MBA2471 Q&A Wednesday: How do I get my first few customers for my new app?

Wed May 22 2024

Are you struggling to get your first few customers for your new web app, especially one built around a SaaS model? Do you feel confident about your product but find yourself stumped when it comes to the marketing side of things? If these challenges sound familiar, you're definitely not alone, and today's episode is tailored just for you.

Summary

The $100 MBA Show: Episode MBA2471 Q&A Wednesday - "How Do I Get My First Few Customers for My New App?"

Release Date: May 22, 2024
Host: Omar Zenhom
Podcast Description: Awarded Best of Apple Podcasts, The $100 MBA Show delivers practical business lessons for the real world. These no-fluff episodes are packed with pure business-building training you need.

Introduction to Q&A Wednesday

[01:26] Omar Zenhom:
Omar kicks off the episode by introducing the format of Q&A Wednesday, where he addresses questions from listeners. Today's question comes from Clark, who is about to launch his first web app—a SaaS product that helps business owners integrate unique music into their media, such as videos and podcasts. Clark is confident in his product development but seeks guidance on acquiring his first few customers, acknowledging marketing as his weak point.

Understanding the Customer Acquisition Process

[02:15] Omar Zenhom:
Omar emphasizes that acquiring customers is where the success of a business truly begins. He draws from his 10-year experience running a SaaS company, Webinar Ninja, which eventually amassed 30,000 customers and was acquired successfully. He stresses the importance of understanding how people buy, highlighting that customers typically go through a multi-step process before making a purchase.

Notable Quote:
"People need to be aware of your business and what you do long before they actually want to buy." [05:10]

Building Awareness and Educating Your Audience

[05:15] Omar Zenhom:
Omar uses a personal anecdote about training for a 500k bike ride in Thailand to illustrate the customer journey. He explains that just as he had to educate himself about biking gear before purchasing, businesses must educate their audience about their products' value.

Key Strategies:

Email List Building:
- Create a waiting list to collect email addresses.
- Offer incentives such as demos, webinars, or exclusive content to encourage sign-ups.
Targeted Traffic Generation:
- Drive traffic to your waiting list or mailing list through ads.
- Clearly communicate the benefits of joining the list.

Notable Quote:
"Your first job is to get them on a mailing list." [08:30]

Identifying and Targeting the Right Audience

[10:45] Omar Zenhom:
Before investing in ads, Omar advises understanding your target audience in-depth—not just demographics but also interests, income levels, and spending habits. This ensures that marketing efforts reach individuals who are genuinely interested in the product.

Example:
For The $100 MBA Show, the target audience comprises individuals in their 30s to 40s transitioning into entrepreneurship, with disposable income for investing in business growth tools.

Notable Quote:
"Understand exactly who your audience is... interests, income, how they spend their time." [12:10]

Leveraging Paid Advertising and Content Marketing

[15:00] Omar Zenhom:
Omar outlines two primary methods to grow the mailing list and acquire customers:

Paid Advertising:
- Utilize platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
- Experiment with different ad budgets and strategies to find what works.
- Consider education through courses or hiring agencies to optimize ad performance.
Content Marketing:
- Create valuable content such as blog posts, podcasts, or YouTube videos.
- Regularly publish content that addresses your audience's needs and drives them to join the mailing list.
- Content marketing is a long-term strategy that builds trust and authority.

Notable Quote:
"Content marketing is essential, regardless of whether you're running ads." [17:30]

Nurturing Leads and Converting to Sales

[20:00] Omar Zenhom:
Once the mailing list is established, Omar highlights the importance of nurturing leads through a curated email sequence. This involves educating subscribers about the product’s benefits, sharing valuable insights, and gradually guiding them towards making a purchase.

Conversion Tactics:

Free Trials and Discounts:
Offer free trials with credit card sign-ups or limited-time discounts to encourage initial purchases.
Personalized Communication:
Use email marketing tools like ConvertKit or Mailchimp to automate and personalize email sequences.

Notable Quote:
"Nurture your audience, educate them, and they’ll be ready to buy when the time is right." [22:15]

Partnering and Leveraging Other Audiences

[25:00] Omar Zenhom:
To expand reach, Omar recommends partnering with other businesses or complementary service providers. For instance, partnering with a video editing app can create mutual benefits where both audiences gain more value, and referral commissions incentivize partnerships.

Example:
Webinar Ninja partnered with email service providers like Mailchimp and AWeber, conducting joint webinars to introduce each other to their respective audiences.

