Ask HN: Share your wisdom on customer acquisition

#1

Post by yoyobutter » Thu, Dec 14, 2023, 12:04 AM UTC

I am a technical founder with no marketing and sales experience. I have enjoyed coding and technical management aspect. We recently bootstrapped a company. Both of us deeply technical but I have taken sales role.

I have been doing cold emailing and have gained a few prospects. Most people either don’t respond or are not interested.

1/ what are ways to rapidly acquire customers?

2/ product is new technology enhanced with AI but there are companies with old way of doing things. It is hard to explain benefits of new tech.

3/ sometimes we see how customers could benefit from our product based on their website but they don’t respond.

4/ we do not have domain knowledge such as healthcare or insurance etc.

There are thousands of you who created successful companies. Were you in similar situation? What worked for you? Please suggest.

Re: Ask HN: Share your wisdom on customer acquisition

#2

Post by paulcole » Thu, Dec 14, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

I’m sure other people will have had the opposite opinion, but if you have no clue what you’re doing and you try 2 or 3 things to acquire customers you’ll have fewer opportunities than somebody else who has no clue what they’re doing but who tries 2 or 3 dozen things.

Are you writing about or making videos about your product and (even better) your niche every single day?

How much are you spending on ads and on how many channels?

You have an ideal customer in mind? How can you reach more of them?

How many email addresses do you have? How often are you emailing them?

What are you doing to learn? Start w/ StoryBrand by Donald Miller.

How many hours a day are you spending calling potential customers?

You can trick yourself into thinking you’re doing enough, but if you don’t know what you’re doing and are getting no results, how can you possibly know? You just need to do a lot of things and know that most of them will fail and learn.

Re: Ask HN: Share your wisdom on customer acquisition

#3

Post by codingdave » Thu, Dec 14, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

> we do not have domain knowledge

So you have no leads on people who want your product. And no domain knowledge. It sounds like you skipped step one in creating a product - make sure you know of someone who wants it and will pay for it.

And that leads to the 2nd problem I see: "It is hard to explain benefits of new tech."

If that is true, you aren't solving a big enough problem. Regardless of your solution, there isn't a market if you don't at least pique some interest when you say, "We have a solution to {problem}."

So I'd take a big step back, and ask yourself some basic PMF questions:

1) What problem are you solving?

2) Who has that problem?

3) Is that problem a large enough pain that they would be willing to pay for a solution?

4) Does your solution meet the need well enough that they would be willing to pay for your specific specific solution?

Re: Ask HN: Share your wisdom on customer acquisition

#4

Post by nprateem » Thu, Dec 14, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

> what are ways to rapidly acquire customers?

Hire someone who knows what they're doing and go back to coding.

You either need to be willing to learn an entirely new skill (and fast) or go back to what you know, otherwise you're both just wasting your time.

Re: Ask HN: Share your wisdom on customer acquisition

#5

Post by Chandraa » Sat, Dec 16, 2023, 2:23 AM UTC

There is no silver bullet - it's a grind. Some broad thoughts:

First, identify the exact buyer persona for the product. Get to this level of clarity: Person X at company type Y making Z revenue has A problem and our product solves that with a clear B ROI and we have a list of C people to vouch for us.

Without that clarity, you'll be shooting in the dark. You can make as much noise as you want but unless your existing customers are rave about you to their peers the engine won't start....

Next, figure out where these people hang out. Are there conferences they go to? Groups they participate in? Twitter handles they follow? Do they have any influencial customers or organizations they look up to?

You can get a sense for this by talking to your existing buyers and doing research.

Then, try all niche marketing channels to get to them. Examples: conference emails or booths, influencer marketing, Twitter ads, etc.

In parallel, A/B test the heck out of your landing page. Hash out the exact words and visuals and make it easy for them to request a demo.

Keep experimenting until you find something that works. Then double down on it and scale.