Get clear on your purpose
“Start by asking yourself what problem you’re trying to solve,” says Katie Vanneck-Smith, Co-founder and Publisher at Tortoise Media. “What’s your purpose in people’s lives? The strategies for how to get your first customers should stem from that.”
At Tortoise, the founders wrote a manifesto stating what they were trying to achieve.
“Even before we had a product, people were happy to sign up because they bought into our vision,” says Vanneck-Smith.
Poppy Jamie, the founder of the mental wellbeing app Happy Not Perfect, agrees: “In 2018, it was a relatively open market for mental health apps. Because of the purpose-driven mission of our company, we had far more people sharing than we might otherwise have done.”
It can be tempting to skip straight to more tangible marketing tactics – but it is worth putting in the groundwork first. Tiwalola Ogunlesi, life coach and founder of women’s coaching app Confident & Killing It, spent a year posting inspirational videos on social media before launching her business.
“It’s really important to build a reputation for yourself so that people know who you are, what you stand for and the value you bring,” she says. “If I had announced that I was open for coaching clients without first proving what I was capable of, no one would have signed up.”