Notable Quote:
"Partnering allows you to leverage another person's audience in a win-win scenario." [27:45]

Collecting and Implementing Customer Feedback

[30:30] Omar Zenhom:
As the first customers start engaging with the product, gathering and acting on their feedback is crucial. Rapid iteration based on customer feedback not only improves the product but also enhances customer satisfaction and retention.

Best Practices:

Direct Communication:
Engage with customers through calls, emails, and surveys to understand their needs and pain points.
Transparency:
Inform customers about updates and how their feedback has been implemented to demonstrate responsiveness.

Notable Quote:
"Constantly improving based on feedback keeps your customers happy and reduces churn." [33:50]

Conclusion: Building Relationships at Scale

[38:00] Omar Zenhom:
Omar wraps up the episode by reiterating that marketing and sales are fundamentally about building and nurturing relationships at scale. By educating the audience, targeting the right customers, leveraging partnerships, and continually improving based on feedback, entrepreneurs can effectively acquire and retain their first few customers and beyond.

Final Thoughts:

Marketing as Relationship Building:
View every interaction as a step towards a deeper relationship with your customers.
Value-Driven Approach:
Focus on how your product adds value to the customer's life or business.

Notable Quote:
"Your job as an entrepreneur is to help other people add value to their lives through your product or service." [40:15]

Additional Notes

Listener Engagement:
Omar encourages listeners to submit their questions via email to be featured in future Q&A Wednesdays.
Subscription Call-to-Action:
He urges listeners to subscribe to the podcast on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify to support the show and stay updated with new episodes.

For More Information:
Visit The $100 MBA Show to explore additional resources and subscribe to future episodes.

