It will be tough if you are a newbie in the market. No one wants to sit in an empty restaurant. They will ask who your previous customers are which you don’t have. So how do you find your first customers? You need to do everything you can to get your first customers. It is the key thing to make or break your business. There are some ideas for you to try out:
Use Your Own Network: from my own experience, most of my work has come from who I know; my friends, my old colleagues, for example. So think about your network, your friends, your family even your old boss. They are the people most likely to give you the first shot.
Try online Social Networking: try to promote your services via social networks. Set yourself up on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. After all, it’s free. Join some groups, taking time to interact with others and offer value. Some of them may be your potential customers or know someone may turn out to be. At least, try to get noticed.
Join offline groups: Join meetups, attend events where you think you can link up with potential customers. If you are offering software development services, joined groups with your fellow developers to discuss tech things. If you are really good at what you do, there is a chance they will think about you when they need extra hands. Try to join business groups where your customers hang-out but remember to avoid groups that are frequented predominantly by consultants who just talk to offer their services to you. This just wastes your time and defeats the purpose of you being there – find customers!
Making lists: Making lists of companies you’d like to work with or develop a list of people related to your fields. You can find them on search engines, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. Follow your named contacts through these platforms and be bold, get in touch with them to ask if they need your services.
Give it away: If you build products or services. You can offer your products or services for free. It’s not always possible to give it for free, especially if you are service-oriented, but it’s a good way to build up users. Software companies often do premium model, that means offer basic products for free and charge for the premium one.
If you cannot do that, you can just offer a special price to a limited number of users, for a limited period of time only.
Pay for ads: You can pay for advertisements on channels such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn in order to get customers. But as a startup with limited money, this is not my choice.
But remember even if you don’t like sales, to be a successful entrepreneur you will need to be able to sell.
If you’re lucky and work hard, you will be able to find a few first customers. Treat them right and serve them the best you can because worth of mouths is the best form of advertising. The first batch of customer you win will tell other which in turn will play a major role in establishing a profitable business for you.
After all, they are the guys giving you the first shot!
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