Editor’s note: ExitEvent and WRALTechWire are cooperating in presenting news about the region’s entrepreneurial sector. Today, entrepreneur Eric Boggs offers first-hand advice about how startups can sell their products.
DURHAM, N.C. - So you’ve got a product? That’s great! And a handful of early adopters? Even better!
Now comes the hard part. Going from the first handful of friends/family/charity customers to executing a process that will drive your next 100 or next 1000 customers is no small task. I know because I’ve been through the wringer twice—at Bronto Software as employee #1 and at Argyle Social as the founder and former CEO. It is a monster undertaking that requires quite a bit of trial and error…and mostly error at the start.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is a “How To Get Your First 100 Customers” playbook, though there are a number of things that you should consider early on—email marketing, paid advertising, content marketing, affiliate marketing, social media, co-marketing, integrations, etc. Outbound sales is a strategy often overlooked and also a strategy of particular interest for my new joint, RevBoss.
Ultimately, you’ll need to do a little bit of everything. For the purposes of this mini-treatise, however, I want to focus on social media, an incredibly misunderstood marketing channel particularly for early-stage companies that are hungry for distribution. So if you’re building a sales and marketing organization at a startup (or any sized organization), here is your to-do list.
The full post can be read online at ExitEvent.
