presented at #fi (founders institute, paris) - gives tools and strategies for finding early beta users/customers - includes www.surveymonkey.com, www.followerwonk.com, www.rivaliq.com and www.launchrock.com

1. T.A. McCann –Strategies for market and customer research
@tamccann

2. • Customer research vs. market research
• Know your users/customers
• Find and nurture the new influencers
• Bake customer engagement into your
company
• Build a tribe – engage and communicate
2

3. Market research
• Market research is basically bullshit – invest limited
time, customers and traction are more important
• Find a few numbers that work, stick with those, then
move on
– E.g. - 400M people have MS Outlook, but there is no
social network integration
• What are the key trends that support your
marketspace growth?
– E.g. – more connections, more networks, more
posts…(users need a way to focus attention)
3

4. Find your market-space/competition
4

5. 5

6. 6

7. Build a map toward success
7

8. A valuable target customer
• Business professional
• Places high value of relationships (>8/10)
• Has significant (>50%) of key relationships outside company
• >5 meetings/week with outside people (more/new is better)
• Uses technology to gain information advantage
• Actively builds and manages his network
• Pays monthly information service fees
(mobile, CRM, wiki, contact manager… (more is better)
People like this include;
T.A. • Roles include (execs, sales, recruiter, PR, journalists, lawyers…)
Brad • Influencer of others and/or small teams
Buzz
Kendall • Technical, early but not bleeding edge adopter
Brandt
Miles Austin
Dave Thomas (WSGR) • Often fits in GTD category as well
• Reads books like “never eat alone” or “4 hour work week”
• Attends “networking” events or activities
8

9. Use a survey to capture and scale
Gist survey – with over 6500 responses - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZTH5BJR
9

10. My post with a process - http://tamccann.com/finding-the-right-beta-users/
Tim Ferris/Noah Kagan - http://twurl.nl/vquqtg
10

11. Map real people <--> personas
Kevin Spidel
"I am the Managing Director of an
international PR firm and am very active on
the social web. Gist allows me to cut through
the noise and manage my contacts directly. I
am able to monitor what matters... the
relationship."
Managing Director
Patriot Strategies
http://patriotstrategies.com
Washington, DC, USA
5300 contacts, 1279 companies

12. Leverage your network to find more
12

15. Influence the influencers

16. Develop a culture of engagement

17. Friends of Gist – customers are people too

18. Create moments of delight and AMPLIFY

19. Send regular status (2 weeks)
19

20. Go make something great!
T.A. McCann
tam@gist.com
@tamccann