“If you can dream it, you can do it.” Walt Disney
Now your product is ready and you tested and improved it to a good enough level.
The next challenge is to find first users and customers. People tend to slow down at this stage because of 2 main reasons,
- they freak out with the idea of sharing their product, fear rejection
- they have no clue how to do it or lack options
Both of these reasons are connected from the root. Let’s look at why these reasons don’t matter and how you can proceed to find customers.
Own the Service & Communicate with Your Circle
You have built a product, have gone through some mix of knowledge, research, expression while building it. In order to make the jump start with first users, you need full power. In order to have full power, you have to own your product and be confident about it.
Let go of the fear that people will say what you make sucks, it doesn’t matter, that fear doesn’t matter. Most productive and influential people receive this kind of criticism everyday, they hear that they will fail everyday, they do it anyways!
Now own the service and start communicating with your close circle. Share what you are offering and tell them they can always get a better pricing as a friend discount. You can also tell them to ask their circle to reach more people.
Connect People on Social & Provide Value
If you are only consuming social media as entertainment until now (I don’t recommend that), now you can start adding potential clients as friends and truly provide them with value. With some initiation these people can become your first clients.
How to proceed?
Get in touch with people who you might be helpful to, and then simply be helpful. Building a relationship takes time and it is the best way to build trust. First users of your product can give you feedback that nobody else gives and this is critical before scaling up.
Write lead generating content and share
What is lead generating content?
As GaryVee says attention is the online currency. Lead generating content is understanding the nerves and trends of your industry and turning that data into attention grabbing content.
Lead generation is related to,
- An interesting title
- Helpful, maybe fun or controversial content
- Some level of expertise and trust
It is better this content is somewhat related to your audiences’ interests. Then, if you provide value through content, you will have the leverage to collect emails naturally which will turn into customers over time.
Free samples (trial period) are a great initiator
Free samples and trial period are offered by almost every service for a reason. Actually for 2 reasons, here they are:
- Helps clients understand the product, its quality and earns their trust
- Anyone that gets a good free service feels more like supporting your work over time
There are some general examples how people use free samples to collect emails,
- Offer a free ebook that helps and educates people
- Offer 1 week of free service and show results of using the service with a 1 year contract
- Offer a piece from the collection, let them pay for the collection
Collaborate with Competitors
This sounds a bit controversial but believe me it is not. Your competitors, people with a similar service, have already a database of clients they worked with over the years. No matter how close the expertise area is, the service probably has differences which makes competitors a great client provider as well. This happens in a few ways:
- Make friends with competitors and ask how you can help, is it possible to direct clients when crowded
- Ask to fulfil a complementary skill to their service
- Offer to share each others’ contacts and database while making clear what the differences are
The last one confuses people but it is easy actually. If you are a photographer and take wedding photos but not much baby photos, you can direct your customers to a friend for baby photos.
Think tank ha!
Focus on 1 Client and Grow from There
Most starters get overexcited, overwhelmed and distracted. They feel like all clients should immediately roll in one after another.
While starting, focusing is key (we even wrote an ebook on (How to Focus). Just build a process to reach out to people and build relationships. Focus on getting your first client.
Then learn from one client and repeat, here you go!
Ozgur @ freedomxx.com