Marketing Examined - 🔍 How To Get Your First 1000 Customers

Waddup y'all - Alex here.

if you shoot me a response here and I don't get back to you it's because I'm traveling for the next two weeks. 

Will newsletters still hit your inbox? Without a doubt.

As always, appreciate you!

In today's edition, I'm covering the step by step playbook to acquire your first 1000 customers.

You've been there. I've been there. You work with an influencer only to spend weeks trying to ink a deal for a post that underperforms.

And your confidence in "influencer marketing" tanks. 

That's why brands like Canon, H&M, and Nestle are turning to creator marketing.

Because creators are the new spokespeople for brands.

Which is where #paid comes into play.

They help you collaborate with the right creators who will help build your brand.

In less than 10 minutes, you can:

• Find creators who love your brand
• Run paid media organically through their social channels 
• Have deep analytics on how your creator is performing 

You can try a test campaign here.

Don’t chase the stadium, chase the auditorium.

When you start building your startup your goal shouldn’t be to build the largest audience but to find fans who’d drop everything to consume your content, who’d be first in line for your product, and pay attention to your every move.

But finding your first 1000 fans needs a playbook.

And this is Noah Kagan’s 5-step playbook to acquire his first 1000 customers for any business he launches:

Meet your customers where they are and sell them one by one.

Example: When Tinder first started, the team went to different sororities and fraternities to acquire their first 15,000 users.

Test, test, test, and collect.

Test everything. Collect the data. Determine what works best.

Example: When I first started Marketing Examined, I set a timeframe of two months to test 10 different tactics to find the five that worked best.

This is why it’s called “Buffet Marketing.” Because you walk up with an empty plate and stack it so high, you can barely walk back to your table without dropping something.

But as you eat, some things are better than others, so you leave those for the waiter to pick up, and you walk back up to the buffet to get seconds of what you liked.

Finding customers 100-500 is no different.

Find the 1-2 things that have the potential to 10x.

Example: For Marketing Examined, that was two things: Twitter Threads and Paid Media.

Take what’s proven to work and 10x. This means trimming the fat aka anything that takes time away from what’s driving significant growth.

Example: For Sumo this meant doubling down on email marketing and running daily giveaways. This took them from 500 customers to 1000 in a week's time.

You’ve generated demand.

But, a successful flywheel takes the initial demand to build more demand. 

Your flywheel is dependent on your business model.

But test how you can build acquisition loops, referral loops, and affiliate loops into your product resulting in a system that feeds itself.

Lastly, if you want to dive into a world of growth, then I'd love for you to join my paid newsletter, Growth Marketing Examined.

It focuses on three things:

1. Co-working - Build with others.

2. Content - Upgrade your playbook.

3. Community - Learn from others.

I like to think of it as fuel for a rocket ship.

You can join me and hundreds of other marketers and founders here.