problem of finding clients – an important issue for any company, but for startups – especially important. In fact any start-up begins with the authors of their own investments in the project. Money on advertising are often there, and to attract clients is urgently needed. Denis Alaev, co-founder of geolocation service AlterEgo, formulated the 7 tips that are designed to help beginners to attract the first customers in online projects.

Communicate in thematic community

Your first clients – very interested in your service people. You have to solve their pressing problems. It is best to offer this service may be subject to the communities where people mainly come to solve a particular problem. When we launched AlterGeo, at first the service was, how-to platform for Wi-Fi navigation. So I just climbed up on the various forums on the Wi-Fi, where people were talking on Wi-Fi, how to determine the location, etc. How to choose a resource? Quite simply, if the forum or in the conferences have comments – it means life “living» and there will be people who would be interested in your service.

On time and professionally react to complaints and suggestions

From those of the first visitors / customers will come to you depends on someone else or not. For a man, it is important that it be heard, but how to convey it, via e-mail or phone, will depend on the specifics of your project. Of course I would recommend both, as in most cases the response speed is not critical and it is possible to manage e-mail message. If you have brought some damage, be sure to give compensation or discount. This is important. If there is no damage, it is enough to apologize and to promise that more is not repeated.

Be patient

Sometimes there is a feeling that the user base does not grow as fast as you thought. She almost always does not grow as fast as it wants. Certainly very slow growth says that business is something wrong. But the temptation to adjust base growth must be restrained, may be tempted to start an active newsletter users to share such as “Bring a Friend”, which are not pleasing methods. If you are properly arranged on the site, if the service is good and convenient, people will eventually do recommend it to friends and acquaintances.

Communicate personally

With your first clients try to communicate in person, especially in the beginning they will not so much. Write a letter, or even call, ask them how your service, everything is like, maybe they would like to change something or improve. People love attention and always talk about it or write a blog. The truth need not be too intrusive, as it can play a bad joke, and users of the principle will not attend your service.

Remember and advertising

Promotion of social media – a good thing and working, but advertising is still needed. Discussion in the community, SMM (Social media marketing), SMO (Social media optimization) can not distance constant stream of customers, these methods can only be a background, some early users of the kernel. For significant growth – need advertising. The main influx of people is carried out only through advertising.

Do not promise too much

If you have something to announce, or have promised, it should be 100% sure that it is able to do this. When we launched the site, many times we have announced some useful options in mobile applications, for example support for “Yandex.Maps” in the Android-version. But to improve and could not, because they always put off as low priority. We have good reason, force majeure. However, at some point we noticed that the complaints began to rise. The paradox, but: users were upset by these minor changes, which we all promised, but failed to comply with, at the service as a whole worked well.

Enter all the time for something new

This is very useful for service and for customers as it encourages them to go more often to the site, but did you have any interesting lotion? Over time it becomes a habit, and users will always enter the site. Such improvement should be planned in advance, even at the stage of project development.