Just got my first customer!

Hello mnoah and thank you for your comment.

What were some of the different ways you used to attract your first customer/potential customers?

I wasn't completely honest when I created this post. My first customer was my barber. The idea for my product spurred from a struggle my barber had. Everyday he was sending SMS reminders for his next-day appointments. Hence, I thought why not automate that for him? After discussion with him, he liked the idea - I created the product and he became my first customer. However, he is not a paid customer, yet. The reason is that although he is interested and I even have him onboard, in his own words, "I am busy and need to find some time to input my customers first". I provided him with solutions, but seems like he is struggling with something - i will find out at some point.

My first real (paying) customer was the one this post was referring to, and it was a woman who has a beauty salon. The way I got to her? I asked around for people who are in the audience I am targeting - in this case, appointment-based businesses. And a friend of mine gave me the phone number of his cousin.

I called her, I said if its alright to talk about something that will help her be more productive and worry less. She said sure. And from there my target was to get her interested and move to human contact - make a demo.

If you get a prospect at the demo phase, it's even easier to "close" because you have someone who is interested in what you are selling, he/she just have to be leaned towards paying.

I tried social media messaging with no success to get them to do a demo (even though some said they are interested and I have something interesting). From my cold-calling, out of 10 calls I have one who is interested in moving to the demo phase. Not sure if its good enough as I haven't called a lot of people yet but seems to be a market for it.

Incidentally, the two demos I have today - are from my barber who referred them to me. So there is that as well.

Demographics-wise, what I am doing is not something original, and these type of products are all over the internet BUT in my country there is a gap as most businesses write their appointments in diaries and/or google calendar so I have a chance.

After I get feedback and build the product according to the needs of my customers, I will expand in other countries and see how it goes.

I have been doing cold emails with very little (zero) success.

close.io has a nice email-guide on cold emailing but in my case I wanted to start small and local - I might not even cold-email as my audience at least here in Cyprus do not use email much. Cold emailing works for people who actually use email in their everyday life and from my experience - cold email does not work in my niche.

Also cold email is mostly for CEO, high-level executives in my opinion, you can get more from cold-calling or in-person meetings but I again it depends on what is your target audience and demographics.

I wish you luck.

I thank you aminmemon :)