How do you get the first 100 customers you ever have Tutorial and infographic |
Check out this guide for 3 simple, free and practical marketing methods to land the first 100 clients, and earn a living through your love of business.
Are you struggling to get your first few customers in the in the
I feel you. I've been there.
It's hard. Soul-crushing, even.
However, when you reach the other end -- the side past your first 100 customers?
That's everything. In terms of finances and other aspects.
Today, I'll teach you how I used my strategies to achieve my goal and show you how you can get your first 100 customers, but also the many who will follow after them.
Before we dive into that, let's look back to look at what's preventing your progress at all.
(P.S. Do you prefer a visual method? Hop down to the end of this page to see informational walkthrough. )
The most significant obstacle that stands at the feet of most creators
What's the biggest Achilles' heel of most artists like you? Usually, it's marketing.
And who can blame you? Marketing can be a chore and can make you feel overwhelmed.
There are so many strategies that you could try ( build links to your website, create infographics Try mail marketing and social media ads, etc.) but you don't have enough time or money, or both.
When it comes to marketing, it is likely that you have one or all of these issues:
I'm a creator and not a salesperson!
I'm not sure if I have an investment in marketing
There are many different marketing techniques, but which do I even pick?
Here's some good news for you.
These strategies discuss won't need you to have a marketing plan, costs the earth or prove too complicated to execute. The only thing you need is the "get the job completed!" attitude.
The strategies might not be as effective or as powerful as paid advertising or SEO do, but they're free, simple, and designed to work, especially during the early days of your online business.
I've tested the strategies I'll be sharing in order to create 300 new email subscribers to Mapplinks Academy , many of whom turned into paid students as well as agency clients. even our largest fans on the internet.
These strategies also helped me to identify our target customers as well as the places they frequent, and what their problems are. These helped get trial signups to the relatively new floral estimate software out of New York.
After that is out of the way now, let's start let's get started, shall us?
Marketing strategy #1: Reddit
Reddit is a platform in which you can meet like-minded folks with tight knit communities centered by a particular topic, theme or other particular niche.
If you're a novice and do not know about Reddit is, or aren't interested enough to learn -- ignore it at your own peril. Reddit could perhaps be the ideal place to get your first 100 potential customers.
Don't take my word for it.
Reddit is listed as #6 for the most popular sites across the United States according to Alexa ranking (and #18 in top sites around the globe! ).
Now that I've (hopefully) accomplished a good job at convincing you why Reddit isn't to be neglected and what are the best ways of you do to promote your business through Reddit can do for you?
It's true, Reddit can help you by providing the following services:
Get early adopters to your product/service
Receive great feedback from fellow Redditors (who might become your customers)
Discover which type of individuals are the most open to the offer you are offering.
Basically, whether it's understanding the audience you're targeting, getting customer feedback as well as encouraging sign-ups, Reddit has you covered.
What can you do to make Reddit be useful to you? Below is a five-step step guide:
Identify and make a list of 10-15 subreddits that are relevant to your service or product and join these.
Engage in conversations with other Redditors on these subreddits. Comment on their threads or upvote their comments in order to add worth to these subreddits.
You can spend a few days watching these subreddits and see what kind of content gets upvoted and identify which kinds of posts you can make a difference.
Make a post on these subreddits regarding the product you're selling, either in an article or as a reference to the product you sell in reply to a different article.
Be sure to frame the message in a way that doesn't make it sound heavily promotional. Start with a "Hey Redditors, here's what I'm working on ..." and "Looking to get some opinions." Redditors can smell self-promo from a mile away So be cautious.
For example: when I tried to get the signups for our growth hacking free course on Reddit This is what we tried:
We identified a subreddit list that our ideal customer/target market probably hangs out (for us, it was subreddits like growthhacking, r/growthhacking , r/startups , r/growmybusiness , SideProjects, for example. ).
We truly engaged with fellow Redditors in these subreddits by upvotes, comments, sharing ideas for marketing or offering feedback on their ideas.
We gently introduced what we were selling by posting on these subreddits in a direct manner or connecting to our email course indirectly as a response to someone's question.
Repeatedly rinsed.
The result: We signed up 45 people who signed up for our free course. Not too shabby considering these signups were free.
Warning: Reddit can be a cruel and unforgiving place and especially for self-serving users. Self-promotion is a big no-no for Redditers. They can scold you to downvote, call you out, and even remove you from subreddits.
In order to avoid being criticized or banned, make sure that you follow the guidelines of each subreddit, add worth to conversations as well as making sure you're promoting your activities in the right places.
The rule I generally follow when it comes to Reddit advertising: Give 3 times Ask once, give 3 times.
More information: Reddit marketing - How to self-promote on Reddit and increase your visitors
Marketing strategy #2: Quora
( Source )
Quora is a effective Q&A platform with huge potential, particularly if you're operating in a segment of. And with an estimated ~80 million users per month (based on the January 2020 Ahrefs information), it can reach a large audience that are able to reach with ease.
The Quora question also ranks in the first Google page for various keywords that is a huge advantage for people who want to find to get into the Google SERPs, without any heavy-duty SEO work of creating content that is keyword-focused, building links and ensuring it gets to be ranked.
This is how you can get Quora be successful:
Answer questions asked by users via the site related to the solution you're offering.
Answer the questions in the amount of detail you think is needed (but not to much).
Gently introduce your product to them and show how it will ease the pain points of your customers as a link within the answer.
In this case, if I wanted to market the same growth hacking course as before, I'd look on Quora for the term "growth hacking". A question is asked :
The next thing to do is write the perfect answer, which is at least 2-3x times better than the other answers. What I mean is to give away tons of value in your answer in a way that readers want to find out more about your and what you're doing.
