How did you land your first customers?
Dmitry Kalinchenko
102 replies
What has worked for you in landing your first few customers? We've just launched a public beta with a couple of initial customers and looking to onboard more. I'm curious what worked for others, especially in b2b saas space.
P.S. Apologies if this topic has already been explored but I haven't found anything relevant.
Replies
Janna Bastow@simplybastow
We launched ProdPad more than 10 years ago, before Product Hunt even existed (though watch this space, we're launching new AI tools for ProdPad next Monday 😎 https://www.producthunt.com/prod...), so we had to find other routes to find our first customers.
It was just me and @simoncast back then, and we were both product managers by day, so we didn't really know what we were doing with marketing, but we figured it out... And our first ever paying customer from a decade ago is still with us today 🌟
I'd give the same advice today though: Build a 'good enough' homepage that's easy to change so ou can test different taglines and value propositions (ours was literally something simple like 'Better product management with ProdPad's roadmap software' or some variation on that), and TAKE HOLD of your first customers.
DON'T have automated onboarding emails. Instead, literally look up each customer who comes through on LinkedIn, look at the logs to see what they did when they encountered your webpage or trial sign up, and send a custom message for each.
We were getting something like 5-10 trials a day back in the super early days, and so this flow was perfectly manageable, if I was willing to keep a constant check on the logs and my inbox. And then every time someone replies, REPLY BACK IMMEDIATELY. Give proactive help. Ask questions. Clue them in about the new stuff you're testing or about to release, and ask them if they want to be beta testers. Make them feel really special. You'll also invariably help them with bugs, as the first version of your product will suck. That's okay! As long as you show them that you acknowledge and can fix bugs, and take on board their suggestions for ways to improve your app (there will be lots—you don't have to build all of these suggestions, but your first trialists will point out some pretty obvious wins), you'll get on their good side.
Then ask them to buy. Even if you don't have a payment system fully sorted yet. Talk to them about pricing and how they'd pay for this thing. If they give you positive signs, get a payment system in place (even if rough and ready and a bit manual at first), and start taking in some money! Voila, your first customers.
It took us a month or so to get our first customer, from the time we launched ProdPad in it's customer-ready state (we had an internal only version previously), and most of my time that month was spent talking to our very first trialists through the door, learning and adapting our product and processes so we could continue gaining speed.
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hey @dmitry_kalinchenko! it's a really great question. we're actually in a similar position right now. one of the strongest channels we've had has been live demos (virtually through zoom). it's been a great way to get in front of warm potential customers, friendlies, etc and try to get that early validation. let me know if you find good sources! we're actually launching on PH today 🤞😬 and would love any feedback you might have! :) https://www.producthunt.com/post...
@dmitry_kalinchenko @justintbuchanan Also in the same boat working to lock in our first few customers for our B2B software. Are these demo events you participated in or one-on-one chats you arranged with customers?
@dmitry_kalinchenko @justintbuchanan love the idea of demos! Do you have an email list where you market the demos? Curious how do you get leads for those sessions?
We got the first client through Social Media. Continuous updates on all our social media platforms. got us more traction and our first client.
@kanan_tandi personal social media accounts or did you start a business account and targeted your segmented audiences? Curious what was the timeline from when you first started the channel -> 1st customer?
Hi! We already had a strong product LiveChat (https://www.producthunt.com/post... ) when we started working on our product suite. Our second product was @chatbotcom . The first paying customers came from LiveChat's customers database (the tools work smoothly together). Also, we bought a strong domain (chatbot.com) that gave us organic, well-converting traffic. A similar story happened with our third product - HelpDesk. First customers came from LiveChat's database (with HelpDesk we covered some customer cases that LiveChat doesn't cover). Also, we bought a strong domain (HelpDesk.com) and got organic traffic. As far as I remember, the first paying customer came from Product Hunt, actually. :) (https://www.producthunt.com/post...)
Before official launch, I tried to chime in into conversation on social media when people search for that.
I run https://hanami.run and example I google "Cloudflare email forwarding" and join the dicussion like this https://community.cloudflare.com...
