How did you get your first 1000 customers?
After 8 months of coding, I finally release my price comparison extension Compass, www.letscompass.com.
Now I'm finding out that marketing is going to be difficult, to say the least. How did you guys go about getting your first 1000 customers? Here's what we have tried:
1: Wrote a blog, www.letscompass.com/blog.html, and posted it to Medium.
2: Tried posting it to a few subreddits, but pretty quickly got removed.
3: Tried to find other forums where people shop and hang out, but they either don't have the volume or don't like soliciting.
So my question is, what did you guys do to get your first 1000 users? We are trying to avoid PPC as long as possible, did you guys have any growth hacks that worked well?
Hi Casey
I like the extension, congratulations on its launch.
How are you defining a User. Someone who visits your website or someone who visits your website and then downloads the extension?
If the latter, at a 10% conversion to download, you're looking to generate 10,000 visits - a not insignificant number.
Reviewing the work you've done, you're a long way off the amount that would be required to deliver anything like this volume, without 'going viral', being championed by a major influencer, or featured in the extension marketplace.
Reviewing your blog, you're going to need to experiment over 10s or even 100s of posts to discover the headlines, images and positioning that will build a content audience.
Welcome to the world of marketing.
I've built consumer audiences well in excess of one million people/month so I have put some thoughts below.
Before anything, I would reframe your task and try and deliver your first 100 happy users. You need a product that people love and will promote for you.
I would then break down sources of landing-page traffic and experiment around each of them. Ultimately there are the following sources of traffic for visitors to your download page, and you should be exploring them all with experimentation, using UTM links to track.
(from your own content, communities, other websites, platforms and marketplaces, and existing product users)
Communities I would look to target:
voucher and deal websites, Facebook interest groups highlighting relevant offers, mum groups etc
You're building a consumer product which to scale will probably require a strategy around all of these sources of acquisition. My suggestions would be to focus energy on the following:
If you could use your tool to highlight some of the best bargains / savings being found I think you could create some compelling product messaging ie Save X on Nike trainers from Walmart with Compass
Hi Oliver,
Thank you so much, my initial shotgun approach was overwhelming and you've brought me back down to sanity, I feel much better after reading your response.
I think you are right to hyper-focus on money-saving forums. Initially, I was overwhelmed with the number of forums and which I should spend time building up a reputation and learning, but I guess this time is not wasted if it helps me understand what cost-conscious users are looking for.
Excellent idea on the Save X from Walmart, I can use this to show where to save money (assuming the app was installed).
Your comment: "paid ad experimentation. $20 per platform across Facebook / Twitter and Reddit. Reddit would be great platform for volume if you leverage your story well and focus on the right subreddits."
When you say "leverage your story", do you mean our company pitch of why we exist and what we are trying to build?
Hey! No worries and please message me on LinkedIn if you want to chat more.
Re: forums. Use your signature to promote your extension. Then reply to relevant posts with helpful info and particularly good offers.
Re: Reddit. Ads should be informal and first person. Try a $10 spend and experiment with something like:
Hey Reddit! I'm Casey and I've created a FREE browser extension to stop you wasting money. Compass will warn you at checkout if your shopping can be found cheaper elsewhere. I'd love you to download it and let me know what you think.
Track conversions (they have a pixel) and document results. Explore ad variations.
I could not agree more with this post. Being featured or having your product recognized by a major influencer is key to validating your idea and growing your customer base.
The caveat here is post-50 users.
Regarding the blog (and your landing page!
Ah I'm so new to the SEO world, thanks for this!
Not sure if this is your problem at all but have you considered allowing potential users to paste a link on your website to see what kind of results they could get? Might help increase conversions if you show some value before install.
For me at least it’s a super big ask to install an extension without proof it would actually be useful. I get lots of ads with price comparison extensions, tried one once and it was useless and annoying.
Woah awesome idea! We already have the tech and data to do this, it makes perfect sense to let them try it out first.
Case studies work(ed) very well.
"Here's how I did this thing. Here's you can do it too. If you want, you can use my service/saas/product to make it easier".
Then it's much easier to share those case studies in FB groups, forums etc.
Congrats on your launch! I wrote a post on IH about reaching my first 1000 users about a year ago, I'm sure you'll find it useful: https://www.indiehackers.com/@RickVanHaasteren/how-i-got-my-first-1000-users-47d06edc3d
In general: there isn't that one growth hack, that magic trick that hands you those users. Consistent effort and trying out new things will make it happen!
My goal-tracking app, Complice, only has 300-some customers, but I can speak to my experience.
