Have you decided to launch your your own business?
More important than the website and all the planning at the beginning, your debut in entrepreneurship is crowned with success when the first order comes in. And the second. And the third, and so on.
After all, the fact that people buy your products shows you’re on the right track. And the first 100 customers are extraordinarily valuable in many ways.
Let’s talk about this for a moment. About the first 100 people who buy from you, and what their impact on your business is – or ideally should be.
I’ve mentioned in various webinars and live streams the importance of the first 100 customers, so below, I’ll go into a little more detail about each effect they have.
Contents Why your first 100 customers are super important
- Validate your business
- Gives you valuable feedback
- Teaches you what works and what doesn’t
- Become your first brand ambassadors
- Help you establish a reputation
- They’re the first sources of income you can reinvest
- But how do you get your first 100 customers?
1. Validate your business
By the time you get your first orders – say, the first 100 – you’re working with probabilities. Possibly you follow best practices, get inspiration from market data, or imagine different plans and outcomes and test them. That’s very ok.
But you won’t know if your business idea is good or if your approach to the market is okay until you see tangible results.
The first 100 orders validate your idea and signal that there is demand in the market for your type of business and products. There is a need, a problem or a desire that you are responding to.
First orders also give you access to real information, specific to the relationship between your customers and you as a seller.
You can better understand your audience and their needs, so you can adjust your communication and promotion strategy accordingly.
Attention!
The first 100 customers are signs of validation when you manage to get them as quickly or consistently (depending on what you sell).
If you only get 100 customers in a year, even though you sell low-medium priced, relatively common products… that’s not ok.
Read also: Why it’s now the hardest and easiest to start an online business [Podcast]
2. Gives you valuable feedback
When you have a startup and are just starting to gather orders, you have amazing opportunities to interact directly with customers and provide super personalized experiences.
It’s from these initial customers that the optimization of your store and offerings really begins. They provide you with first testimonials and reviews from strangers, and answer questionnaires or surveys.
You can approach them by email, chat or phone, either when you confirm your order or some time after the parcel has arrived and the products have started to be used.
Read also: How to increase customer retention and purchase frequency
3. Teach you what works and what doesn’t
With your first clients you can experiment without any long-lasting follow-up. For example, a very well known brand might have problems if they did a redesign without thorough preparation beforehand (communications, notifications etc.).
But we are not limited to rebranding, changing the theme or logo.
Based on the feedback you get from your first 100 customers, you can figure out if you need to adjust your business model, marketing strategy, website content and promotional materials, marketing channels and so on.
Of course 100 people is not a sufficient number to draw objective conclusions, but it is a starting point.
When you identify objections or suggestions common to everyone, it’s clear that you need to change something.
Then, as your customer and visitor base grows, you can also start using tools like heatmaps or screen recordings, with unosoft Insights, for example, from whose reports you can draw interesting conclusions to optimize your conversion rate.
Read also: How to make your first marketing campaign for your online store [Video]
4. Become your first brand ambassador
As I said above, the first 100 customers are the ones you have time to take care of personally. You can communicate personally with each one and give them more time resources than you will in the future.
This means that you can talk to them on the phone and practice your skills, you can prepare their parcels to include different surprise items, you can contact them personally after a certain time after the order and propose to promote you in their circle of friends against vouchers and gifts etc.
Your first 100 customers can therefore become your first brand ambassadors.
The value of a returning customer is invaluable, and if they also recommend you in their community, your positive brand image reinforces itself.
Read also: How to optimize your website and attract customers [10 Idei + Bonus]
5. Helping you establish a reputation
A positive brand image starts with the reputation that your store gets from the first 100 customers. And reputation impacts both customer decisions and potential business partners, which could help you accelerate the growth of your business.
So, my advice is to invest time and resources to think and implement a controlled branding strategy.
