The unfair advantage that led us to 15k MRR in 6 months... and that you also have
Full disclosure: It's not a growth hacking technique or a secret guru sauce that got us to 18k MRR in 6 months.
How did we achieve that with a product that clearly has fewer features, less credibility and a wayyy smaller team than our competitors? 🤯
It's actually quite simple.
More importantly, you can replicate it.
🕵 What is the ONE thing that you can do best as an indie hacker ?
I'm not talking about whether you are good at coding or marketing. I'm talking about what is THE thing that is very hard to replicate as a big brand.
Human contact
Big brands spend millions to make their brands more human.
You are human... so that's already a big advantage.
I'm sure you want to hug this cat, even if you are allergic like me... that's in our DNA.
As human, we are wired to connect to each other. Use it !
OK, but how? Let's see...
✨ People love a custom experience
What is the common thing between Starbucks, Amazon and Apple ? They all have outstanding customer experience.
You could think that it starts with the product, maybe for Apple, but don't tell me that you go to Amazon for the quality of the product.
But I'm not Amazon ?!
Exactly ! You can do even better.
Amazon have to use powerful AI to create a custom experience, you have something more powerful when starting... your brain.
Create something custom and give the best experience possible.
How do I apply this to my business ?
You have an e-commerce store ? Start sending a handwritten thank you card to every customer you get until 1000.
You have a SaaS business ? Answer at any time and give your personal phone to your 200 first customers.
You have an online course ? Give free coaching for the first 20 applicants.
The results for us at Edusign
Edusign is a SaaS that digitizes attendance sheets. Nothing too sexy, but we give the best customer experience possible and try to remove more friction every day.
Giving our personal phone number and talk with clients for hours was the best decision we ever made. We got so much feedback and referrals from that. Zalando did pretty much the same... worked out quite well.
Of course, at some point, it became unsustainable, but that's a problem that you want to have
Our product is far from perfect, but I can assure you that most people will stick for the long run with you if they know that you hear them and answer the phone.
Enjoy the ride !
PS : Enjoyed the article ? Please leave me a comment or hit the upvote button !
Paul Graham said something along the lines of "doing what doesn't scale". Good work
Ahah exactly !
Regarding the customer experience I'd like to mention the book "The Experience Economy" (B. Joseph Pine, James H. Gilmore ). Might be interesting for some of you :-)
Nice post Elliot and congrats for your MRR ;)
Interesting idea to give your personal phone number to clients.
Do you think it was a better solution than just allowing clients to schedule video calls with you?
Thanks!
For the first ~300 prospects, I called them right after they signed-up (or in the morning if they did it late at night).
Sometimes people don't respond, but when they do, they often are amazed at the speed that we get back to them. Usually, B2B companies take more time or even 'just' send an email. This makes, I believe, a huge advantage.
This first phone call, which usually last 5 to 10 minutes, sometimes more, is the opportunity to learn more about the prospect and more importantly, schedule a video call demo.
Thus, I have all the information I need to make the perfect demo that converts highly.
Customization + human contact = win
To conclude, I would say that you need both. Moreover, we are a 'product-led' company, which means that clients love our product when they see it (video call). I would guess that giving your phone number can make an even bigger difference when that's not the case.
Overall, some people will abuse your availability. You can then chose to listen to them or let the phone ring sometimes. They understand that you aren't available because... it's your personal phone :p
Best of luck with your project!
Thanks for the insight ;)
Really interesting indeed!
Congrats on the rapid growth! What was your most effective customer acquisition method? How did you get your first few customers?
Hey, thank you :)
We took ~4months to produce the first MVP (working part-time).
This gave me enough time to produce a website that isn't too bad in term of SEO.
Thus, ~70% of our first 100 clients came from SEO, 10% SEA, the rest is friends & family, and some contact that we had.
Now it's 50% SEO and ~40% referral ~5% social network ~5% unknown.
We don't do outbound, but we are going to change that soon.
Nevertheless, our SEO keywords are in a specific niche, I'm not trying to compete with huge websites, which makes my work a bit easier.
If SEO wasn't an option, I would have gone with phone calls, and some growth tricks I know to get the first clients, but this isn't scalable, so a long term strategy would remain important.
Congrats Elliot and thanks for writing this up
Thanks!
I love this approach!
Congratulations on hitting 15K MMR! That's a pretty big achievement in 6 months, especially considering that you are targeting only the French market at the moment. Are you planning to go global?
Thanks :) Yes, we may go global, but we still need to evaluate the market opportunity... and we have too much demand in France for the moment to expand (we couldn't handle it).
Thank you Elliott. What are the 5 best trust- building human touch engagement tips you have experienced ?
Great idea and congrats on the growth!
Not so sure the idea is great aha! Thanks :)