How to get customers for your startup business in 2024. It's very hard. So why do people not focus on it?
One of the hardest things in building a business is the acquisition of customers. Too many people focus on what is not important, which is actually the product and constantly adjust the product to make it look better to add more features. However, everyone wants to avoid the hardest thing which is, of course, customer acquisition. You have to constantly change your product and adapt to the marketplace and try different tactics to try to attract users.
It is certainly one of the most challenging and hardest things in building any kind of business. Whether you're building a software as a service business or a hardware business, marketing and sales are essential to the success of your business. Great entrepreneurs like Elan musk, Mark Cuban and Mark Zuckerberg have said some of the best sale tactics are when the product cells itself and mouth-to-mouth is used when friends tell other friends about the product, essentially showing that the product is marketing itself and the company does not have to spend a dime on marketing dollars. However, this is not the case for the majority of early-stage companies and businesses out there. You will have to find various growth hacking ways to grow your business without much marketing dollars. We have always found the best start-ups to grow naturally without the use of paid advertising.
In 2024 and beyond content creation will be one of the most effective ways to market your product. And so if you are not building your own blog, in addition to the start-up you are trying to create, you should be affiliated with bloggers in the space, you are trying to build.
So how would we start going about acquiring customers for free?
There are plenty of things you can do to try to growth hack and get your first customers without spending any dollars to
- Is, of course, telling your friends and family to see if they like the product
2. This would be posting in various Facebook groups.
3. This would be partnering with influencers and trying to get a revenue share without paying any upfront dollars.
4. Using social media to try to promote your product.
5. Creating various bits of content yourself to try to demonstrate the product
6. Thinking out of the box and trying to understand where people who would buy your product are and how to sell to them.
7. Going to events
DONT KEEP FOCUSING ON PRODUCT AND FOCUS ON GETTING REVENUE THROUGH THE DOOR!
Whatever you do, if you are not seeing conversions within 3 to 6 months, you must pivot to a different product or service. It doesn't mean you have to completely reinvent your business. However, it is likely that the way you have chosen to sell your business is not working. This is why building a minimal viable product to test the market is extremely essential before investing huge amount of time in the features of the product.
Very clearly, I would number one, get a minimal viable product out there and number two test the market to see if there are any conversions. If there are none within three months, pivot and keep testing and trying this strategy until you get conversions and paid conversions into subscribers.