Nowadays, a strong marketing plan can make or break a new company. Your product has shown the first signs of interest from the audience. How can you gain 1,000 more users?
Our team studied 1000 startups and discovered how these projects attracted their first customers.
Top GTM Strategies for Early-Stage Startups
Startups have a high failure rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 20% fail in the first year, 50% within five years, and 65% by year ten. Many startups fail because they need a good marketing plan.
Success is independent of having lots of resources. Take Quibi's example. Despite $1.75 billion in funding, this short-form streaming platform failed after just six months. It failed because it needed to target or engage its audience effectively. Scarcity can lead to better performance and innovation. People turn on their creativity and skills when they have a limited budget. This situation makes startups find new ways to grow their business and find cheaper methods.
Learn how to be successful and avoid costly mistakes by studying the top strategies of other big companies.
6 working strategies to get your 1000 customers
Startups use different ways to get their first 1,000 customers. Each strategy has its own benefits and success stories.
Personal connections
Using personal networks is often a quick and cheap way to do things.
Find people in your network, like your target market, and join related groups. First, try LinkedIn connections to look for professionals in your target demographic. By joining groups, you can offer incentives and exclusive access to early adopters, allowing you to beta-test your product before the official launch.
Get feedback to make improvements quickly. You can send out questionnaires and have one-on-one conversations to get input; analytics can help you learn how adopters use your product. Take a look at the quick survey below.
Airbnb is an excellent example of this. The founders used their San Francisco contacts to get friends and understandings and list their properties on the platform. They also took photos of the properties in person, which helped them build trust and improve the listings. Airbnb's founders even rented their apartments to prove the concept. As a result, in its first year, Airbnb made 80,000 bookings.
Aside from personal connections, actively participating in digital communities is a highly effective approach.
Engaging digital communities
Your target customers are already organized in online communities.
Start by finding your audience using tools like Reddit and Slofile. Systematize it all into Airtable. Look at this kind of example of a community for entrepreneurs on LinkedIn. You can find interesting trending discussions by hot hashtags on X.
To make yourself known, actively participate in the collected communities by sharing valuable content and engaging in meaningful conversations. For your ease, we have put together a scheme of where to post, what to post, and what the result may be.
Dropbox's experience shows how this can work. Drew Houston shared a demo video on Hacker News, a popular tech community. It got many people to sign up for the beta version of Dropbox, which increased signups from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight.
Leveraging launch platforms
Product Hunt helps your product get noticed right from the start. It's all about creating a great product story and good-quality pictures for the launch. The platform will give you direct access to a global audience, making your product visible to users worldwide.
Remember, products featured on Product Hunt often get covered by big names like TechCrunch, Mashable, and Forbes. This exposure boosts visibility and helps build trust with potential users and investors.
Reach out to journalists and bloggers who have previously covered similar products, and look for partnership opportunities to maximize your launch visibility.
Notion used this strategy and got a great result. The company’s 2016 Product Hunt launch made them the top product of the day, increasing their visibility and securing early users. Notion's Product Hunt launch got over 20,000 upvotes and hundreds of comments.
Direct B2B engagement
If you're a B2B startup, going for direct sales and outreach can be a solid move, but it does need more resources. First, list potential B2B customers in your network or industry. Take Apollo – it's helping small and mid-sized businesses improve their sales processes. Their approach caters to different customer needs, offering perks like improved lead management, automated workflows, and deeper customer insights.
When reaching out, ensure you have an offer that suits each customer. Clearbit gathers detailed info on potential customers, which will help you customize your offers. And remember to engage with communities and hand out free trials – that way, people will give your product a shot, and you can gather valuable feedback.
Before Slack became famous, its founders asked tech companies in their network to try the product for free in exchange for feedback. This direct engagement allowed them to refine their offering and build initial traction. Slack had 15,000 users in its first two weeks.
[cta-section]
Strategic social media promotion
Social media marketing can yield impressive results when executed well. Find out where your target audience is on social media. It seems simple in words, but how much is behind a simple audience search?
Finding your audience is a long process that consists of different steps like:
- Research
- Creating interesting and useful content
- Constant communication with the audience
- Responding to feedback
- Analyzing and collecting insights
For example, TikTok lets brands reach a big audience with creative and authentic marketing. It is for younger people who like trends, entertainment, and niche content. For instance, the Beauty brand Glossier built its first customers through Emily Weiss's beauty blog on Instagram. Glossier went from 15,000 to over 1.8 million Instagram followers in a few years.
Create your tone of voice and stick to it across all channels. It will help your audience recognize your brand. Allow users to create content and interact with your community. Collaborate with influencers to reach more people.
Customer referral programs
We need a user-friendly referral system to attract new customers and keep existing ones happy. The main features are quick rewards and easy tracking.
Our success with the referral program hinges on our ability to continuously optimize, spread the word, and reward those who bring in the most referrals. The key to this is using analytics to monitor progress and make improvements.
Dropbox nailed it by offering free storage for the referrer and the new user – their referral program grew like crazy, reaching 4 million users in just 15 months, with 35% of new users coming from referrals.
We will show you where to spread your referral program and, in a few words, how it works.
Partnerships and integrations collaborate
Working with other businesses to sell your products more widely boosts your sales. Just think about finding partners, developing an excellent value proposition, and starting with small partnerships. You could even team up with former or current colleagues and friends who could make fabulous business partners. Getting involved in industry events or hopping into online entrepreneur communities would be an intelligent move, too.
Make sure your products complement each other, shout about your partnership, and set clear goals while keeping in touch with your partners to sort out any issues and make your collaboration even better. As you grow, set up a partnership program, pick partners matching your long-term goals, and consider offering or seeking exclusivity.
Remember when Stripe joined Shopify and became the go-to payment processor for many online businesses? Their value increased from $5 billion in 2015 to $95 billion in 2021. Stripe became the top dog payment processor for major platforms like Amazon, Instacart, and Lyft.
What strategy to choose?
These companies show how they've customized their GTM strategies for their products and customers, using personal outreach, community engagement, launch platforms, direct sales, and social media to gain customers. The key is to choose the right strategy based on your startup's resources, product, and target market.
Each strategy differs in how fast, cheap, and good it is, depending on the startup's resources, product, and target market. By choosing the right approach, social media, and platform for promoting content, startups can grow faster, keep customers, and avoid risks.
Always remember this:
- Know your target audience and what you offer them.
- Make a clear plan for one strategy.
- Track how well the strategy is working.
- Focus on building relationships and providing value.
4