Eventually I land the first customer that way.
hey @kureikain! I checked out your product - I love the clean design and rich documentation. one extra thought for you to consider, I love your pricing (very affordable!), but the colorful design almost looks like it could be "100, 600, 1500" at first glance if you don't see the periods. Maybe consider just staying "$1, $6, $15"? I actually think that'll look and feel cheaper to the users. Just a thought! :)
@justintbuchanan thanks so much for such a valueable feedback. That's totally right now that you said it. Thanks so much again. Gonna make a quick change :-)
We went through our personal network to reach prospects for interview during beta. On boarded them on free plan as they could give us way to build better product.
We recently pivoted and invited them for 15 min meeting and gave lifetime access to most features otherwise they had to pay for.
@pooran_prasad_rajanna I often hear about the networking funnel, but is it easy to switch to other paid methods of acquiring clients after?
Hey @dmitry_kalinchenko,
We got around 1600 first time customers for free on the day of the launch.
Method
1. Engaged in online communities that needed our product well before launch
2. Collected emails without spamming
3. Updated potential users consistently
4. Converted them on launch.
In my opinion, the biggest issue is always "retention", not acquisition.
Hope that helps.
@dmitry_kalinchenko @david_t_kim WOW! 1600 customers on day 1 sounds amazing. What communities did you engage in and how many email were u able to collect pre-launch. I am assuming it'd be atleast upwards of 5k
@dmitry_kalinchenko @david_t_kim "In my opinion, the biggest issue is always retention, not acquitioin." Very important insight.
@dmitry_kalinchenko @rajansoni Yes, it was at least 5k emails. We got customers from mostly social communities like Indie Hackers, Reddit, Facebook Groups and some discord.
@david_t_kim That sounds fantastic. How long before the launch did you start engaging in the communities. Also, post launch did you continue nurturing the communities?
Networking. It’s important to have a good connection with people who connections with other and so on..
It helps get the word around for sure!
First customer was our first business 😅 needed paperless.io for our document workflow at mankido.
To answer my own question, here's how we landed the first 2 users:
1. Before I was very serious about the idea, I listed our website on Wikipedia within a relevant article. We use a Decision Matrix to enable collaborative decision-making, so I posted the link on that page on Wikipedia. Eventually, got contacted for someone who was looking for a more mature version of what I had built.
2. A networking event for startups - randomly met a person with the exact need we were trying to serve.
https://www.producthunt.com/post...
At https://growcify.com, we received several requests from customers before even launching the product. And at https://localites.co, it was all about community spread.
We are building in public, every new status update we have, such as the figma prototype being completed. We consultant with the founders who helped us validate our idea initially to walk them through the user journey. It increases buy in, relationship building and more.
@ethan_halfhide I like the idea about buy in. How did u get customers to follow you initially though? Did you already have the right following or email list?
First, I'd find customers (LinkedIn, Reddit, forums, ...) and speak with them 1-2-1 to understand their real priorities.
@randomdraw637484 I am pretty much planning to do just that. Find potential customers on linkedin and message them asking for 10 minutes to take their inputs
@randomdraw637484 When you found and tried engaging your prospective customers, did you mention your product at all? Or just the general topic of the conversation?
We answered related quora questions and engaged in reddit communities
I asked a couple of my friends running their own startups for feedback of our product ( https://roiculture.com ). Eventually, they liked it and subscribed!
@shyam_prasad_reddy We answered related quora questions and engaged in reddit communities
romantic link
We were our first customer! Aside from that, we reached out to our target audience directly - individual + personalised cold emails worked for us! Now we grow organically (and we're gearing up for a marketing campaign).
Don't be afraid to speak to your target audience directly!
We're a tutoring platform, Think Tutor, so we came in with some existing clients and began to transition them over. It's difficult to develop your first new customers through your platform though!
I got my first client through a Social Media launch. Posted https://nichewebsitebuilder.com/ on PH today and got two additional users.
@dmitry_kalinchenko We have created community in Facebook and created some heads-up about the product we going to launch which helped us to get users when we launch the product. https://creptel.com/musicians
You raised a good question, we started testing our service with our friends and acquaintances, then moved on to social networks and today we opened the hunt https://www.producthunt.com/post... In six months, we have increased our community to 1,500 users. Social networks give us more growth than just advertising. I hope you will also succeed