How long did it take to build up a customer base for your business?

[tranguyen]

Hey everyone 👋

When you are starting a new venture, it can take a while before you get your first customer and build up a community of customers around your business. And the work doesn’t stop after those early days either. 

Inspired by @Committed's question on how to attract more clients to their business, we’d love to know:

How long did it take to build up a customer base for your business?

What did you do to source them and how did you feel when you got your first yes or that first sale? Share with us below!

[eatunicookies]

Yes, of course! Our focus on going into this thing was to have something to leverage a platform for community. In further reaches of our business, we'd like to explore and experiment with mentorships and charitable collaborations, so pop-ups and markets have been a great way to advertise, do F2F marketing, and meet so many people from all walks of life.

What about yourself? Are any boots on the ground?

[maxpete]

That's awesome! My wife runs a business and she does do some pop-ups and craft markets throughout the year. It definitely is a great way to build community! She's been leaning into workshops too which has been fun too.

[Angiesbeauty]

I took me approximately 6 months to have a consistent customer base with returning clients as well. The first few months were definitely tough.

[maxpete]

Hope it's going more smoothly now! Agreed, the first few months can be brutal.

[cocoabella1]

Hello community, it took me about two to three years to have a solid customer base where I didn't have to look for income anywhere else. Instagram had just introduced itself, so I took full advantage. I was able to open up my salon about two years later.

[maxpete]

That's great to hear! Is IG your biggest driver of customers now?

[Cmamboman1914]

if you have a unique product 1-2 yrs.....if your business is just another business then it could take longer.

[Editide]

We started our editing business in 2001, offering services to the world through email. For the first two years, we collected email addresses from university websites (our target market) and sent out as many as 100 cold email messages a day. We also have a rudimentary website, but I doubt it factors much in our new-customer acquisition. We have done no marketing since about 2004, but we do have relationships with a few university writing centers and dissertation coaches, who refer about 20% of our clients to us. Since the beginning, many of our clients have come to us to edit their dissertations, and we never hear from them again. However, each year, a few move into academia professionally and continue to use our services for grants and articles. In this way, our returning clientele has slowly grown to about 30% of our business.

[eatunicookies]

Have you considered increasing your leads through organic posting. Similar to what you do with the cold outreach email, so you'll turn each email into a video. 

Creating 5 messages for the same content. 

Unless an academic is continuing their education your churn will continue to be high.

[Editide]

I'm not sure what you mean by "organic posting," but I assume it is some sort of social media activity. I've never ad any interest in social media, so we have not used it. However, I expect it would have been valuable; had we needed it, I would have gotten into it.

Yes, the churn is fairly high, but we found that the word of mouth was phenomenal. Many of our clients learned of our services through discussion lists at the various universities where we had other clients.

[eatunicookies]

Having that university tie-in sounds like a great lead magnet.

Yes, I was referring to YouTube because it becomes a repetitive lead magnet as well. The others, so-so

[Fairestcape]

I tend to agree with you regarding Social Media... People who waste their lives watching cats doing backward flips, or looking at a photo of what some stranger just had for lunch, are usually people who have little money to spend. We focus (95%) on business customers - people who need a problem solved and are prepared to pay for it. Active business people do not waste time on Social Media - they get on with doing productive work (and usually on a laptop or desktop).

Furthermore - the point of a website is to make money (profits - not sales) and many businesses put too much time into Social Media content. My business is NOT here to "entertain" - it is to get sales and make profits. And when someone visits one of our sites the ONLY WAY we want them to leave is through the checkout page. So many webshops pepper their pages with outbound links to their Social Media presence - and in around 80% of cases, when a person leaves a website, they are unlikely to return (Forrester Research determined this many years ago).

If a company has a social media presence, then this MUST serve as funnelling to the place where sales are made. Links FROM social media TO the eCommerce facility... never the other way around.

[jarvishelps]

Hey! I would mostly agree with this except one case. People that take the time to generate good content on social media will get paid by the social media outlet (Meta, TikTok, Youtube, etc). There are a lot of people out there who have ecommerce stores but the income from that can be quickly outweighed by the money they make from a strong social media presence. Plus, the money made from social media only costs them their time to make content so while its not as passive as a properly outsourced ecommerce store might be, it does have a very large profit margin. Plus once a video is posted, it never goes away. I follow a Youtube streamer who has had his channel for over 10 years and I'm watching videos he made 10-12 years ago. So he took the time to make that video once, and its been generating money for him for over a decade without him having to do anything else to it. So yes, while I agree that in most cases its important for people to stay on your website in order to generate revenue, I'd have to disagree with that in the case where someone is a great content creator, because if that person leaves their website and ends up following their social media page instead then that follow could end up generating revenue for years to come. 

[Fairestcape]

For every person making good income from Social Media, there are hundreds of thousands who barely scratch out an existence. Sure... the tiny minority who make a living will happily tell you so, but you never hear from the masses who eke out pennies. The VERY tiny minority who make good money are generally savvy business people who tend to succeed at most ventures. But even here, the time, energy, expertise and effort in running a profitable social media venture (eg: Youtube channel) is no different from running any business. "Mr Beast" has made millions from his Social Media ventures - but he spends millions doing so, and is known to work 20-hours a day for weeks at a time.

Note: There's only one "Mr Beast"... everyone else is a wannabe.

[BernardTerrellC]

It took about 5 years to really build a consistent customer base. But when the pandemic hit, we lost a nice amount. Now we are back up and beyond. Just have patience and be consisitent. 

[maxpete]

Glad to hear that things are back up! Totally agree on patience and persistence too. 

[Fairestcape]

Yes... the ridiculous shut-downs during the pandemic forced thousands out of business - some had been successful businesses for decades. One lesson we learned was to find different ways of meeting customers' needs - including delivery to doorstep (for local customers) and in the case of long-standing corporate customers, we offered to let them pay over an extended period to ease the sudden impact on their cashflows. Nearly all of them survived, and show their loyalty to us by sticking with us. Yes... it was a risk to stagger payments, but everyone was facing risks back then so we weren't any more special than anybody else. It has paid off. Our major customers not only come back for more of the same products, but often involve us in developing new ones to meet their needs.

[jarvishelps]

I'm two years into my digital marketing business at www.jarvishelps.com with probably 13 recurring clients that book on a monthly basis. My customer database on Square has about 50 customers in total that I've done one time projects for or work for not on a regular basis. 

[maxpete]

These are great numbers!

[eatunicookies]

Have you done any winback outreach to those one-time customers? Introduce your new services?

[jarvishelps]

Hey there!

I have not actually. My recurring clients keep me pretty busy but I'm thinking of hiring an assistant once I have more. Do you have recommendations on a winback outreach?