• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

WittySparks

Ignite Your Thoughts

  • Topics
    • Technology
    • Business
    • Marketing
    • Education
    • Healthcare
    • Travel & Tourism
    • Entertainment
    • Guides
    • Tutorials
  • Reviews
  • Newsletter
  • Contact Us

Growth Strategies to Attain One Million Customers

The path from zero to a million customers can be a difficult and unpredictable journey. Hitting the one million mark is a big deal no matter what your market segment. It is even more significant for B2B products and services that might not have the sizzle of a sexy consumer offering or as broad of an audience.

At the same time, you don’t need excessive resources and an endless well of cash. You just need to make the effort, build the connection, and reach out to customers, influencers, and your team and find the growth strategies that can really accelerate your growth. As your startup works to build a product and a company that will last, here are the strategies for getting to your first million – and beyond.

Facebook, now a billion-user behemoth, hit the milestone in 10 months. Pocket, which lets you save web articles to read later, hit 20 million users when it had just 20 employees. Live-video streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope (now part of the Twitter nest) zipped to the million mark quickly after breaking out at SXSW 2015.

Table of Contents

  • The First Thousand Customers
  • Earning Loyal Customers
  • Create Exclusivity
  • New Growth Channels

The First Thousand Customers

In the early stages, it is better to gain a thousand customers who love you than a million who don’t like you enough to stick around. Word-of-mouth is extremely valuable and will help drive new customer acquisition. Get to know your customers, talk to them, and establish a feedback loop. Start measuring early. How do you put a yardstick on customer love? Net Promoter scores, surveys, reviews, and other tools can help.

At fashion marketplace Poshmark, co-founder Tracy Sun Tu says she personally recruited the first 500 fashion bloggers who she knew would be critical for the social component of the site.

Earning Loyal Customers

Your customers are the best soldiers in your marketing army: The best-case scenario is that your product has a viral loop – think about how LinkedIn and Facebook members refer others to the site as they build out their own connections. With a viral loop, when you drive more usage from your current customer base, you drive more new customer acquisition. DocuSign’s viral loop is an organic part of the product: sending documents to others to sign using DocuSign introduces tens of thousands of new users to DocuSign every day.

Customer Connections – Identify your advocates and develop clear strategies to help them spread the word for you. Intuit co-founder Scott Cook famously said, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.” Intuit leverages accountants as brand ambassadors, enabling and encouraging them to connect small businesses with QuickBooks in a personal way.

Create Exclusivity

Everyone enjoys being a VIP – Someone who is in the inner circle and has something that no one else has. Smart businesses use this feeling to their advantage, as a reward to encourage the first trove of users to sign up. Pinterest, Spotify, Facebook were initially invited only and that only made them more attractive. It generated amazing amounts of buzz. People wanted in. They wanted to be part of the privileged few.

About.me used Exclusively to create a sense of scarcity and urgency. About Me experienced an amazing reaction as they gained 400,000 users within a few months of launching. People clamored to ensure they got their own URL before anyone else. The hype said, “act now or miss out”…. and users acted! Does your product have a scarce aspect that benefits users on a first-come, first-serve basis? If not, can you craft one?

Digital Solutions for Bigger Growth of Small Business
Digital Solutions for Bigger Growth of Small Business

New Growth Channels

Don’t be afraid to invest time and money in customer acquisition. Understand these costs and plan wisely so you don’t blow your budget. Here are a few tactics and strategies:

Referral and affiliate programs – customers giving away discount codes to friends – have helped fuel tremendous growth for companies like Lyft and Uber. Essentially, you’re giving people incentives to refer others to become your customers and use your product more.

Business Development Relationships – Business development partnerships can be very valuable in driving exposure and new user acquisition – Pocket, for instance, is available on 500 apps. But proceed with care as business development partnerships can drain time and development resources, particularly if you’re trying to partner with a behemoth.

While some lucky startups sprint to a million users, for most the climb to the million milestones is a marathon. What’s important is to build a strong foundation that will help as you scale. Test, measure, and iterate to determine the best approach for your product and your customers. Importantly, the strategies that make the companies successful starting out will not necessarily take them to the next level.

Related Articles

  • How Covid-19 Boosting Web App Development Companies Growth?
  • 10 Ways to Boost Your Business
  • Things you must do to grow your Business

October 30, 2017 by Fabiha Siddiqui Tagged With: Growth Strategies

Previous Post: « 3D and 4D Technology: A Billion Dollar Market
Next Post: 7 Ridiculously Mind-blowing Ways to Celebrate Christmas This Year »

Primary Sidebar

Search

Recently Published

  • Most Effective 2021 Marketing Tactics for MLM Business
  • 9 ways to deal with the pressure of college and part-time work
  • Yoga for Constipation: Channelising the Power of Asanas
  • 20 Actionable Email Marketing Tips To Boost Your Results
  • Art Print makes Your Life Colourful

Random Reads

YouTube Subscribe Button Configuration

Subscribe Button Guide – Effortless method to attach the YouTube Subscribe Button manually

Are you looking to increase your social media followers? All you need is to do is add the YouTube subscribe button on your website.

Data Science and its impact on career and business

How Data Science Can Add Value to Your Career and Business

Data science takes an analytical approach to raw numbers, facts, and statistics, and transforms it into solutions that address organisational problems.

The Amazing Christmas window display at Harrods – A mix of Fashion and Fairytale!

The London department store located in Knightsbridge, Harrods is ushering in Christmas in the most fantastical fashion. The department store known for its reputation for wealth, glamor, and opulence has unveiled its extravagant Christmas window display on November 1st featuring a Disney-princess theme.

Mobile Vendor - Payment methods

Ways To Get Paid as a Mobile Vendor

Especially if you take your business on the road, it can be difficult figuring out how to get paid. But, thanks to new technology and payment methods, freelancers and mobile vendors now have more options.

Footer

Search

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Affiliate Disclosure