Playbooks · 17
How to get your first 10 customers, one play at a time.
Each playbook is a short, practical guide: when to use it, the steps, a template you can fill in, and how to know it worked. FirstTen picks the right ones for your business.
- Content
Turn rivals’ worst reviews into a comparison page
Buyers who are leaving a competitor search for alternatives. Meet them with an honest side-by-side.
- AI search
Write the answer page AI assistants cite
Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude what to use. Give them a page worth quoting.
- Communities
Reply first where buyers complain
Every week someone describes your buyer’s pain in public. Be the most helpful reply.
- Communities
Become useful in one community before you post
Pick one place your buyers gather and earn the right to share your work there.
- Social
Catch people asking for what you sell
Set up alerts for the phrases buyers use when they are ready to look, and answer fast.
- Social
Join the post that is already getting attention
When a post about your buyer’s problem takes off, add the most useful comment under it.
- Outbound
Write to 20 hand-picked buyers
Twenty personal emails to people who clearly have the problem beat a thousand templated ones.
- Product-led
Offer free 15-minute fix-it calls
Solve one real problem live. The best first customers come from people you helped.
- Partnerships
Pitch the podcasts your buyers already hear
Small niche shows need guests and reach exactly your buyer.
- Partnerships
Get featured in a niche newsletter
One mention in the newsletter your buyer trusts can bring your first ten users.
- Partnerships
Ride a bigger product’s marketplace
If you integrate with a platform your buyers use, its app directory is a free storefront.
- Product-led
Build the small free tool buyers search for
A calculator, checker or generator that solves one step of the problem, for free.
- Referrals
Give first users a reason to invite one more
Your happiest early users know others like them. Make inviting natural and worth it.
- Product-led
Three emails that turn signups into customers
Most early signups never get value. A short, personal sequence fixes that.
- Content
List where buyers browse alternatives
Buyers compare options on directories and review sites. Be there with a complete profile.
- Paid
Own the search term competitors forgot
A small, precise search campaign on high-intent terms nobody is bidding on.
- Events
Host a tiny, useful live session
Thirty minutes teaching one thing your buyer needs, with ten people, beats a big webinar.
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