20 🔥 Growth Marketing Hacks To Get Your First 100 Customers
”.. The reality is, starting a company takes a lot of commitment and resources. People have a fair amount of inertia. It takes a lot to get us moving ..” says Simon from the Entrepreneurs Handbook on Medium.
He continues -
”.. The value you will get out of building your company in public far outweighs the potential risk of someone stealing your idea.”
It’s true that when you build in the open and share your numbers, you naturally draw more interest and curiosity. It might get as far as having people tweet and market your product for you. This is what marketing is all about, leveraging the interest in your product, for your product.
You can read Simon’s full blog post here. However I summarized below the main takeaways (All credit goes to Simon P. for writing this wonderful and useful piece of information).
1 💎: Define Your Ideal Customer
Know who you’re targeting.
2 💎: Own Your Audience
Grow an email list (It’s the most solid way to stay in touch with your audience).
3 💎: Nurture Your Audience
Engage with your audience, #2 was just the start.
4 💎: Scarcity
Utilize the FOMO strategy.
5 💎: Treat Every Customer Like Customer 0
Customer service is one of the most neglected things when you grow. Don’t neglect your customers.
6 💎: Leverage Established Distribution Channels
Reddit, Quora and general forums are great tools for this.
7 💎: Community
It makes it “sticky” so that people don’t want to leave.
8 💎: Alternative Ads
Don’t go straight to Google or FB for ads, it’s been redone so many times, rather utilize newsletters in your niche. This is where you can easily target potential customers easily.
10 💎: Quick SEO
Start small. Start with long-tail keywords that have an intent directly linked to your product.
11 💎: Press
Build a story around your product and brand so that press becomes interested in covering you.
12 💎: Go to Where Your Customers Are
The founders of Etsy did this to great effect. They actually traveled to trade shows and markets around the country where vendors were showing off their products.
13 💎: Partnerships
Businesses rely on distribution. So if you have a way to distribute better for some cost, consider it, it might help you grow your business.
14 💎: Use Your Network
Do something valuable for people, and they will want to share it. For example write a free e-book and share it with your followers, they will probably share it with their followers.
15 💎: Encourage Word of Mouth
Like affiliate programs. It’s a give and take relationship.
16 💎: Build in Public (my favorite)
Show the world what you build and your numbers. This will put your product in the spotlight. and make it easier for you to market your product.
17 💎: Affiliate Programs
Like #15.
18 💎: Be Human
Give yourself/your company a personality. Be humble and respect your users, they will respect you in return.
19 💎: Lead Magnets
Make it something that doesn’t cost you money - like an eBook. This will allow you to grow your e-mail list.
20 💎: Add Value
Give tons of value before you start charging for it. This will build your credibility and build your brand.
From Simon blog post: “When you are constantly giving away valuable information, advice, and resources, people are more likely to trust you with their contact information.”.
21 💎: Build quick and fail fast
This one wasn’t mentioned in Simon’s blog, but I think it’s important enough to mention here that you should build your MVP quickly in order to validate your idea or fail fast, it can save you tons of time, instead of building something people don’t want. You can do that by utilizing the power of a website builder that converts (free to try) (sponsored).
That would be all for this edition folks. Hope you enjoyed it, stay safe and keep building in public!