Issue #2: Recruiting Participants for Customer Discovery Interviews
The internet is a graveyard of startups, and those who pry into the carcasses of dead startups have identified many reasons startups fail. They often cite a failure to build...
The internet is a graveyard of startups, and those who pry into the carcasses of dead startups have identified many reasons startups fail. They often cite a failure to build what customers need as one of the most notable reasons. It may sound like common sense to create a product that solves an actual problem, yet we see hundreds of products that don’t do that. They are solutions looking for problems to solve and are doomed to fail.
It, therefore, makes sense that people looking to launch startups or build products are advised to talk to customers to understand their pain points.
All that is well and good, but I have noticed that the how is often not discussed.
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Where can I find potential customers?
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How do I get them to talk to me?
If you too have thought of those questions, you may find this article helpful. I detail the approach I adopted for finding and recruiting participants for the customer discovery interviews I conducted.
Where can I find potential customers?
Reddit, Facebook Groups, and Twitter are some of the watering holes where users congregate. You can recruit your interviewees on these platforms, but it is crucial to understand their peculiarities and how that impacts recruitment strategy.
On Reddit and Facebook Groups, users with specific interests coalesce in defined groups, and group membership explicitly reveals users’ inclinations. To recruit interviewees on these platforms, you only need to find the subreddits/groups in which your target audience hangs out and recruit people directly from there.
On the other hand, recruiting on Twitter is not so straightforward. Twitter is an unstructured platform lacking defined groups. Users implicitly signal their proclivities through their tweets, and while it’s possible to assign people into fuzzy interest groups by observing their timelines, it is time-consuming. Luckily, Twitter has features like Like and Retweet that users often use to signal their interests explicitly.
How do I get them to talk to me?
This part is daunting, and I understand why many founders forgo it and go straight into development. Over the last few weeks, I have learned that it is not that difficult. I am currently working on a product idea, and I used Twitter to recruit over 30 people for customer discovery interviews. To find people who fit into the particular group I was looking for, I tweeted and asked people to signal their membership of that group through likes.
At the time of writing, 72 people liked the tweet. I selected over 30 people and sent them the following message:
Hello {{name}},
I hope you are having a good day. I am getting in touch with you because you liked this tweet:
I listen to a lot of podcasts myself (Throughline, How I Built This, and Hidden Brain are some of my faves) and I am interested in speaking with other podcast listeners to understand their listening habits, what works and what doesn’t, among other things.
I would appreciate if you could have a 15-minute conversation with me when you are free. My Calendly link is below. Please book any 15-minute slot that works for you.
I look forward to speaking with you, and please let me know if you have any question.
Thank you.
You will notice that the message is straight to the point. I stated my intention clearly and how long I expected the conversation to be. I don’t have data to back this up, but I reckon people are more likely to accept requests like this if they feel you’re not asking too much of their time. More importantly, I added my Calendly link, making it easier for them to book the time slots that worked for them. Since you’re asking them for a favour, it is essential to lower the amount of work they need to do to speak with you. 90% of the people I sent the message to responded and booked a slot within two days!
I hope that founders who find interviewing customers intimidating can use this as a template for recruiting participants for their interviews. Good luck, and wagmi 🚀 as crypto folks say.