Tapping into early adopters could help sustain a brand and build a strong foundation to prepare for its rocky future in regards to investments.
It is pivotal for any startup to establish themselves amongst their early adopters. However, if the marketing strategy geared towards achieving this is the same as that of the majority of customers, then it is likely to collapse. There is a gradual process of identifying early adopters, preparing the pitch for business ideas, and finally reaching out to them.
Who are Early Adopters?
Early adopters are a defining crowd for any startup or innovation technology as they determine the success or failure that any product is likely to embark on. After the innovators, they are the first customers, investors, and reviewers of a product before it hits the mainstream audience. They are identified by a strong financial background, social reach, and cultural capital. These early adopters provide startups with necessary feedback that helps identify compelling issues and allows for the owners to reflect on or resolve them. They further use their social capital to create a buzz around the product through their networking.
Strategizing Pitch For Early Adopters
While pitching to early adopters, it is important to remember they exist in a niche and don’t respond well to mainstream advertising. Therefore, the pitch for the early adopters needs to be filtered and specially tapered towards their experiences or problems in order to grab their attention. In addition, the solutions to their problems and concerns need a voice in the proposal. This should also entail the details of the exclusive pre-release of the product to pique their interests.
How to Reach Early Adopters?
Connecting With Social Media Communities: One of the best ways of identifying your user base is knowing your target audience and finding them in the social networking communities like subreddits or Facebook groups, amongst other web platforms. The basic rules apply here, which involves adhering to the community guidelines. The fundamental approach forbids direct advertisement of any kind.
Leveraging Your Professional Network: The first 10-20 customers for any startup would be the ones closest to the owners or entrepreneurs. After that, however, early adopters are decided on a bigger scale and require a bigger network of people. To engage potential customers, one must not leave any stone unturned in sifting through their professional connections in LinkedIn or other platforms.
Cold Emails/ Calls: This might be a tedious process involving finding out an interested target audience, collecting the list of their contacts, and sending them cold emails and calls. These emails and calls should carry clear and concise information about the product and its purpose. They shouldn’t sound like a sales pitch meant as a clickbait to entice the customer into buying something. The framed message should be research-oriented and might be sent twice or thrice for a response.
A 2016 study on the role of early adopters in the tech sphere using Twitter to influence people’s decision-making on major tech products. The study states that 46% of Twitter users agree that the platform played a valuable role in recent purchases. Early adopters are attracted to niche, small-scale innovative launches that are yet to become a part of mass culture. Entrepreneurs need to tap into this mindset of the early adopters and exploit their potential to promote, marketing, and refine their products and services.
