How to get your first 1000 users in 100 days & your first $10k
Episode 63
In today’s Growthshots, we discuss how to get your first 1000 users in 100 days and your first $10k.
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Friends,
Now that you have your landing page set up, your value propositions defined, and you’ve identified a pressing problem to solve using a bunch of tools, it’s time for the real thing to happen.
Your landing page is designed right now to build your “waitlist” of users.
The waitlist will collect 3 data points from the user - Their names, emails and what is the main problem they’re hoping to solve using your solution. A simple Typeform will do here.
Do things that don't scale
Now you gotta drive traffic to this landing page and get people on the waitlist. There are 3 things you can do here to get your initial people on the waitlist. The goal here is to get 100 people signed up on your waitlist.
Social listening = Use tools like CustomerPing, GummySearch, Notifier.so & F5Bot to add value to people in forums where people are complaining about their problems. Offer them your solution and ask to get on a call and learn more.
Building in public = Share updates on Twitter and show what you’re working on.
Content marketing = Identify the forums where your users hang out and post articles on what you’re building, industry reports, reviews etc that are genuinely helpful to your users. Ship teasers when applicable. Get people on the waitlist. You can also use a lead magnet to collect emails.
Talk to your users
Once you’ve done things that don’t scale and got 100 users on your waitlist, send a personalized email to all of them. Tell them that you’d like to show them what you’ve been building and getting feedback from them. Use a tool like YAMM to automate this process (its free). Get them on a demo and show them your MVP prototype. (It’s a proof-of-concept at this stage remember)
Of course a lot of people won’t reply (follow up is key here) and even less will agree to get on a call. So account for this right away & for the ones who do, make sure to add as much as possible.
Prepare a slide deck before the call and add (a) the benefits of using this product (b) existing solutions and how they suck and ((C) pricing tiers.
Ask questions to your users at this stage like - “How do you think this product will help you?”, “What are some tools you’ve tried and why have they not stuck for you?”
Build your board of advisors
Tell your users that once they pay $x (small one-time), they’ll be added to the Inner Circle Group. Be clear in the amount you’re “raising”. Eg: I need 50 users to pay me $100 right now so I can go invest my time into building this product.
In exchange for letting your early users shape your product & giving feedback, offer them a % discount on launch or a first-year free kinda deal. Incentivize them. If they truly NEED this solution, they’ll be happy to pay.
Your inner circle group acts as a board of advisors. Post screenshots and updates to this group to show them how the app is coming along. Host monthly calls with all your users and get feedback on the UX, the features etc.
Compare notes. Ask about pricing tiers and what kind of pricing would make sense for them. Read more about pricing here
Now it’s time to start coding and building. Use Airtable or Notion to collect and manage feedback and build out your product direction and roadmap.
Repeat this for the next 90-100 days and you will have built something people want - validated by people willing to pay you. Now you can take it to the next level.
Soft Launch & doing more things that dont scale
2 weeks before the product is ready to be shipped, try to get another 50 users (on a discounted deal). Post updates on what you’re building in places where your users hang out, write blog posts and gently promote what you’re building. Ask them to get on the waitlist.
At this stage, you can also run a small scaled paid-ads campaign. Send daily emails to your waitlist users (the ones not in your inner circle) & warm them up about your upcoming launch in T-x days.
In your emails, explain the product and how it would solve their problems. Show parts of the product to your Twitter followers & get them excited about what was to come.
Once your product’s V1 is ready, create a discounted pricing deal. And send an update to the same forums & the launch email to your waitlisted users.
Write an article and post about your journey on Twitter, social media. You should get another 50-100 users from doing this.
Next up, once you now have 100-150 paying users for your product, you could submit to directories that will post your product like BetaList etc.
You could also launch a lifetime deal at this stage on Appsumo or similar places and get 100 more users.
Get a steady flow of users consistently
And finally, armed with all this validation, a working product that users love and $$$ in the bank, you could go all in for a Product Hunt Launch. Play your cards right here and you could have another 100-200 users just from this launch alone.
Your marketing doesn’t stop here though. You need to still ship product updates, share useful content with your users, and keep slowly building your user base. And get to that 1000 user mark. Add referral marketing to acquire more users.
Which is a big milestone. At $10 a user, even if you have 500 paying users, that’s $5k in MRR. And this is on the lower side. It will probably be in the 10k range if things work out for you and luck’s on your side as well.
On the conversion side, at this stage you should focus on upsell emails, fixing your onboarding, optimizing your product UX, sending drip/engagement emails, churn emails and the whole 9-yards. This will sure up your unit economics from Day one.
This means at the end of this cycle, you'll have acquired 1000 users who are paying you $$$, use your product, and you've fixed gaps in the product journey. And have a product roadmap of what to build thanks to your board of advisors.
A pretty good 100 days of work - wouldn't you say?
Attract & close high-intent buyers from your landing page
99% of startups fail because they fail to find product-market fit. Especially in the early days when you’re spread thin between building out your product & talking to customers. Both of which are non-negotiables.
Your landing page is the first thing that prospects see when they land on your page. Your copy needs to communicate your value prop effectively & target their pain points and how your solution helps them.
Copywriting is more than just words. It’s sales. And you need to invest in a salesman that does the selling for you 24*7 even when you’re asleep.
But who can you trust with this?
Well, the gentleman who left the above review got a before-after version of his landing page (pipl.ai)
He saw a 21% increase in conversion on his page and guess what?
He made $10k in sales for his SaaS. Talk about a high ROI.
Not going to guarantee that this will 100% happen for you too but a man can try :)
Some more examples:
Want to get more users from your landing page? Book a call with me - I’d love to learn more about what you’re building :)
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a real business nerd