy to discuss their problems with you A friend of mine started his mobile invoicing startup based on the problems his cleaning lady had tracking payments Kickstarter & other funding sites 84) Look for products ge ing funded in your industry: Funding sites are booming which means all kinds of companies and ideas are ge ing funded Others in your industry can be incredible sources of knowledge not just on how to run a campaign, but what they’ve learned from interacting with their new customers 85) Ask complimentary funded projects for help: A fellow crowd-funded project that has finished their funding will be very busy trying to deliver their product to their supporters, but they might just be willing to send a message, tweet or post on your behalf If their funding is still open, you may be able to swap promotion to your audience and theirs Remember: You don’t get what you don’t ask for! (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/kickstarter-contact.jpg) https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 22/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… 86) Reach out to users that backed the project: Every Kickstarter has a tab for Backers which includes their profiles, which you can click to see what else they’ve backed While they have no messaging system (Indiegogo does), with their full names on Kickstarter, you can likely Google or search Twi er or Linkedin for them and message them there 87) Put your idea on a funding site: If you feel you’ve validated your idea enough, then running your own crowd-funding campaign is a great way to validate interest for your idea There is tons of information on the web about making the most of a campaign, just search on Google (h p://lmgtfy.com/?q=kickstarter+best+practices) or Quora (h p://www.quora.com/search? q=kickstarter) Youtube 88) Talk to Youtube Channel owners: Youtube is filled with creators making content on all kinds of markets If you go to Youtube’s channel search (h ps://www.youtube.com/channels), you can search for your category and see who has channels and how many subscribers they reach Just like you can talk to bloggers as experts in a market, you can learn a lot by interviewing channel owners (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/screen-shot-2013-08-06-at-4-31-39-pm.png) 89) Ask channel owners for promotion: If your idea resonates with the channel owner, there’s a good chance you can get them to talk about you on one of their episodes or maybe even have you as a guest They may charge you a fee, but if it’s your exact target audience, it might just be worth it 90) Start your own channel: If you think video is a great medium to communicate with your audience then creating a channel to connect with them may be a great option Just like starting your own Meetup group, it can initially be hard, but once you’ve built an audience it will have a great, long-term payoff https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 23/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… 91) Run ads on Youtube: Youtube leverages Google’s ad powers to run targeted ads You only pay for the ads people fully watch (not skip) so if video seems a powerful way to communicate with your audience, it’s worth experimenting Remember, Dropbox started with nothing but a video (h p://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587) and got over 75,000 signups (although they did not run it as a video ad) Your own Product: 92) Put your name on it: If any part of your product can be seen by a non-customer, make sure your name is on it This is easy, free marketing that your customers can provide for you simply in using your product KISSinsights (now Qualaroo (qualaroo.com)) had incredible growth without doing any paid advertising because of a simple link in each of their pop up surveys (h ps://jasonevanish.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/qualaroo-powered-by.jpg)93) Make sharing an option for more access: If your product has metered usage, then you will always have customers who are uncomfortable moving up to a new, costlier tier MixPanel has a free 50,000 events plan that can become a free 175,000 plan if you put their logo on your homepage (h ps://mixpanel.com/free/) I’ve seen countless startups with that logo in their footer for just this reason, so don’t think your users won’t it until you try 94) Build a product “worth tweeting about”: In the rush to build MVPs and move fast, it can be easy to end up building a half assed product instead of half a product (h p://makecheckthink.com/post/30180169203/build-half-a-product-not-a-half-assed-product) If you instead solve a deep pain in a delightful way (h p://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/What-are-someof-the-techniques-Stripe-used-aggressively-for-early-user-acquisition), people will naturally rave about it Crashlytics (crashlytics.com), which was Twi er’s largest acquisition (h p://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/02/05/twi ers-boston-acquisitions-crashlytics-tops-100mbluefin-labs-close-behind/) ever, used this strategy (h p://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2013/06/25/four-pillars-of-leadership/) to experience viral growth of their app crash reporting tool https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 24/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… Mobile: 