Finding Your First 1000 Early Adopters

You’ll get there when you get there but, here’s how you can boost the process.

Here’s a breakdown of our first ~1000 beta users on @Tidl, getting their fast is not always as easy as it looks, but there’re a few things you can do right to get the ball rolling.

Get your product right

Nothing matters more than your core product.

Friends and family first

Frankly they’re easier to approach, more likely to share and, more forgiving towards mistakes. ❤️

Reward

Reward your early adopters for taking a chance with a new product. Thank them via email or on social media. Give them as many reasons as possible to like and share your product.

Build up

Depending on the type of product you could do a lot by creating hype using your marketing. Use a wait list process to onboard users, you can even bump them up the list for sharing.

Exclusive access to communites

Start by opening exclusive access to leading startup communities like Product Hunt, BetaList or even Facebook groups. For our early adopters we launched Tidl progressively starting with a few Facebook groups followed by startup communites before finally opening up public access.

Respect the feedback loop

Give each new customer a better experience. Meaning, use the feedback from your first few members to find any flaws and improve your product before the next round of marketing. Fix. Improve. Repeat.

Engage those who share

Use tools like Twitter dashboard, Google Alerts or search to find people who are talking about your startup and like, reply, retweet or re-share.

Double down on your product. Almost all the techniques pivot on your product being great. So, if you ever have to choose between a new marketing project or improving your product/service — always choose the latter and the rest will follow.