When you first start a company, the folks who purchase first will most likely be your friends and family. This experience is both embarrassing and endearing. They want to see you win. It’s like your mom putting your drawings on the fridge. These folks are your grassroots team.
Hopefully, your project survives long enough to make real customers—ideally, ones who don’t know you personally.
For the bootstrapped brand, the experience these customers have with you is critically important. If they have a good experience, they’ll support you. If they have a bad experience, they’ll tell everyone they know, especially you. What new customers think of you is important because this is your street team.
A couple of years back, I wasted a five-figure dollar amount on an influencer program. The agency that executed this program yielded little to no user-generated content [UGC]. I hired the wrong people.
In this program, we gave away hundreds of items. Though I quickly learned that giving product away makes you friends, not customers.
If they want your product solely because it’s free, then they don’t really want your product.
Chomp’s most loyal customers own fifteen or more t-shirts. I saw a video of a guy who has purchased 30 different Chomp tees.
While Chomp has a team of athletes on our flow program [free product], these folks only add context to the brand. They are surfers, lifeguards, skaters, and one super-funny MMA practitioner.
I don’t know how much traffic these athletes drive because I don’t care. I like them and they like us. They were Chomp customers and now they’re our influencers.
My advice to bootstrapped brand founders is to care immensely about your customers and their needs. They are the best marketing you can get.