How do you get first users?
Ermias De Angeli
32 replies
Hi, I'm almost finished developing my app and I'm about to launch it on google play, now how do I find my first users? Any site or blog to post projects to before the actual launch? preferably free (xd).
Replies
Anupama Panchal
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Launch in Product Hunt or other Listing Platforms. Leverage communities with your Target users and start sharing about the problem which are solving for them.
Share
Hang out where your target market is and participate, they'll naturally want to check out your product.
For example I target startup founders so I hang out here, on IndieHackers, twitter and reddit.
Not sure about customers being partners in the mission but without a customer base, you don’t have a business but a hobby. This holds true for any kind of product or service. Similar being the case for a blog, which is just another page on a server without a reader base. Is thereby important to think about how to get the first 1000 customers. This is just a number and could be 100 as well !!
Why 1000 customers?
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Despite being a key aspect of building something, product/tech-oriented founders discount the distribution aspect of building. The emphasis on a product and what it can do becomes such a big-time sink that very little focus goes on acquiring the first set of customers.
Not thinking about the problem, often results in situations where we end up building something which is not needed by the market or building a product for a small market. Without getting to the first 1000 customers and understanding their usage behaviour, it’s difficult to tell if we have product-market fit.
Once you get 1000 people to try out your product and if a sizeable chunk of them continue to use the product beyond a month. You know that you have some kind of product market fit.
This retention percentage will vary by the industry and the kind of business. For B2B SAAS, the monthly churn is supposed to be low, around ~2%, so that yearly churn is somewhere around 25%. The same number for consumer market is lot more lenient. The number being around 65% monthly retention for something like FB. This is an awesome video by YC here.
User Persona
FromNotion
I wrote an article on a UGC platform like PH or IH and got my first users.
SEOJuice
I'd suggest talking about building in public - there's a whole community around these types of launching. And knowing what struggles the founder had to deal with to make the vision a reality - makes it easier to relate to you and buy from you
Neuton AutoML
You are in the right place :)
We were trying to solve a client problem. Low Engagement was the main issue then we build a chatbot (@botpenguin1) and his engagement increased by 3 times for that year he was the first client for our product.
Thx guys.
Coursenest
Building an audience around your product's niche before the launch definitely helps!
Openvibe
First, spread the word to your closest friends and family. Once it starts working for them, then just widen the circle and ask them to share. Once it's getting positive feedback, then marketing, product hunt, social media
Project management OS
Each customer is exposed to multiple parallel options around him. Most probably he is already involved with an existing solution.
So as per my view companies best bet is to provide additional value in terms of service or a product to customer for free along with desired primary solution.
Goal is to get him to a decision to atleast give it a try. I know this will increase customer accusation cost but this will be one of the most used widely used early customer accusation strategy in coming years with increasing no of product launches now and then.
Obviously there are other strategies for early customer accusation which are more relevant and practical to nature of business and its model.
One medicine can't cure all. Thats why we hire industry specific experts I guess. Hahaha 😂😂
HackerPulse
Free channels: social media (create accounts, engage in convos), product hunt, slack communities etc
Friends and family are always great. If you have social media announce it there!
teQatlas
Of course you need to start with your nearest community circle )
@tasha_dziatkovskaya Good point. The easiest users to get are those that you already know who fit the target demographic.
Free = long. Run a small ad for a couple of bucks to at least understand the need for the product and the number of bugs
I'd speak to people you think will be your ideal customer profile and actually offer them something, usage of your product for 2 - 4 weeks (Free)
Engage with them, listen to their concerns and include an incentive for them to tell others about it.
HTH
Olu
Founder @ Prelo
You can get your first user by doing seo of your website or promote your product online which should be organic.
Please visit: https://www.octalsoftware.com.sg...
LinkedIn is a good avenue to organically share some stuff like this but of course Product hunt can also provide you those perks just when I also put up my product here from my web at https://www.camellamanors.com. But you gotta go checkout LinkedIn too plus make all your team mates boost it and share for more organic reach.
Congrats Ermias! Start out by creating a landing page even before you officially launched. Instead of a signup button, add a button that will subscribe them to a mailing list through which they will be notified when your product is ready. Share that landing page to relevant communities on the major social networks. If the product is interesting & useful, you should be able to get a few hundred signups within days. That's how we got our first 700 people to signup even before launch.
First - Quality
Then you just have to use marketing =)