Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is a great way to test your idea and validate your assumptions before investing too much time and money into your startup. But how do you get early adopters for your MVP? How do you find and attract the people who are willing to try your product, give you feedback, and spread the word? Here are some tips to help you get early adopters for your MVP.
Before you start looking for early adopters, you need to have a clear idea of who your ideal customer is. Who are they, what are their problems, what are their goals, and how can your product help them? You can use tools like customer personas, surveys, interviews, or online research to understand your target audience better. This will help you tailor your MVP to their needs and preferences, and also narrow down your search for early adopters.
Early Adopters buy technology for very different reasons than the main market. They have innovative visions that involves assembling components that they’ve built and they acquire from third parties. With that frame of reference, it’s about vision alignment first and foremost, then showing how your MVP is the missing piece. When deploying with the Early Adopter, it’s critical that you fight for metrics and proof points that you will need for the Early Majority market. The Early Adopter will diminish the need for these as not being relevant to them, but be steadfast. You need to tell an outcomes-based story to win the Main Street market.
Should your MVP exist today, catalogue its features, branding, sales avenues via region, on & offline. Ensure your MVP contains strong margins, upsells in features, options for freemium vs paid services add ons. Discovery research may aid decision making, ultimatley its what are you solving today that doesnt exist vs is it actually required, are you saving time and money after purchasing it.
Your value proposition is the core message that explains why your product is different and better than the alternatives. It should communicate the benefits and outcomes that your product delivers, not just the features and functions. You need to validate your value proposition with your target audience, and make sure that it resonates with them and addresses their pain points. You can use methods like landing pages, email campaigns, social media posts, or online ads to test your value proposition and measure the response rate.
Keep that propersition short and simple, avoiding text with images, opt for a less is more approach. Stand out while providing an engaging campaign traversing prospects to website / basket.
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to get early adopters for your MVP is to leverage your existing network. You can reach out to your friends, family, colleagues, contacts, or followers who might be interested in your product or know someone who is. You can ask them to sign up for your MVP, give you feedback, or refer you to others. You can also use platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit to connect with relevant groups, communities, or influencers who share your target audience's interests and problems.
Agree, perpetual momentum is king, avoid single sufference posts have your adopters broadcast regularly. Produce a calendar guiding people through posts date, which platofrm and help with case studies.
Another way to get early adopters for your MVP is to offer them incentives and rewards for trying your product, giving you feedback, or spreading the word. You can use strategies like discounts, free trials, coupons, bonuses, referrals, or gamification to motivate and engage your early adopters. You can also use social proof, testimonials, or case studies to showcase the value and results that your product provides, and build trust and credibility with your potential early adopters.
Add in beta trails and pre launch discounts, boost traction via refferal schemes, tailor discounts around seasonal gifting and paydays.
The main purpose of getting early adopters for your MVP is to collect and act on their feedback. You need to listen to what they have to say about your product, what they like, what they don't like, what they need, and what they want. You need to use tools like surveys, reviews, ratings, comments, or analytics to gather and analyze their feedback. You also need to act on their feedback, and make improvements, changes, or updates to your product based on their input. This will help you create a better product, satisfy your early adopters, and attract more customers.
It is important for a startup to set the tone - "we'd love to hear what you have to say about our product." This not only provide quality information to iterate the product but also creates a sense of community between the startup and its users. It decreases the need for extensive quantitative research and increases word of mouth.
Early alterations pre mass adoption, increase your value propersition and smoothen out any gremlins before the outspoken knock down your MVP.
I love to use basic landing pages that can do split a/b testing for MVPs. With a good landing page, you can test anything. The best part is how easy it is to incorporate feedback into new tests and keep iterating. The feedback cycle is only constrained by the number of users you can get top of funnel.
This article seems very geared towards software which is great but physical products will cost more to produce and make. If you’re inventing a new product to go to market, it will cost even more so you have to move quicker and with less information which then increases the risk profile. Once you understand that, you can start creating a plan to deliver product within the boundaries you create to receive customer feedback so you can make tweaks while keeping your finger on the pulse with the resources you have to hand. Lastly, a big consideration is that your tweaks can not move outside of what is possible to scale. You have to balance resource management, scalability of the idea and most importantly the customer feedback.
As we are in the process of creating a new SaaS Application, I couldn't agree more. Everyone wants the pretty first, and you need the proof of concept first. I'll disagree with Matt that Physical products are not that expensive when you look at the big picture. Creating a proof of concept physical product like a new sprinkler for instance is way less expensive than producing 50,000 of them to find out no one wants them. Service can be the same way. We started our first company installing telephone jacks, then flat screen TV's. Eventually growing into a full service Network engineering company. If you are bootstrapping a business, starting with the MVP is the only way to go. If you have millions of OPM, then go to town.
It’s easy to say that they do not cost much in the grand scheme but when you’re starting from zero, the cost does matter. Patrick and I tried to start a sports bottle brand when we were 19 and after a lot of effort we found that we would need to spend ￡50k to get some prototypes created. The idea didn’t make it off the ground even to a point of gaining customer feedback because the initial outlay to try the idea cost too much. Yes, it depends on the product but when you are physically creating things, not simply reselling, it’s costs more and you have to be ready for that.