Most startups die because they don't know how to get users

Here are 4 customer acquisition flywheels that I've used to build 10 startups

Get your first 500 customers in 90 days using these

We'll discuss:

a) How to go from 0 to 100 in 30 days
b) How to go from 100 to 250 in 60 days
c) How to go from 250 to 500 in 90 days

a) How to go from 0 to 100 in 30 days?

Zapier ACTUALLY got its first 500 users using the strategy I'm sharing below

They found people who had requested features from competitors that Zapier was solving for and wrote replies directing them to Zapier.

How to copy this strategy:

1. THE SOCIAL FLYWHEEL

Let's say you're building a Zapier Alternative.

Check which social platforms similar products are using.

Make a database of competing products and the social channels where they are most popular.

Each good competitive product will have a 10,000+ follower base across 5 different platforms.

50% of their followers are either already customers or future customers.

These people have a problem you're solving and might become your customers tomorrow.

Now go to their product and teams' social handles

• Follow their followers and DM them
• Reply to every reply from their followers

- Don't sell, give away a free trial
- Ask them for advice, not money

back of envelope math:

Say Zapier has 20K unique followers on twitter.

And it has 10K unique comments on its content.

Assuming 20% of them are customers.

That's 2,000 RELEVANT people you can give a free trial to.

Maybe 3% of those will sign up.

That's 60 users.

BOOM.

Make your team (or you) do this all day, every day, for 30 days

Now roughly speaking,

If you have 10 competitors, you'll have at least

10 x 2,000 = 20,000 people to reach out to with 3% of them signing up, or 600 new users.

It's a slog, but it works.

Social Flywheel -

- Keep adding similar competitors to your database
- Keep engaging with relevant customers
- Keep giving away trials

The Social Flywheel alone WILL get you 500 customers

b) How to go from 100 to 250 in 30 days

2. THE EMAIL FLYWHEEL

This may sound like a pain, but you need to get your hands dirty here.

Step 1: Find or build a list of potential clients
Step 2: Use an email finder and drip sequence like @MeetApollo (my fav)

Step 3:
Take a picture holding their product or a whiteboard with their name

This level of hyper-personalization will increase your reply rates from 5% to 90%!

Kinds of responses you'll get

Mention them by name, and their product in the pic, and be specific on how you can save them TIME or MONEY

Nothing else matters.

NEVER tout your software’s features, they don’t care.

Step 4: Schedule 4 emails in your drip sequence

Email 1 - the custom picture intro & why your software will make them $ or save them time

Email 2 - A reminder

Email 3 - Case study highlighting your killer results

Email 4 - Last chance - Is there anyone I should be talking to on your team instead? I don’t mind if you fwd me

Email Flywheel

1. Keep Finding Relevant Emails
2. Keep Sending hyper-personalized emails
3. Keep booking calls and converting

The Email Flywheel can get you 100's of customers

c) How to go from 250 to 500 in 30 days

3. THE REFERRAL FLYWHEEL

Your users know other people like them

Make your users get you more users

Spotify has nailed this.

• Build a "Invite your friends" feature
• Provide credits/discounts to BOTH: users who invite and people who join
• Give your existing users a free month, cool upgrades, and outright cash

Make the reward so valuable that it's stupid for them to not invite their friends

If your product is good, you will turn 250 users into 500 in no time.

4. THE LAUNCH FLYWHEEL

Launches make a BIG SPLASH, get a lot of attention, and can get a lot of users quickly

When you're small, nobody remembers that you exist.

So you should make a big splash every 6 months.

Airbnb launched 4 times and nobody noticed

Launch on Product Hunt 3 times in 1 year when you hit these milestones

1) 100 users
2) 250 users
3) 500 users

Things to do before each launch:

- Tell all your users/friends to upvote before you launch
- Post on your socials, gain traction
- Launch when you know that you will get 500 upvotes on the worst day

What it may look like for you

Launch 1
Rank #1 on Product Hunt and you'll typically get between 400-500 sign-ups!

Launch 2
200 users make it easier to Rank #1 again. 500+ sign-ups again

Launch 3
With 500 users AND a referral system, you can BREAK Product Hunt

Combine all your firepower at every stage to do the BIGGEST LAUNCH YOU POSSIBLY CAN

Each launch is a reason to blatantly promote and a way to give discounts without people thinking the product is cheap.
(It's a special occasion discount)

You can get an extra 100 users every time you do a launch and get thousands of eyeballs

The above strategies combined with repeated launches will get you to 500 users in 3 months or less

TLDR;

1) Social Flywheel
2) Email Flywheel
4) Referral Flywheel
5) Launch Flywheel

You can easily get 500 users in 90 days if you execute these right.

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