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When you consider your niche, your aim should not be just what you love, but what you love, that people need and are willing to pay for it. What if you love something, but people are not willing to pay for your skill, or there is no demand for it.
By Gaurav Radadiya | Dec 29, 2020
'YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, MORALLY, TO GET YOUR CUSTOMER.'
With emphasizing enough to take it into customers' hands, it's time to launch. As you can recall, we must remove all other distractions and focus on your main feature that people are willing to pay. With that saying, all your focus should be directed to launch it well and find your first paying customer asap to stimulate the motivation. Often, founders screw this launching part, and due to not landing their first paying customer, their motivation starts dying. The aim here is to follow a step-by-step process that can increase the odds of getting your initial customers.
The key is to keep the distance of days — between the day you discover the idea and the day you launch — as minimum as possible.
When I'd decided to write this book, what I did first, is to create an Instagram account and started giving away valuable content to attract the people who are likely potential customers. We live in the information world. And, everyone continually engages with the information, whether it's useful or not. But, if you can manage to find people in your market, they will certainly stop and listen to you as the content you share is valuable; also, it matters to them.
FREE content triggers reciprocity. Reciprocity means we tend to repay what another person has provided us, mostly in the same manner. Suppose your neighbor gives you delicious food they cooked for dinner, which makes you obliged to give something in return. Reciprocity is one of the dominant mental triggers, along with social proof, when it comes to selling your product.
When people see your free content and find valuable and genuine, then you create authority — another powerful mental trigger. If we need some medical help, we visit the doctor. Because they hold authority over others as we know they have more practice in treating the medical condition you have. Likewise, when you give away FREE content, you make yourself an authority on your subject. If you continue giving them valuable content, you start building trust with them.
The day you conceive the idea and decide to take a leap, your first step is to create a social media presence. You can choose your comfortable medium, whether you want to do Audio, Video, or Blogs. The content you share via your Podcast, YouTube channel, or Blogs, becomes your lead magnet. Meanwhile, you can keep working on creating MVP and your launch process. As I am writing this, I have generated nearly 3000 followers on my Instagram account and 300 Newsletter subscribers, to whom I share valuable content, multiple times a day, and email them twice a week. I have built the list of potential customers by placing a magnet with the help of the word FREE.
Building a community becomes the most crucial in this competitive world.
As an entrepreneur, your job is to build a community of your potential clients, and that too by solving their problems. As soon as they figure out, your content is no longer valuable, they will leave for better solutions. They choose you to solve their problem, to make their life better, to get that end result they have in their mind. You have to provide that consistently without getting fail. And, when you do this successfully, they become your raving fans. They become your salesperson. They tell everyone how you change their life forever. One of the best examples of building a community is Apple. On launch day, people stand in a long queue to get an iPhone first. Apple has built a community of raving fans. You must start building a community for your company if you have not started yet, and give them so much that they go out and become a megaphone for your product.
Have you seen how your favorite authors launch their books? Or How big studios launch their movies? They create anticipation by showing a small clip or blurb well before they intend to release their book or movie. They create a buzz for the book or movie. Apple runs a huge campaign before the release date. If you can engineer your launch the way these big boys do — that too within your budget — your sales will be skyrocketed, within your launch period.
Remember the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop we discussed in the previous chapter? When you close the launch, you will have some customers or no customers, depending upon the list of your prospects and the story you constructed. If you don't get any customers, ask your prospect, what's stopping them from taking actions? Is it the solution you proposed not valid? Or is it any confusion? Or, you missed answering one of their questions? Analyze the reasons which are stopping them. And reconstruct the story and offer, and launch again. Reiterate this procedure until you master the technique.
Once you have your initial customers, your job is to communicate with them about their experiences. Stay in touch with them, ask for feedback, but don't pester. If they are happy with the product, move ahead to implement other features, along with changing the product according to their feedback. All your focus should be on getting as much feedback as possible to improve or pivot. Pivot — the concept of a lean startup by Eric Ries — is when the solution you offered was discarded by customers altogether. Hence, an essential shift in a business model or a new approach in your solution is needed based on the feedback. Instagram: that was a location-based check-in service when it started, and then they pivoted to the photo-sharing app. Twitter — one of today's largest social media platforms began life as Odeo, a podcasting platform. Netflix, which started as a mail-order DVD service, evolving to streaming movies, then started to develop its own films, TV shows and documentaries. All of these examples reflect the importance of fast launching, so you can adjust fast while still not broke.
Earlier this year, I attended a seminar on entrepreneurship in Jamnagar, Gujarat. I was sitting there waiting for the speaker to arrive, meanwhile my mind was glued to the big screen in front of us, playing testimonials of the speaker's clients. They all seemed so excited, going gaga over how the course had changed their life. The speaker was using one of the most potent mental triggers called Social Proof. Even in his speech, he repeatedly addressed how his course helped people gain in their business.
In his book Influence, Robert B. Cialdini minted the term — Social Proof, which means people will follow the actions of the masses. When some people do a specific behavior, others are likely to follow as they think it is the correct way. People choose restaurants based on higher ratings, more people join in clapping and shouting, after one start in a movie theatre. People react based on socially accepted norms. Great marketers and entrepreneurs know this, and utilize it to increase their sales.
After you have your initial customers, ask for testimonials. Tell them to write a review or record a video about their experience using your product. Nearly all the companies engineer their product around the social proof, and they often exploit it by generating fake social proof. Some ask their friends and family to write a good about them, which can backfires if the product is incompetent. Do it sincerely because it can question your trustworthiness. It hinders your long term growth. Are you not here in for quick bucks, right? You are in for long term growth, don't let it sidelined by quick fixes.
For you to win, others don't have to lose. When you go out there, you will find many others are already screaming at your prospect with the same solution. They all are screaming, 'Mine Is Better Solution.' Your prospects will always have a choice to leave you, hence unless you give them new and improved solutions, they will move out. Contrary to that, if you make them feel like no one does, including new innovative solutions for their problems, they will stick to you. Not only stick to you but happily pay more. Some go beyond and will become a cheerleader for your product. Therefore, as an entrepreneur, you must figure out new creative solutions. There will always be room for improvement. You just have to look for it.
Ask these questions, 'How can I serve my customers more? What's more, I can do to improve my product? What will be the new ways to solve this?' often. As Peter Thiel said, 'You can't find secrets without looking for them.'
Instead of competing, try innovating a better product. This way, not only will you help your customers avoid normalcy, but you will also give them more reasons to come back to you. I don't mean you should avoid competition altogether, but be smart enough to recognize where to compete and where not. With competition, you kill your profits. Hence it is wise to give, none of your competition capable of giving.
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