If you build it, they won't come

Novice founders often need a marketing strategy for their product idea. "We'll get written up on TechCrunch or go viral on Facebook" isn't a strategy — it's a recipe for failure.

Congratulations on shipping your digital product! Pat yourself on the back because many startups struggle to push anything live to production — look no further than well-funded flameouts like Clinkle and Magic Leap. Pop the champagne and celebrate this important win today because you’ve beaten the first brutal statistic — 100% of startups that don’t ship fail. But remember, the real work begins tomorrow. As hard as it is to ship your first version product, it’s even harder to find your first customers.

If you’re like most startups, you’ve spent most of your seed capital building your digital product, leaving little left for sales and marketing. You can tap into your network for early adopters, but your warm introductions and leads will soon dry up.

Why your customers won’t come

Remember that scene from your favorite movie. After spending a third of the film building up the founder’s story and “great idea,” the movie cuts to 37 seconds of B-roll, showing how hard the founder worked to grow their business. Then, magically “success.” Don’t fall for this lie.

What you see on TV and read about in the news isn’t reality. Many startups grind it out for months or years, looking everywhere for their customers. Slack “ate their own dog food” and worked out the kinks with early adopters before their big press push that led to a hockey-stick growth trajectory. Countless other startups you’ve never heard of have vanished — CrunchBase their only trace — as their founders failed to find customers.

Finding customers is hard because no one wants to be your first customer. Sure, your Uncle Leo may have bought a subscription to your SaaS product for scheduling meetings, but he runs a pet store. How many meetings could he have? What you need are referenceable customers. Specifically, you want people with budget authority who trust you and are willing to take a leap of faith.

How to find your customers

If your first test is shipping, you passed. But you may fail your second test if you start talking to customers when your product is live. You must speak with potential customers during the entire product development process. Creating your product in a vacuum will never replicate the success of products like Slack.

You must create a repeatable marketing process to reach your next company milestone. Customer feedback helps you find your repeatable process faster.

Repeatable doesn’t mean sending an email blast to 10,000 sales VPs for your revenue growth product that integrates with Salesforce. And it doesn’t mean convincing TechCrunch to write about your startup, either. A repeatable process targets a niche big enough to drive consistent customer revenue growth for the next 6-12 months — ideally much longer.

Think about your niche-like search filters on your Linkedin Sales Navigator account. Yes, you need to pay for Linkedin if you’re serious about growing your customer base. As you add search filters, you narrow in on a niche and your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) — the people who will buy your Software-as-a-Service or marketplace product.

You may think you know your ICP and the messaging that will drive them into your funnel, and you might be right. But, chances are, only some of your assumptions hold.

Test. Learn. Repeat. The process is: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe, no, no, maybe, yes, maybe, yes, yes, no, maybe, yes. Sometimes that chain of noes is one or two hundred long before you get that first “maybe.”

To get to that first “maybe,” you must start small and focused. You’ve thought of 14 marketing and sales channels you can use to reach your ICP. Great! Don’t try everything all at once. Try two channels at most, but it’s better to start with just one. Stack rank the list and think like your customer.

Most decision-makers only respond to three messages: reducing cost, increasing revenue, and eliminating risk. Get as creative as you like with your messaging, but ensure your prospective customers can easily understand how your product solves one of these three problems.

Over this iterative process, you run dozens of tiny experiments until you find yourself saying, “hmmm… that’s interesting.” Hopefully, not too long after, you’ll reach an AHA moment — then continue iterating until your quantity and quality of customer conversations are predictable.

Frequent conversations with people interested in your product lead you to your customers. Congratulations! You’ve found them.