a single source, nothing corroborates it
Do not plan on word of mouth for customer one
Spreading by recommendation requires a genuinely good product, enough users for the network to exist, and customers who happen to know other buyers like themselves. None of that is true at the start, so an answer to how you will find the first twenty five customers cannot be that people will tell each other or that a store listing will do it.
The method
- 01
Word of mouth cannot be your starting channel: it needs a genuinely great product, a critical mass of users you do not yet know how to reach, and customers who happen to know other buyers like themselves.
- 02
Reject word of mouth going viral, or simply listing in an app store, as an answer to how you will find your first 25 customers.
What it returned
Zue lists the chain of conditions and notes that for a one-off wedding purchase most of them do not hold.
The author's example of an unacceptable plan is launching a music app for young girls in the App Store and hoping friends' sisters spread it
Sources
- How to Get Startup Ideas: The Meat Grinder Approach - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · How will I get the first 25 customers? Then the next 250? · 2016-04-23
- The Place Card TeardownCory Zue · coryzue.com · Word of mouth · 2017-04-30
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
More in word of mouth
- Check word of mouth exists before you build8 unconnected · contested
- Turn buyers into fans instead of buying ads6 unconnected
- Show up in person where your readers are5 unconnected
- Make the second user arrive with the first5 unconnected
- Answer support as if it were the sales channel4 unconnected
- Give the hardest customers your hours4 unconnected