Early Adopters: Here’s the 411 on Your O.G. Brand Advocates

Early adopters are brand advocates of the most important kind – they’re the ones who shape the evolution of your product. The question is, how do you capture them?

Key Takeaways: 

• Early adopters are the first 20 to 200 of your buyers who are passionate about solving problems.
• Be intentional about securing early adopters – they’ll help you evolve your product through honest feedback.
• You can score early adopters by putting your brand out there and actively soliciting their involvement: join subreddits, post thoughtful blogs, and get their opinions (to start).
• Getting early adopters is so critical that you should consider working with an agency to plan how you’ll get them. 

There’s nothing easy about getting a startup to take off. Whatever your brand or product is, you can’t expect it to explode without a solid crew of early adopters to back you up. 

Early adopters aren’t quite your first buyers, but they’re pretty close. Your very first buyers are probably people you know. Beyond the first 20 buyers or so, the goal is to achieve critical mass with a solid population of buyers who are:

• Early to the party (e.g., within the first 200), and
• Invested in solving a problem (the same one your product solves). 

There’s a reason these buyers – your early adopters – are so vital to your product’s success.  

They know what they need, and they’re motivated to get it. Their investment means they’ll sing your product’s praises while also pushing you to do more. 

They see the value in your product, but they know it could be even better, and they have no qualms about telling you how. Early adopters know your product is great, and they know what they’d change to make it perfect. 

Here’s why you should care about early adopters 

We’ve got a secret for you: you can’t sell a blockbuster product without having a product-market fit. And you can’t achieve product-market fit without getting real feedback on what you’re selling. 

Sure, you want your brand to amass a fan base, but you don’t want those fans to blindly accept that your product is operating at 100% from day one. (No matter how good it is, there’s always room for it to get better.) 

Instead, you need buyers who love your vision and see its potential to get even better. 

Those are your early adopters. They see that your product is 75% of the way there, but they know what it’s missing that could close that 25% gap – and they’re more than willing to tell you. 

5 ways to score dedicated early adopters

So how do you find buyers who are so hyped about the problem you’re solving they’ll spend hours dissecting your solution to improve on it? 

They aren’t just any buyers – they’re unicorns, so you have to hunt for them. You can’t expect such a rare breed to come to you! 

The best way to bring early adopters on board with your product? Double down on your outreach. That means: 

1. Be part of their communities

The people you’re looking for are power users on communities centered around their interests and problems. You can get credibility and convince them to try your product by joining them where they’re already flocking. 

Before you launch, get on board with the communities where your potential early adopters hang out. 

There’s a subreddit, Discord channel, Slack channel, or a good old-fashioned web forum where people are passionate about solving the same problems your product addresses. Those are the places where you want to be. 

2. Join them on social media

Social networks are another way to find early adopters through the power of community. 

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram aren’t tied to any particular community, but they have plenty of ways to find members of those communities. 

That means finding and participating in: 

-Facebook and LinkedIn groups
-Instagram and Twitter hashtags
-Messenger groups 

Hint: It’s not enough to join a few Facebook groups and lurk. You have to join the power users by being one of them. Post, converse, reach out, and share. That’s how you garner influence and build connections that yield early adopters. 

3. Blog about their problems (and solutions) 

Publishing content lets you develop a reputation as someone who gives a true and honest crap about the problems your potential early adopters are facing. 

The types of buyers who become early adopters are passionate about seeking out solutions to those problems. That means they consume a lot of content. That’s your in! 

Of course, it can’t be just any mediocre content. The readers you want to reach are looking for substance, and they’ll see right through blog posts that don’t provide any real value. 

You have to appeal to their passion, and that means creating thoughtful, down-to-earth blog posts that explore issues and tell a story they can relate to. 

4. Start a conversation

Got an email list? The good news is you already have a curated pool of people who are probably interested in what you’re selling. 

Email outreach is an awesome way to start a genuine connection and solicit opinions. Plan emails that follow the PAS format: Problem, Agitate, Solution. 

Show that you know the problem they’re facing and the consequence of ignoring that problem. Introduce a solution – like your product. 

Then, instead of the classic CTA where you implore the reader to buy in, ask for honest feedback. If you’re emailing the right people, they’ll be happy to tell you what they think. 

5. Involve them in a soft launch

A soft launch only works if you’ve already established yourself as a power user among other power users. Once you have a presence in the most important communities and social network groups, you can designate a launch week across those platforms. 

Instead of launching everywhere, mobilize the subreddits, Discord channels, and Instagram hashtags where you’ve been hanging out and invite them to see what you’ve got for them. 

During the soft launch, it’s important to focus on getting shares, upvotes, and visibility – but it’s even more critical to emphasize that you’re looking for feedback. 

Soft launches are all about engaging the community and hearing what they say. 

During and post-launch, you have to get people talking about what works and what’s missing. That’s the critical information that guides the evolution of your product (and gets you closer to a perfect product-market fit).  

We’ll help you find your brand’s beacons 

If you’ve made it this far and you’re still fretting about how you’ll find your brand’s superfans, don’t sweat too much. At ContentBacon, we know what it takes to connect with the early adopters who will make or break your product’s launch and evolution. 

Hint: It takes calculated, kickass content to build the connections that will guide your brand to success. 

Mediocre content won’t convince a potential early adopter that your product has outstanding potential. You need the right content to convince your earliest buyers that you have the potential to solve their problem 100%. 

That’s where we come in with our team of sizzling writers, editors, and strategists who know how to convert and communicate with the buyers who can be your brand’s guiding beacons to greatness. 

We’ve got your back. Let’s talk about taking your next campaign from fizzle to sizzle!