Road to Acquire Your First 100 SaaS Customers
What the journey looks like.
Hello and once again, happy Friday! :)
The road to acquire your first 100 customers for your SaaS (Software as a Service) product is a significant milestone and often the toughest challenge for startup founders. This journey requires a strategic approach, disciplined execution, and a willingness to engage in hands-on marketing efforts.
Let’s look at what you should do to get started:
Start Before You Code: Identifying Advantages
Before diving into development, evaluate your existing advantages. If you have an audience or a network, leverage it to serve their needs with a product tailored to their interests and pain points. This approach significantly increases your chances of attracting early customers.
💡 Building with an Audience or Network
Leverage Existing Connections: Create a product that addresses the pain points of your current audience or network.
Engage Early: Use your network to gather feedback, generate interest, and build a loyal customer base before launch.
💡 Building without an Audience or Network
Explore Alternative Channels: Utilise traffic channels that do not require an existing audience. We'll delve into these later.
Build a Network: Join entrepreneur communities around you to gain support and connections.
Pre-Coding: Validating Your Idea
Validation is key to ensuring your product meets market needs. Create a landing page offering valuable content or updates on your product launch. Collect email addresses and engage in customer development conversations to gather feedback and refine your product.
Public Sharing: Share your ideas on social media, participate in podcasts, and seek advice to build interest in your product.
Engage Potential Customers: Use the feedback to validate interest and adjust your product accordingly.
Launching to Your Email List
Once you’ve validated your idea and secured interested customers, it’s time to launch. Inform your email list about the launch with teasers and exclusive incentives. Reward their loyalty to generate initial momentum.
Teasers and Incentives: Provide sneak peeks, exclusive content, or early bird discounts to your email subscribers.
Early Feedback: Use the feedback from these day-zero customers to fine-tune your product.
The “Scratch and Claw”
The first 100 customers often require unscalable efforts.
Use platforms like Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit, Quora, and Stack Exchange to gain visibility and attract customers.
Active Participation: Engage in discussions, answer questions, and share your product’s value proposition on these platforms.
Experiment and Learn: Test different approaches to see what works best for your product.
Early Marketing Efforts
Explore through the vast number of ways in which you can market your product:
Affiliate Marketing: Partner with affiliates to tap into their customer base in exchange for a commission.
SEO Optimization: Increase your visibility through SEO practices.
Social Media: Utilise platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook to reach potential customers.
Content Marketing: Blog/vlog regularly and share meaningful content
Referral Programs: Encourage the few existing users to refer new customers by offering incentives.
Pricing for Success
Avoid underpricing your product. Biggest mistake that SaaS companies make. Set a price that reflects the value your product provides. Comfortable pricing allows you to invest in more effective marketing approaches, like pay-per-click advertising, and accelerates growth.
Conclusion
It is important to remember that your first 100 customers are your first source of learning and growth from their feedback. Keep listening, keep improving, and build genuine relationships with your users.
Have questions? Ask in the comments!