1. Start a referral program
Did you know 92% of people trust personal recommendations over other forms of marketing? Referrals work best for any product/service or in any industry. And for decades, word of mouth has been the best way to acquire new customers. With referral programs, your existing users also benefit. Hence it is a win-win situation for all.
2. Introduce beta testing
Exclusivity makes humans feel special, which works like a charm when used in marketing. Launch a beta group where only limited users are invited based on the sign-ups. This is the most popular method many startups use to acquire new users.
3. Get featured
Start building contact with major publication houses or editors. This will enable your startup to get featured easily as compared to others. Being featured gives you leverage as it brings a lot of eyeballs to your products and services. The public knows about your startup, and that’s exactly what you want when building a startup, i.e., brand awareness.
4. Use content marketing
Firstly be specific about who is your target market. Then create targeted content for this specific community. The more focused your content is, the more effective will be your marketing campaign.
Dropbox used this strategy to gain 5,000 to 75,000 people on its waiting list overnight.
5. Bribe new customers with cash
With any customer acquisition method, you need to pay money, then why not give it to the users directly? Sometimes startup gives the new user cash offers and additional gifts for the referral. This incentivizes the sign-ups and boosts the startup user base.
6. Connect with another brand
If your startup journey has just begun, why not collaborate with a bigger brand which has already built a market reputation? This way, you attract a lot of eyeballs by leveraging the large audience segment this bigger brand has created. Remember the Android promotion with KitKat?
7. Offer a gift
Any human who says they don’t like gifts would be lying! And this is very well-known to marketers. You can offer gifts with each sale of your product/service, which lures people and increases your user base. Some may argue that you’ll have to burn a lot of cash, but many successful companies use this method.
8. Promote via a flash mob
This is a non-traditional method of marketing your startup, and it works out best if your target audience is Genz and young millennials. The sudden group performance and the excitement in a public space are bound to attract customers. The brand Sears used this to promote its jeans. You can hire a flash mob if you don’t want to take the hassle of organizing. Check out: bookaflashmob.com.
9. Steal users of your competitors
Target your competitor’s users and find out what they are complaining about. Now attract those users by email marketing or running Ads to show that you have the solution to the problems they’ve been complaining about. This method requires extensive research, but it’s worth it.
10. Hold a contest
You can attract new customers by hosting a contest and rewarding them with a free product/service. The amount of participation is enormous. This is exactly how YouTube grew when it started by giving a FREE iPod Nano to the users who uploaded videos.
