Software as a Service is an amazing opportunity. Consumers get to purchase software for a fraction of the usual cost with no upfront payment or commitment. Producers can sell to a global market and aggregrate thousands of customers. The difficulty for producers is acquiring those customers. Here are the first three steps:
The first challenge is getting customer number one. This is difficult because you have to first build a product; an expensive proposition, even with free software and agile development.
The second challenge is getting the first ten customers. This requires a real belief in your service and a willingness to be a salesman and evangelist for your product. It also starts the process of customer feedback. Every customer wants to steer the product road map in their preferred direction. Giving consideration to this feedback and keeping everybody happy is tough.
After the first ten or twenty customers are onboard a few champions emerge, confidence rises and preparation for step three begins: bringing in 100 customers, most of whom you don’t know. This is the great internet marketing challenge where SEO, organic listings, twitter, linkedin and possibly even blogs like this start to kick in. If you’re interested in being one of our customers number 10 to 100 and you’re reading this please let me know or sign up here – assemblypoint.com/signup
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by frankiep: Local observations from @JohnDennehy on challenges of building a userbase: http://bit.ly/4BpOPg…