No.1 Customer acquisition strategy for new startups in crowded markets

On the path to Product Market Fit

Hey everybody, my name is Guillermo Flor and on this article of the Product Market Fit Newsletter I want to talk about how to find customers even when the market is already very crowded and most companies are already using a solution.

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How to get customers in a crowded market as a new startup

Picture this: you are a founder building a new CRM and start trying to sell.

After several weeks you realize that most companies that you reach out to already are using a CRM or a substitute for it.

You start researching your competition and this is how it looks:

What next?

Option 1: You try stealing customers from your pre-existing competitors

Don’t hate me for this, I’ve also been there. I’ve struggled finding customers because every company in my pipeline that I was targeting already had my competitor’s solution. What was I doing wrong?

⚠️ Don’t ignore Consumer Inertia: super important for B2B but also for B2C

Humans, by nature, are creatures of habit. We get used to a way of doing things and after some time it is super hard to change, even impossible.

This is why you can still see people using Yahoo or AOL for email, using the same operating system like Windows 7 (and not wanting to update it) or even using paper still because they aren’t comfortable with computers.

With every change, comes a great resistance, so don’t underestimate it. It will kill your company.

Convincing customers to change their behaviors takes a great, superior product and huge marketing effort, and still you’ll be able to only convince the early adopters, not ideal…

So, don’t do it! You have another option👇

✔️Target behavioral change - target companies that are looking for a change

This might sound super logical/basic now, it is and yet, I don’t see so many founders acknowledge it and build a strategy around it.

So, the idea is: rather than focusing on convincing entrenched customers to switch, look for people/companies actively changing their behaviors

How to find customers looking to change their behavior

People and organizations tend to be more open to new products/services during natural changes times:

1. B2C

People moving to a new city, starting a new job, enrolling in a new university, getting married, buying a home, becoming a parent, getting retired, etc.

2. B2B

Companies that have just raised capital, that are entering a new market, that have just acquired a new business, that are growing really fast, etc.

💰 Premium: how to find the companies/people in a transition moment and multiple examples B2B & B2C