The vast majority of our people have come from one of two places: partner referrals, and customer referrals.
Complice partnered with another app, Beeminder, which is so similar that it could be seen as a competitor, but we decided to be friends instead and have since referred thousands of dollars of revenue to each other. Since Beeminder focuses on commitment, it also reduces my churn.
I also worked with an online community to create a virtual coworking room for them, and that link referred a lot of people.
I'm not sure what the equivalent situations would be for your situation, but it's worth thinking about.
Finally, word-of-mouth. People like the thing, they share it with others. Create a system so that after a person has their first savings with Compass, they're prompted to share "I just saved $X on these headphones using Compass" on Facebook/Twitter etc.
@MalcolmOcean just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get your first 300 customers? I'm building an app in and around that area (productivity, accountability), so I just wanted to get a sense of how long it took you to get your customers! thanks in advance
It took about 4 years, but I've done very little marketing (as I kind of mentioned above) so it's been very gradual. I also wasn't doing full-time software development either for most of that time. Someone who was legit hustling could definitely do it in 1-2 years, although that wouldn't be easy as it takes time to figure out what works. You've got to figure out what you can afford runway-wise and what kind of lifestyle you want to have while you're growing it too.
One of the challenging aspects with a productivity/accountability app is that people have internal conflicts about using your app, so even if it's the best thing ever, their fear of success may kick in and cause them to abandon it. This is less true for something that's simply a tool that solves <problem-person-isn't-conflicted-about>. So managing inactivity, churn & reactivation is key.
Thank you so much for the advice! I'll keep that in mind when building out my product. Best of luck :)
Ya I've been thinking about some way to integrate some sharing. I like the idea "I've saved $x".
Your product is a consumer product, so keep in mind that your strategies will need to tailor to your customers. First off, understand that a lot of the "how we got our first X customers" information is tailored to B2B Saas. It's not that those tactics whole-sale won't work for you, but when considering them (e.g. B2B SaaS-style content marketing), just keep in mind that your mileage may vary.
Personally, I would start with and invest early in SEO. Think of SEO as a long-term investment rather than a short-term trade -- it's probably not going to generate returns tomorrow, or next week, but over time it will generate positive returns for you. If it were me, I'd focus on long-tail terms, and be willing to get creative.
Hey Casey,
Your site and chrome extension listing look really good. Nothing stands out that needs to be changed.
In my opinion, marketing is much harder than development. With persistent and a little luck, I've been able to grow my weather extension to over 200k active users but it has not been easy.
Some tips:
I'm curious how does your extension compare prices? A blog post on the tech behind the extension would be interesting.
Good luck!
Hey Tim, thanks for the response, great ideas. One question, how did you get featured on LifeHacker, did you email someone who worked there? Did you ask them to feature a blog you wrote or the product itself?
I definitely think if there is some unique tech here, getting a post on LifeHacker would be a game changer. Can you share how you approached it?
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Interestingly enough, we aren't competing with Honey, we do price comparison while they do coupons. However, this is the response I get more often or not, maybe we should change our message to show how we aren't an alternative to Honey, but an addition.
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The value in this comment is not to be underestimated.
"You cater to everyone, you nourish no one. Lowest hanging fruit first, the easy wins, go in hard, narrow and deep."
Most entrepreneurs should really follow this as a north star to customer acquisition.
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This is an amazing answer. I will definitely reference this as a roadmap.
Your product is v1 or MVP?
V1
How many customers, users, visitors?
Users: 47 (Mostly from friendly and family)
Visitors: Avg 10 per day to the landing page, 2 per day to Chrome store app
Conversion rate: Something like 10%, but not enough customers at this point to tell.
From the two main answers on here, the main take away seems to be that a very individualized, personal approach to customer acquisition is okay for now. If like you said, 1 gets me 2, 2 gets me 3, etc, are there any key takeaways I should look for each time I acquire a new user?
It seems like I have gotten some contradictory advice in (1) Paul Graham: Do whatever you can to make the customer happy and (2) The customer is often wrong in what features to build, don't just listen to them.
Is there a good way to decide what features are worth building to satisfy customers and make them love the product?
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Hi Ace,
Thanks again for your very thorough response. I think this is a great framework for deciding when and how to include what feature requests.
As of now, the V1 that is currently launched should have the majority of the primary features we want including. The main idea is to show users where the product they are viewing can be found cheaper online. However, over time the objective is to improve those search results to make them more accurate and compatible with how our users shop online.
I'll continue to refer back to this as we develop future features, thanks again.
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Looking forward to it, thanks Ace
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