Your expertise can be a huge help. Answer the question. be argumentative and critique Give enough details but do not go into too much detail because you want to make sure that at the end the day, you want buyers to take note of the product you have created.
The best guideline to follow when responding an inquiry is to provide enough details to keep readers wanting more. Add a hyperlink to your website along with the CTA directing readers on where for more information. And that's it.
Like our Reddit instance above, it is important to keep it simple with your CTA and self-promotion.
Answer Quora frequently, about once each week and you should start seeing traffic and signups within no time. It really only takes 5 minutes each time.
Below is an instance of an excellent answer to the question " What is growth hacker marketing? ":
Quora marketing , if done right, can lead to some quick-wins in terms of driving trial signups , traffic back to your site or perhaps, building brand awareness.
Below are a few other methods to find questions that you could be able to Quora:
Do Google searches for questions your target consumer might have regarding your products or areas of expertise.
You can follow specific topics on Quora that relate to what you're currently doing.
Answer the relevant queries on Quora.
In my situation I also followed the concept of "growth hacking" to find interesting questions to address. On the right-hand bar which is highlighted above there are also the questions that relate to what you've searched for.
The result: 70 signups via email to our no-cost email course within 4 weeks. The same signups to our email course later changed into paying customers agencies clients, and some raving fans.
The experiment was also made into an ebook to give away to subscribers of our email newsletter, resulting in greater awareness and leadership in the marketing space, along with paying students as customers who are looking to us to duplicate our Quora results for their own businesses.
More reading: Quora Marketing An overview of how to gain more from your efforts
Strategy #3 for marketing: Twitter's advanced search
Twitter's Advanced Search is a tool Twitter gives you the ability to filter tweets using various criteria such as locations, keywords, hashtags, etc.
While the advanced search tool was a separate page prior to its launch however, it's now visible within the feed of Twitter. Here's what Twitter's advanced search appears to be:
The great thing about Twitter's advanced search is that it lets you to narrow down your ideal customers using hashtags, exact phrase matches, and be as specific as the time or locations of tweets.
How to utilize Twitter's advanced search:
Consider the issue the product is solving. You could, for instance, offer a an online course to help students learn about new techniques for makeup.
Enter queries like "need new makeup,"" "looking for help with your makeup," or "any new makeup tips" in Twitter's advanced search.
Get a list of tweets, look at them for patterns, such as keywords and hashtags that are employed. This can help you get even better at searching for keywords later.
Reply to relevant tweets. Contribute value to the conversation and gently plug your product in the final paragraph.
I tried this method while freelancing for a new flower software product from New York. I utilized Twitter advanced search to get information about the problems customers have as well as user profiles, others. to learn the topics florists on Twitter were tweeting about.
But I also used Twitter to find prospective customers for trial. Here's how.
If I do a search with advanced to determine who has used #florists as a hashtag " #florists " in New York, here is the result I came to:
If there are two things I'd change about this tweet now, I'd likely add value to the discussion (instead of just using a poor Emoji) and also make it less promotional.
Though this method didn't produce amazing outcomes for me personally It's largely dependent on what type of niche that you're operating in and the people you're targeting .
An excellent example of what a specific niche Twitter might be able to serve is by the folks at Oberlo which used "need to update their makeup" as a exact match search term and found these queries :
In the past In the event that your online course helps people learn the latest makeup tricks, then tweeting at them with a new makeup tip as well as a link to the online class could be the best way to gain some initial attention.
Why? There is clear intent and the tweets are not old, and the pain point is evident. And, look at the replies to the tweets. None.
Jackpot.
Set up custom alerts via Twitter and then responding to them at least 1-2 times every week will bring some initial traction to your creative online business.
This guide provides suggestions on how to make use of Twitter Advanced Search to zero in on the ideal clients for you and identify the areas of pain for consumers as well as discover opportunities for PR.
Further reading: How to utilize Twitter Advanced Search - The ultimate tutorial
Bonus strategy #4 Don't be afraid to give away stuff for free
Getting someone to buy from you in your first meeting is difficult and unreasonable. They don't have any experience with you therefore they may not trust you. Yet.
The best method to boost revenue is to first offer something to potential customers in exchange for a free item. Examples:
If you're selling an premium ebook on how to become freelance, you can create an e-book with a brief overview of the mistakes you should avoid when becoming freelancers, and offer these tips for free.
It's as simple as:
Making entry less expensive by offering the free trial or giveaway (a mini-course as an example) dramatically increases your odds to get free signups and trials (these customers are more likely to purchase your products once they realize your value proposition offering).
Informationgraphic: The ultimate guide to landing your first 100 clients
Made by our friends at Venngage The infographic & creator of timelines.
Earning money online isn't difficult (and does not have to be cost-effective)
As I said before With so many different marketing strategies to try It's not really a matter of "I don't have any knowledge about the basics of marketing" but more a question of "Which marketing techniques should I start with?"
Here's a recap of all the marketing strategies I've described previously and how you need to do in order to implement them:
Reddit. Engage in genuine discussions on subreddits and slowly reveal what you're doing.
The Quora. Answer questions related to your field of specialization or your area of expertise. Explain your product's capabilities and the way it can solve your customers' problems.
Twitter Advanced Search. Use advanced Twitter search tools to find out people who are in need of what you're offering. And then give it to them.
I hope that this article has helped you an easy way to approach marketing your business that is creative.
As with any other marketing method There will be a time when the strategy doesn't function in the way they did in the past.
If that happens with my strategies take a look at other websites on marketing to find newer strategies for marketing to try. Repeat until you get the first 100 clients.