This includes efforts to exceed customer expectations with every order: memorable shopping experience (with personalized messages, vouchers, etc.), memorable unpacking experience (gifts in the parcel, way of arrangement, interesting inserts) and memorable post-order communication experience (from review request, to exclusive offers).
Read also: How to make your own online store
6. Are the first sources of income to reinvest
Your first 100 customers bring your first money into the company. It’s vital to get income quickly after you launch, because that’s how you validate your business idea.
Some of your first customers may bring you more profitable orders than others – perhaps larger orders or products with a better profit margin.
The revenue that results from the first 100 orders (and more) is – ideally – reinvested back into the business.
The first few pennies are crucial for sustaining the internal operations of the shop and give the business an edge – they also motivate you when you no longer have to bring in money from home for your business to run, but are self-sustaining.
Read also: How to unlock the hidden potential of your business
7. But how do you get your first 100 customers?
Good.
Now you know why and how important your first 100 customers are.
But the question is, how do you get them relatively quickly and without exhausting all your resources before you actually get started?
- Every business has a different approach. It’s important to identify a starting point – possibly an audience segment you are targeting. For example, to this end, you might hold a webinar, do a high-profile launch for a closed community, go offline to a specific location and give a presentation, etc.
- Start the promotion part before you have an actual point of sale (e.g. website). Pre-launch teasing and messaging is all about sorting out your audience and identifying those channels with the best potential for you.
- Offer something free or very cheap, and then build trust to sell it more expensively – you can start with closed content (guide, vouchers, benefits etc.), react immediately after sign-up with a soft-sell – a deep discount offer or a relatively cheap product, then continue to maintain interest with email and make upsell and cross-sell recommendations.
- Treat your first customers like royalty – if you succeeded in getting 1 customer, get them to bring you 2 more in return. Make sure you give your first customers such an amazing experience on their first order that they take pictures, videos and praise you online and offline in their circle of acquaintances.
Tip!
You can even incentivize them with rewards such as early-bird vouchers, access to a group with exclusive benefits for loyal customers, etc.
- Tell your friends and family to recommend you – extremely rarely does it happen that your own family makes first orders. Most of the time, they expect to get the products for free – and from there a lot of problems arise that we can discuss until next year. Instead, you can get your circle of acquaintances involved in the promotion part, to share your initial offers or an extra discount code or to recommend you to someone they know who might need your products.
- Expand your network of contacts – participate in events, fairs, exhibitions and festivals. Talk to potential partners here, but also open sales processes, whether you sell on the spot or get people to order from the website.
- Set aside a budget for paid advertising – all your competitors are doing PPC ads, so you need to be present for the simple fact that otherwise it’s hard to get visibility. Instead, you can differentiate yourself by the channels you choose to advertise on and their content.
- Make sure you are extremely easy to contact – leave your phone number, email address and website everywhere you go and in niche online communities. You can leave them in comments, in posts (many groups make welcome posts where you are allowed to leave your details and promote yourself, without breaking group rules). And offline, make sure you have business cards or flyers with you and leave them everywhere.
Read more: 5 Methods of promotion for a start-up business
They give you your first feedback, validate your business idea and bring your first money into the company.
Your first 100 customers are extremely important to form the base on which your business will grow.
Prepare a plan for how you plan to maximise the impact of your first customers, but be sure to constantly adjust your marketing strategy so that you attract them quickly and retain them immediately.
Don’t forget to use unosoft’s platform features, which help you communicate effectively with your customers and provide them with enjoyable pre- and post-order experiences.
And if you’re just starting out and you’re not 100% sure which platform to go for yet, we’re offering you a 15-day free trial to see for yourself what and how you can do with unosoft.
Monthly subscriptions start from 1 euro, and in addition to the support team at your disposal, you have access to a community of +16,000 members who can answer your questions at any time.
Passionate about entrepreneurship and eCommerce, I started my online activity in 2000.
Together with my team I have helped over 3,000 companies grow their business on the unosoft platform.