Transcript

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Hey o welcome to the $100 NBA show. Powerful business Business lessons you can count on. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And today's episode is Q and A Wednesday where we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over@omar mba.net Today's question is from Clark and Clark asks. I'm about to launch my very first web app. It's a SaaS product helping business owners integrate unique music in their media, whether it's video, podcast or wherever they want to insert custom music. My question is how do I get my first few customers? I'm very strong on the product side, but my weakness is marketing. Would love your help. Thanks Clark. No worries Clark. I got your back. Luckily, my strength is marketing and sales. I'm going to explain to Clark and everybody who's listening, what's the best way to get your first few customers to get that traction that you need to validate your product to get feedback from those first customers and make some initial money, make some cash and start to get the ball rolling when it comes to marketing and sales and get on your Way to having a successful business. Just for context, I ran a software company, a SaaS business web app myself for 10 years within our ninja, and I was exactly where Clark is right now. Ten years ago, I had to get my first customers and then I had to get more customers and more customers. 30,000 customers later, I'm happy to say we had enough of success in our hands that we got acquired. So I'm going to share with you what actually worked in the real world with software and acquiring customers. We're going to zoom out a little bit, have more of a wider plan on how to acquire customers, especially those first ones, and how to build a system so we can continue to get customers to buy our app. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Getting customers to exchange their money for your product is really when the rubber hits the road. That's really when you have a business on your hands. And Clark's about to launch his app and he wants to start selling and get new customers. So how does he get started? How does anybody get started? Well, let's back up a little bit. We have to start thinking about how do people actually buy? How do you buy anything? Okay. A lot of people think that all I gotta do is say, hey, I have this thing for sale. Create enough awareness, maybe run some ads and people will buy. That's just not how things work. Okay? This is not how people buy. Think about the last thing you bought. It could be a tv, it could be a pair of shoes, it could be a vacation, it could be whatever. But most people, when it's time to buy something, it's not the first time they heard about this product or service. It's not the first time they thought about buying something or buying this product. There's a sequence, there's a process that people go through before they actually make that transaction. And we have to honor that process. That's a real thing. We can't just ignore, we can't just pretend it doesn't exist because we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot, waste a lot of money on marketing ads if we just pretend this process does not exist. So what is this process? Well, basically, people need to be aware of your business and what you do and your product way before they actually want to buy or need to buy. You have to be top of mind so you are there and ready and top of mind when they are ready to buy. For example, I just went on a 500k bike ride for charity in Thailand. I'm not really an avid bike rider. I ride bikes, you know, occasionally, you know, when I'm on holiday on a tour or something like that, but not really. Seriously, I'm not, you know, riding 80, 90, 100Ks a day, which is what I had to do on this bike ride. So leading up to this bike ride, I had to start training. I had to start understanding what makes it easier for me to ride for long distances. So I started to read some articles. I started to read some blog posts. I started to realize, okay, there's certain accessories that help, like padded shorts or a gel seat that you put on your seat. And then I realized there's all the different kinds of shorts and all kinds of seats. Which one's better? What's the best product? What kind of features am I looking for here? It's a whole new world for me. I'm not even sure if I want to buy these things for just a short period of time, maybe a few days when I'm in Thailand. Do I actually need it for training? So there's an educational piece that came with it where I had to understand what I really need. I then attended a webinar on what is the essential gear you need when you start bike riding. There's the obvious things like helmet. But then I realized you also need gloves because your hands will start to hurt if they don't have any padding, especially your wrists if you're leaning on the handlebars for hours. See, I wasn't even aware of the problems that I could have, and therefore, I wasn't even aware I needed these products in the first place. So, say, for example, I started getting ads for gloves. I would ignore them. I'd be like, I don't need gloves. There's a grip on the handlebars. Why do I need gloves? So the why I need the product and the value of the product was something I need to be educated on before I was ready to buy. Eventually, I did buy gloves, and it did help me a lot on the ride. I did buy a gel seat for my bike seat. I did buy padded shorts once. I understood the use and the need, but there was a process involved. Okay, so when it comes to your business, your product, you need to educate your audience. They have to understand the value of what you're offering. You need to be able to be kind of their coach or mentor in understanding the use of your app, your course, your whatever. So the easiest way to do this is to get them on your email list. You need to get people on your mailing list. So that you can educate them via newsletters, via great articles, or post or even mini courses. You might invite them to a webinar like I was invited to and learned all about all the things I need for biking. So even before you start thinking about selling your product, yes, you want to sell your product. You want to make money. This is going to happen. But there's got to be this piece where we nurture our audience and they get to know what we're all about and the value we offer. So your first job is, again, get them on a mailing list. So one of the best ways to do this when you're launching a new product like Clark is, is to start a waiting list and to drive traffic to that waiting list. Now, you got to tell people why the waiting list is important, because again, they don't really understand the app. They understand why they need it. So you might want to say, hey, if you want to learn more about this app, get a demo, a live demo. Learn the top 10 problems this app solves. Learn why this app is going to save you three hours a week, whatever it might be. You got to give them a reason why to join your mailing list or join your waiting list. Say, hey, join the waiting list. And you're going to get all these benefits. You're going to learn all about this stuff. Driving traffic to that page where you collect email addresses for your waiting list is probably the best thing you can do at the start. Why? Because now you have a database of people you can communicate with, nurture, and they can learn from you. Now, you have to understand everybody on your mailing list is not going to buy. And that's okay. Everybody's going to buy at different points. The point of the mailing list is so that when they are ready to buy, they don't go shopping around. They go back to you. They buy from you. Because there's other competitors out there. There's other options out there. And remember, there's the option of not doing anything, all right? Of just ignoring you and ignoring the problem they have and not solving it. But by being on your mailing list, you get to remind them of the value that you offer and the problem that you solve and why this is actually a win for them. Now, my advice to you, and this is something that I didn't do at the beginning of Webinar Ninja and started to do and really helped me, is I didn't just drive traffic to this waiting list or this, you know, opt in. So they get on my mailing list to anybody. I