If you are building a business from the ground up, you have to find your first customer. You know the market, you’ve conceived a solution, and you’ve even started building prototypes.
The race is on. Who’s the first person who’s going to pay you? All your efforts should be focused on this important milestone. After all, if you don’t find your first customer quickly, then you may never get your business off the ground.
- Investor / Angel / Patron / VC
- Customers / Users / Community
These are two very different audiences, and the best young businesses are really clear about whom they are trying to serve. It’s hard to serve both at the same time, and many entrepreneurs struggle to find that balance. But whom do you serve first? It makes a huge difference in planning your content strategy.
Let’s look at a couple of cases.
CASE 1: Funding Source as Customer
Suppose that your product is going to require money up front. It might be a physical product or require specialized expertise. Either way, let’s assume that it’s expensive to build and beyond your ability to bootstrap. In this case, your first customer is very clear. You need a funding source.
How does this inform your content strategy? You need to speak to this audience, in clear terms, about why your solution is worth the investment. Keep in mind, they are not interested in paying you. They are not interested in employing you. They are making a bet on your idea, and that you are the person (or team) to execute on it. This is not employment; this is an investment.
They are clearing the space for you to go after this idea and make it a reality. They don’t want a long term commitment. As soon as the check is cleared, the clock is ticking. What will run out first, your time or money?
You probably think of this as a means to an end. Get some money, build your product, and then get to work solving a problem for your “real” customers. All that is true. But let’s be clear—if an outside funding source is your first customer, their story has to be a good one whether you succeed or fail. Think about that for a second. Even if you fail, a venture capitalist needs to be able to tell a good story about why he made a bet on you. That’s not going to be about your product—it’s going to be about the story around you, your product, and your business.
CASE 2: User Community as Customer
Suppose that your product “proves itself” with a large user community. You may see this as a means to an end, too. Offer the product for free, build a huge user base, and then use that as a platform to make a pitch for some outside money.
Customers pay you to solve a problem for them. They can pay in money, attention, or social capital. Each of these things has value. For some businesses, it’s a one-time transaction. For others, there’s a long-term relationship. But in either case, it’s a transaction.
What do you do to earn that transaction? You have to build up trust, and trust starts with a story. That story has to be genuine. It has to have the customer at the center—not you. If it’s about you, it will fail. People join a community for a variety of reasons, but not one of those reasons is to support you and your dream. Don’t mistake encouragement from your circle of friends for the start of your community.
That means that your product has to provide distinct value for your users. It has to solve an unmet need, in a way that’s different from other similar solutions. It doesn’t matter whether you think your product is exceptional. If your users 1) don’t believe your story, and 2) can’t articulate your story to others easily, then you are going to have trouble drawing people in.
Your content strategy in this case is not so much about what you do, but more about how and why you do it. Your story should be focused on that. Stop selling and start solving issues. If done with a generous intent, you customers will do the selling for you. And they will be better at it than you can ever be.
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This piece is a part of a series called Content Strategy for Entrepreneurs. If you need specific help in building a content strategy for your business, please see http://michaelboezi.com/entrepreneurs.
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