Acquiring the first customers for a startup is challenging, especially in the B2B market, where you need to convince multiple stakeholders to close larger deals.
Starting a new business can feel like moving a mountain. Having gone through this journey and helped several early-stage startups, including Deep Neuron Lab, Kanō, and CarFellows, to win their first customers, we understand the challenges founders face.
Therefore, I’m sharing my experience and what worked for me to help you in your journey.
Get results without a network or funding
Utilizing your network is the most effective way to win your first customers. However, many founders don’t have such a network or are unfamiliar with the appropriate decision-makers.
As a result, the only option left is to acquire your first clients the traditional way: by engaging in conversations, building trust, and closing the deal.
Additionally, in today’s world, early-stage startups have smaller budgets and fewer investments.
This means you must acquire your first pilot customers by yourself and cannot rely on outsourcing work to a PR or lead agency. Paid advertising is not an option, and investing in an AAA website and marketing material is not feasible.
You must make every penny count.
However, the good news is that by going through this process and personally talking to your prospects, you will acquire valuable learnings that will make growing your startup easier.
The traditional process works, it’s just hard
The process may seem simple, but it can be challenging. The first step is to initiate conversations with potential buyers and build trust. Once you’ve established rapport, you can close the deal.
Your website is a crucial asset in this process. We have helped many startups use their website to gain traction and win their first customers.
It’s a valuable tool for starting conversations, building trust with potential buyers, and closing deals more efficiently.
Leverage your website to make your life easier
The initial and most critical step in developing your website is to determine its goals. What are your objectives?
For your early-stage startup, it’s generating more conversations and establishing trust throughout the sales process.
By concentrating solely on these two objectives, you can streamline your efforts and achieve better outcomes.
This approach leads to quicker implementation and reduced costs as opposed to attempting to do everything at the outset.
Build with assumptions in mind
When creating a website, it must be tailored to your ideal customer profile’s (ICP) specific goals, challenges, dreams, and fears. By understanding these critical aspects of your ICP, you can formulate your content to address their needs.
Your initial understanding of your ICP is based on assumptions. That’s okay, because as you engage in more conversations with them, you will learn and refine your understanding of their needs.
By tailoring your website to your ICP, you’re more likely to attract and retain their attention. Furthermore, you increase the likelihood of converting them into customers.
Use a proven content structure
If you’re looking to attract your first customers to your website, consider using these five pages for an effective page structure:
- Home
- About us
- Contact
- Imprint
- Data privacy
Using this simple page structure, you can create a website that is easy to navigate and understand while providing the essential information that your visitors need to become your first customers.
1. Home
- Hero: This section of your website is the first thing that visitors will see when they land on your website. It should be visually striking and grab the attention of the visitor. Spend 80% of your efforts here, as it’s the most important part of your website, making sure your visitors will be curious to explore more.
- Benefits: This section explains how your solution can help your target audience. It should highlight the key pain points that your product or service addresses and how it can make their lives easier.
- Product: This section describes the key features of your product or service. It should also include any relevant images that showcase your product.
- CTA: This section ask your visitors to get in touch with your company. It should be prominently displayed on your website and encourage visitors to take action.
- Trust: This section aims to build trust with your visitors. It can include logos of trusted partners, customer testimonials, case studies, or certifications.
- About: This section provides a brief overview of the founders or team behind your product or service. It should highlight your background and expertise.
- Contact form: This is an opportunity for visitors to get in touch with you directly. It should be easy to find on your website and should include fields for visitors to fill in their name, email address, and message.
2. About us
- Intro: This section provides a short summary that introduces your startup and its mission.
- Vision: This section outlines the long-term goals and aspirations of your company.
- Team: Here, you can introduce the key members of your team and their backgrounds and expertise.
- Partners: This section highlights any companies that have invested in your startup, given you grants, or recognized your work.
3. Contact
- Intro: This section provides a brief message that explains why a visitor should contact you.
- Contact form: This is a form where visitors can fill out their details and send a message directly to you. It should be easy to use and should include fields for visitors to fill in their name, email address, and message.
4. Imprint
- From experience, prospects check the imprint more often than not. This page is used to display important legal information. It is important to ensure that this information is accurate and up-to-date.
- You can use a free imprint generator like eRecht24 Impressum-Generator to create this section. This can help to ensure that your imprint is legally compliant and up-to-date.
5. Data privacy
- This section is important to ensure that your website is GDPR compliant and that you are taking appropriate measures to protect the privacy of your visitors and customers.
- You can use a free data-privacy generator like eRecht24 Datenschutz-Generator to create this section. This can help to ensure that your data privacy policy is legally compliant and up-to-date.
Design simple and functional
We have noticed that many early-stage startups often try to re-invent the wheel with their webdesign. However, we believe that using existing design patterns and conventions is the best approach to follow. This is because such design patterns are tried and tested, and are proven to be successful in creating a positive user experience.
We suggest that you should aim to keep your webdesign simple, elegant, and professional. A clean and straightforward interface can help users navigate your website with ease, and ultimately lead them to convert.
If your founding team has strong design capabilities, we highly recommended to leverage them to build trust with potential customers through polished and modern design.
A well-designed website can create a positive first impression, making it more likely for your visitors to engage with your product.
Use a flexible, easy-to-use page builder
It’s crucial to have a flexible tool for your website. As you learn and your startup grows, you’ll want to update your content frequently. Therefore, ensure your website is easy for your marketing team to edit. It’s not ideal if your marketing team needs to work with a developer every time they want to make a change.
At our company, we use WordPress in combination with Elementor. However, we have also seen Webflow and Wix work well.
Remember, your customers are not concerned about the technology you’ve used. What matters is how well you address their needs and build their trust.
Focus on creating more conversations
Your website’s primary conversion goal is to start conversations with potential customers.
The best way to do this is by using contact forms that ask for basic information like first and last names, email, and short messages. Adding more input fields can decrease your conversion rate.
You can embed a booking tool like Calendly or HubSpot Meeting Scheduler on your website to simplify things. This way, prospects can schedule meetings with you directly.
As your startup grows, you can remove the booking tool from your website and make it available only to more qualified prospects.
At the beginning stages of your startup, it’s essential to have as many conversations with potential customers as possible. Simplifying the process and using a booking tool can help you achieve this goal.
Use your website to win your first customers
Building a startup is a challenging task that demands a lot of effort. However, using your website smartly can save resources and help you win customers faster. We hope that this article will assist you in gaining your first customers for your startup.
If you want personal support in creating a website that can help you win your initial customers, you might want to reach out to us. Our mission is to help B2B startups grow faster and win more customers.