95) Run ads in your side project apps: A number of my friends have built apps as side projects that end up having a few thousand users that never really monetized or amounted to anything As a free user base you can always insert your own ads into your app I met one of the founders at QBix (h ps://qbix.com/) that built the Groups App for the iPhone (helping you organize your contacts) and they used this tactic to drive people to their other apps You can also send them to mobile landing pages to avoid building anything ———————————————————————————————————————- Woah…that was a lot Thank you for making it to the end I hope a few of these have inspired you and point you in the right direction to find those difficult first few users While some of them are paid options, I hope you see how many alternatives there are to paid acquisition on Day There are many, many more ways to find your first users, so let your creativity run wild (like making a fake Vodka brand (h p://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/08/02/how-we-created-a-fake-vodkabrand-to-promote-our-startup/) to launch your events site) and just remember to focus on learning (jasonevanish.com/2012/01/18/how-to-structure-and-get-the-most-out-of-customer-developmentinterviews/) and don’t worry about scaling on Day (paulgraham.com/ds.html) What are the most clever ways you’ve heard to find your first users? ——————————————————————————————————————— https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 25/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… Sign up to learn to Build Customer Driven Products I'm writing a book to share the tactics and strategies to build customer driven products I'll share the templates and processes I use so you too can deeply understand your customers and build products they'll love Email * Name * First Last Posted By: Jason Evanish Category: Education, Entrepreneurship, Lean Startups, Product, Resources Tags: channels, cusdev, customer development, first customer, growth, LEAN, LEAN Startups, marketing channels 18 thoughts on “95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale” Tom Masiero (@BlendahTom) August 12, 2013 @ 3:51 pm Am I crazy or was there a link to BuySellAds for twi er services on this post yesterday? Jason Evanish August 14, 2013 @ 3:21 pm Tom, Yes The link is in the Twi er section: h p://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/by/tweets I think all the paid ones though should only be backups; in the early days, to outreach is likely to be more successful and also generally doesn’t cost any money Why pay to validate your idea when you can learn more doing free tactics? Thanks, Jason https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 26/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… Pingback: Twi er Buys Open Source Training Company Marakana To Power New “Twi er University” For Engineers | whatsweb Pingback: Facebook Tests Celebrities-Only App For Checking And Replying To Fan Cha er | whatsweb Kiran August 17, 2013 @ 11:21 pm Wow, that’s a lot to go through Thanks for providing all this information It will be very useful as we try to get more users for our startup Lokafy.com connects travellers with locals who are passionate about sharing what they love about their home city We have 28 hosts in Toronto and 24 in Paris We have been successful in recruiting local hosts using Craigslist We’ve also created posters (you can see them on our Facebook page), and asked businesses which are frequented by travellers (hostels, restaurants, bars, etc.), to put up the posters Pingback: Software Marketing Tweetables – 19 August 2013 | Smart Software Marketing Pingback: Week #5 – Shipping my MVP, ge ing out of the building and staying productive | melissa's blog Pingback: TheCollaborativeStartup Michael Harries (@michaelharries) September 11, 2013 @ 5:33 pm Great resource for first steps on cust-dev — a looong list of approaches to identifying people for first customer discovery discussions Pingback: 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale | fred zimny's serve4impact 10 Pingback: 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « The Art of Living 11 Pingback: 26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews 12 Pingback: | ConnectingtotheCloud.com 13 Pingback: 26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews - SkyOffice Consulting | SkyOffice Consulting 14 Pingback: 26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews | Progressive Office Marketing 15 Pingback: Lean Startup Lab – Phoenix, AZ | Resources to Help You Find Customers To Interview 16 Pingback: 26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews - Oscar Pena 17 Alex Cook November 1, 2013 @ 7:08 pm Jason – you are a beast Thank you SO much for pu ing all this together I have a feeling I’ll be viewing this often It’s a really amazing post for super early customer development Also some great nuggets for further down the path https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-first-customers-for-customer-development-or-your-first-sale/ 27/28 22/12/2018 95 Ways to find your first customers for customer development or your first sale « Building Customer Driven SaaS Products | Jason Eva… I will write my post on “Reddit for customer development” soon and get back to you! 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