How to Attract New Customers to Your Startup
A 3-step framework filled with actionable strategies you can try
A few years ago, my wife and I launched a subscription box business that sold greeting cards. One of the vivid moments I recall was waiting for our first customer.
After the sales page went live, my wife texted me throughout the day asking, “Has anyone bought yet? Do we have any sales??” For the first couple of days, I had to tell her “No.” It broke my heart. Not just because I was disappointing my wife, but because I wanted the business to succeed — especially after all the hard work we’d put into it.
Struggling to find customers is an experience most entrepreneurs can relate to. And creating a system that consistently drives new sales is essential if you want your business to succeed.
In this post, I’ll share a three-step process you can consider as you look to find new customers.
Step 1: Get Attention
It’s hard to attract potential customers when no one knows you exist. You have to find a way to get in front of people who will actually care about your product. One often overlooked way to do that is to piggyback off the interest and buzz already generated by your competitors.
For example, ProWritingAid is a popular proofreading tool that edits your writing for grammar, spelling mistakes, poor word-choice, repetition, clumsy sentence structure, etc.
Lots of people like ProWritingAid. According to the keyword research tool Ahrefs, over 13,000 people search for it in Google every month.
But when I google “ProWritingAid,” what’s the first thing I see?
It’s an ad for Grammarly, a rival proofreading software.
Grammarly has many features similar to those offered by ProWritingAid. It’s competing for the same people. So it paid to show up first when people searched for ProWritingAid.
You can also take a non-paid approach to this strategy.
Daily Harvest and Green Blender are two popular smoothie delivery services. They send you the ingredients you need to easily prepare superfood-rich smoothies.
Sub-Zero Superfoods is a new entrant in the smoothie delivery space. And like most startups, not many people know it exists.
So how do you attract organic traffic when no one is searching for you?
Similar to the Google AdWords strategy, you can write about competitors people are already searching for and feature your own product in the process.
“Daily Harvest vs Green Blender” gets searched over 300 times per month. “Smoothie delivery service” gets searched an additional 350 times per month.
By writing a post about these proven keywords (and getting it to rank high in search engines), a new company like Sub-Zero Superfoods can get the attention it deserves.
The Food Delivery Guru blog provides a perfect example to reverse engineer with a review that compares all three smoothie delivery services: Daily Harvest, Green Blender, and Sub-Zero Superfoods.
It might feel odd to blog about your competitor, but writing comparison posts or paying bloggers with more established sites to write promoted comparison posts can allow you to hijack some of the existing traffic.
Then, once you have eyeballs, your next job is to persuade prospects to choose your product over competitors.
Step 2: Differentiate
Once you have the attention of your target prospects, you need to find a way to set yourself apart.
Three big picture ways to do this are:
Pricing
Being the least expensive option will always appeal to some customers. And being cheap isn’t the only way to compete on price. You can also compete with a different pricing model, such as offering a one-time pay when your competitors force customers into a subscription, or offering a payment plan when you’re competitors require upfront payment, etc.
Features
Highlighting features your competitors don’t have is a fantastic way to set yourself apart.
For example, put together a feature comparison chart like this one from Kindlepreneur that compares 5 top book writing softwares.
Comparison charts are transparent — and clearly show how competitors differentiate from each other in a marketplace.
Location
Differentiating through location won’t be an option for every business, but it applies to more than just brick and mortar stores.
Hello Fresh and Blue Apron are two popular meal-kit delivery services. They both deliver pre-portioned ingredients to help people easily cook homemade meals. Their pricing models are extremely similar. Even their packaging looks roughly the same, minus the logo.
But there’s one big difference between Hello Fresh and Blue Apron. Hello Fresh delivers to 10 countries across the globe. Blue Apron only delivers to the contiguous United States. So for millions of customers, Hello Fresh automatically beats Blue Apron just by offering shipping to their area.
Step 3. Convert
Once you have attention, and you’ve differentiated your company from your competitors, your final step is to convince prospects to actually take action.
One of the most effective ways to do this is to create a sense of urgency — usually with deadlines you establish through limited-time offers.
Returning to some of our earlier examples, Blue Apron has at times offered new customers three free meals to give the service a try. SaaS tools like ConvertKit (now called Seva) often offer a free month to get customers using the tool.
The writing software Scrivener uses discounts and promo codes to make purchasing their product more appealing and to create a sense of urgency.
And almost all online companies back their products up with a return policy so customers can try the product with no risk.
I’m not trying to make this sound easy.
Attracting customers is hard work.
None of the strategies I’ve shared are guaranteed to succeed. Each requires a level investment on the part of the entrepreneur.
And the framework I’ve unpacked is certainly not the only way to go about winning new business. (In our stationery subscription company, my wife and I found our very first customers by starting with friends and family and asking them to share the product.)
But hopefully, this post has given you a new way to think about the undertaking, a process to consider trying, and the inspiration keep pursuing your goals.
