Ask HN: How do you get people to try out your product? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you get people to try out your product?

31 pointsKurtunCom9 comments

I need help in communicating value prop of our startup. I know problem exists and people are spending tens of hours each week. In a saturated market where every other solution makes bold claim, but in reality falls flat when it comes to quality.

How do you explain that your startup solution is better for them compared to existing market solution or manual efforts?

Do you offer any long-term deals or any rewards for trying out your startup product?

I am curious and willing to learn GTM for software products that are just getting started in the market.

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1. "Show, don't tell." If you have to explain in detail your value prop and rationally convince a potential user that they will be better off using your product, then you might be wrong about how good the product is. If you're truly solving a problem for them, you should be able to show them quickly how you automate a process or generate a helpful result.

2. Ask for feedback, and specifically, try to see if the problem you are solving is truly relevant to them. Most users have dozens of "problems" they have every day, and they choose NOT to solve most of those problems because they have better things to do. Are you sure you're not solving a problem so low on their list of priorities that they simply don't care?

3. Go to where your users are -- conferences, events, web forums, whatever. If you validated #1 and #2, then showing them or presenting to them will get them excited and will get you users.

I find reaching out to people to get feedback via LinkedIn (I do enterprise sales) is a great way to validate a problem, and only then worry about scaling or getting them to try.

Books that might be helpful: [1] "The Mom Test", for interviewing users, and [2] "Competing Against Luck", which introduces 'jobs to be done' and talks about how your biggest competition isn't another product, but users deciding to do NOTHING.

"existing market solution or manual efforts"

This is really the core. How bad are the current solution? How painful is the manual effort?

If the status quo sucks, then you don't need to do any convincing, they'll run to you, beg you for the wishlist. Your job is to make sure it's visible to them. Make sure it doesn't smell like the other startups with crazy claims (i.e. don't say you're top on Product Hunt). You can put ads. You can walk up to them and tell them. You can talk about it on radio. You can post posts on reddit.

Many of these approaches only work for the initial product market fit stage though. Then you have to start thinking about distribution. But distribution is an easier problem.

You'll also fail a lot - most of the time the first thing you make is terrible. But you have to put it in front of someone to figure out what they really want. Assume that first iteration is a the block of marble and not the statue you're trying to carve out of it. The carving only starts after someone rejects it. You carve out a little bit of what the statue isn't, until you end up with the masterpiece.

The best way imo to get early sales for your startup is to use your network. Look at people you directly know who have the problem. I feel like this should be enough to get your first customer or two. After that I'd look at warm introductions.

I've found that in today's world, people are fatigued with inbound email and LinkedIn and so even if you have something valuable, getting someone to listen can be hard. So I think warm intros help at least get to the demo stage.

You might not think you're super connected but via six degrees of separation, you should be able to get a dozen or so demos booked via people who know people in your ICP.

If that doesn't work for your first ten customers (or first customer if enterprise) then you have to seriously question if you're working on the right problem.

You mentioned offering deals or rewards for trying out your product. I recommend against rewarding people for just trying your product. Because if the pain is not so great that they are willing to try out the product on their own, you're probably working on the wrong problem.

I am a bit confused about your stage as a product.

When you say "get people to try out your product", I feel that you are building a new product and looking for early feedback - your first design partner.

But then you say "offer long-term deals or any rewards" and "learn GTM for software products", which makes me think that you are done with your pilots proven that your product solves the problem much better than all the other solutions out there.

These two questions are very different. The first one is about validating if the problem is big enough for the person you are talking to. The second one is about communication and growth.

Thanks for the comment. I don't have PMF yet. I have a couple of paid customers but that's all there is. I don't see new sign up or response from people when I reach out to them over email or LinkedIn. Hence the question around long-term deals or rewards.

I think that in every market there is opportunity for a new market entrant and you can get a few customers just by biting at the statistical distribution. Moving from that beachhead will be the real challenge. You might do everything right and still not gain any ground. I don't believe there is a way to predict just how much ground you will gain because the market itself is always moving. So, the only way to find out is to start fighting. A couple of points from personal experience with SaaS:

* Your first customer will not be representative of your future customers. The adoption curve dictates that you have to start with mavericks and early adopters of whom there are few in the world. In the beginning, I tried everything and persevered despite the rate of closing a sale was very low. Physically going door to door, reaching out to people one by one on Twitter and Instagram. People would typically laugh and try to get me out of their business as quickly as possible but at least I got to see how their business operated from the inside and adapted the pitch based on what I learned. Eventually, I honed in on a few things that I should say and minded many things that I had to avoid saying in order to keep the conversation going.

* Word of mouth starts to spread little by little. When you get to this stage, you passed the first stage. At this point, it's time to figure out what exactly people are saying to other people about your product that they like. Then, incorporate this in to your sales pitch and marketing.

* Know your strengths and weaknesses. If you are not strong in one area (e.g. sales) it is not an excuse to wait until someone closes the sale for you. You just have to work harder on it and figure out what you can do better each time. Conversely, if you are great at something, do not be tempted to use that skill to fix every challenge. The old "when you have a hammer everything is a nail". No matter how difficult things get, it's always helpful to go on a walk and figure out if you are assessing each challenge objectively or letting your passion or emotion drive the decision making.

* Fire customers. Raise prices. Customers associate low price with low quality. Ask yourself if that is your business. It may be useful to set a low price early on just to get someone on board but do not linger in that chasm of misery. In the valley of bargain bin hunters you will get some pathologically bad customers who will drag you down with with them. I think that as soon as you reach "word of mouth" you should start to raise prices.

I think these are universally applicable to any market because it's standard "landing on the beach" procedure for a startup. The stage after will depend on how far up the beach you make it.

The cold emails that are effective in getting the attention of my small business promise me some $25-100 gift card to Starbucks/Amazon in exchange for going through their sales demo.

Now that's pricey for them, but I'd bet the conversion rate there is a lot better than traditional click advertising.

Craigslist can work well for posting $items. Many listings offer gift cards and stuff for trying something out - but that’s oriented towards b2c. B2b probably requires more networking and marketing/ads. But keeping it local is a good way to start

What is it?

Maybe the market doesn't care about quality. Maybe the value isn't real.

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