really started to understand who my target audience is, who would be perfect for my product because I want to get the right people. Because it's going to take time and effort to get people on my mailing list. I might as well choose the right people instead of just saying everybody in the world come on my mailing list and then they're not really interested. My message is, you know, falling on deaf ears. So before you spend a dime on ads to drive traffic to your waiting list or your mailing list or your opt in, you're, you know, I'm going to give a freebie away, a cheat sheet, a guide in exchange for being on my mailing list so that you can then nurture them and then sell your, your product. Before you spend a dime on ads, you need to know who you're targeting. You need to understand exactly who your audience is. I'm talking about not just demographics, I'm talking about interests, I'm talking about income, how they spend their time, what they're interested in, how they spend their money, all that kind of stuff. This is really important because you can really target and narrow down your search to people that are exactly who you need with the amazing tools of social media and ads on social media. So for example, if I were running ads for my audience at the Hundred Dollar mba, I know exactly who I'm looking for. Most people that are interested in the Hundred Dollar mba, this podcast or our program are people that are looking for the second chapter in their life. This is not their first career. Entrepreneurship is not something they're looking to do right out the gate. They probably are working in a job or have worked in a job and have transitioned into entrepreneurship. And so they're probably somewhere between their 30s and their 40s and they could be a bit older as well. They have enough disposable cash to invest in themselves because even though our products are either free or $100, they're going to need to invest in themselves to be successful with the knowledge I give them. Right? They're going to need to invest in starting a business, hiring people run ads. So they need to have some disposable income to have a chance of success. They have to be open to learning and self growth. So they have to be interested in personal development and business in general, be listeners of podcasts in the first place. So you get the point. I really have to understand who I'm looking after so that I get the right people on my list. Next, the easiest way to fast track your mailing list Growth is which will lead to sales is to run ads. That's it. Once you know your target audience and you're targeting this audience through your ads, you're really just throwing money at the problem here. And in this case, it does work. Running ads does help because you're basically borrowing the audience from Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever it might be. You don't have an audience yet, but you want to get in front of people, and these platforms let you do that if you pay them money. Now, you don't have to spend a lot of money to run ads, but I have to say, if you're going to do this yourself, there is an education piece. You have to learn how to run ads yourself. This might take some time. You could take some courses on Udemy or Linda or now it's LinkedIn learning. And this is going to take some investment. But if you want to fast track it even more, hire an agency. There's plenty of agencies out there that will do this. There's a lot of freelancers on upwork. They'll run ads for you ranging from, you know, spending two to $300 on a month to run your ads to people that are gonna charge you five to six to $10,000 a month if you're looking at a very, very highly successful agency. But the point here is just to get started, understand that every market's different. Every value per lead is different. You know, some markets you can get an email address or convert to an email address via ads for a few dollars. Some of them, it's gonna cost 15, $20. This is something that you're gonna know when you experiment. And ads is all about experimentation. If you don't want to run Facebook or Instagram ads or paid ads in general, or maybe you don't have the budget for it right now. The best way to grow your email list is then using free content. You're going to have to spend your time instead of your money. This is like creating blog posts on a regular basis. Two or three blog posts a week. This is like running a podcast like mine or publishing YouTube videos on a YouTube channel where they watch the content and then your call to action in the description will, or at the bottom of the blog post or whatever is sign up for my mailing list. Sign up and get this freebie. Join my waiting list and get these, you know, advantages. This is gonna take longer, but it will serve you long term. I'm a big fan of content marketing. I think everybody should do content marketing, regardless of the running ads or not. If you're running ads, it's just putting fuel to the fire. Now you're like, omar, what's going on here? I get it. I'm growing my email list, but what about my actual sales? Yep, totally get it. And this is going to happen through the nurturing sequence inside your email marketing service. Right? If you're using ConvertKit or Drip or Mailchimp or whatever it might be, there's a way for you to send automatic emails to people that join your mailing list. And this is basically a curated way for you to educate new people that join your mailing list. Give them the freebies you you promised, but also help them out, give them value, show them how they can excel in whatever they do in the market that you're in. So, for example, Clark says he has an app that gives them customized music for their videos and their podcasts. So I would like to know, if I were on his mailing list, how do I choose the right music? How do I make sure that I capture the right mood for the topic of my video? For example, what about for sales? What kind of music should I use for sales? What makes a catchy jingle? What makes it more engaging? Educate people about how your product and what you do can really help them and make their life easier. Make them more money, save them time, whatever it might be. And this could be a series of emails. It could be one email a week or one email every few days. I'm a big believer that too many emails is not a good idea. Think one every other day for the first week is a good cadence to start with. And then once a week is plenty. And then, of course, once you've spent some time, educate them, let's say four or five weeks, you can invite them to learn more, like a live demo, a webinar, or watch a video on your website or on your YouTube channel to learn a little bit more about how your app works and how it can help them. And then you can invite them to a sales call, or you can invite them to buy right there, say, hey, I got an offer for you. Thanks for being on my mailing list. You can get, you know, 15% off your first month. Or if you're in software, free trials are great. It gets them through the door. And I like the method of free trial with credit card on file, which means that when they sign up for the free trial, they put their credit card in. And then when the trial is up, they get charged automatically. This requires them to be a little bit More committed and it gets you a little bit more of a serious customer. And you can decide on how long the trial should be. Every product is different, how long it takes them for a set up and get to get value from your product so they can actually get a win. So that could be 14 days for you. It could be 30 days. And then after 30 days up, you can remind them, hey, your trial will be up in a few days. We're going to charge your credit card. If you love the app, there's nothing you have to do. If it's not a good fit, you can cancel inside your account. Free trials are a great way for people to get a chance to really fall in love with your product and see for themselves the value and a great way for you to convert. At Webinar Ninja, our whole goal is to get as many free trials as possible because we knew that if we got X amount of trials, we're going to get X amount of sales. We had a about a 44% conversion rate on trials, which is very good for our market. But that's because we spent a lot of time nurturing our audience before we invited them to sign up for a trial.