Gaining your first customers is a big deal for any new business. Take it from Alex Fine, Co-Founder & CEO of Fun, who says, “closing your first five customers is BY FAR the hardest thing you do as a founder. It amazed me how much easier it became to close clients after getting over this hurdle.”
It's a challenge every startup faces, yet there's surprisingly little written on the topic, especially advice you can really use.
That's why we talked to seasoned founders and CEOs in the online gambling world to share their experiences and tips. Learning from those who've already walked the path can be incredibly helpful.
Summary Insights
Seven strategies account for every start-up securing their first customers.
The majority of startups attributed their initial user acquisition to a sole strategy, with only one startup benefiting from more than three methods.
High-touch customer engagement was the most popular strategy. Doing things that don’t scale is still crucial to building initial momentum.
A notable omission is the use of paid ads to acquire the first cohort of customers.
Tactics deployed to attract initial customers are often significantly different from those used in scaling customer acquisition.
Leverage Your Network
Utilize your personal and professional network to kickstart your customer acquisition efforts. Your network can be a valuable source of referrals and introductions to potential customers.
Prior to Low6, I had been running a sports events marketing agency and my co-founder was in retail bookmaking so we initially leaned on our connections in both fields to introduce them to our free-to-play pool betting app. We were quite fortunate that the app was built on social competition so had some early success with the power of network effects in building out our customer base.
— Jamie Mitchell, Co-Founder & Group CEO, Low6
We have so far focused on our network, local events, partners, influencers and a bit of programmatic advertising.
— Anders Karlsen, Co-Founder & CEO, Sisu Group (ReSpin)
For our US launch, which manifested itself in a brand-new site and app called FlashPicks, we were able to leverage our established UK business to build relationships with North American operators. We put together a pretty comprehensive pitch deck on the business, so that they had a full overview of our media and dev businesses, so they could see that we're not just going to be driving traffic: we're also building tools to retain users as well.
— Callum Broxton, Head of US Operations, Checkd Group (FlashPicks)
We were in the fortunate position of having a wide network of senior industry contacts before launching our consultancy. So we were well placed to use that network to find and secure our first customers. Further deepening and strengthening these connections has enabled us to sign strategic partnerships with organisations where our offerings complement each other but do not overlap. And this in turn has brought in new customers directly as well as raising our profile within the industry.
— Clyde Harris, Co-Founder, Circle Squared
Industry connections allowed Circle Squared to sign strategic partnerships. Image: Circle Squared
Targeted Influencer Marketing
Focusing on an influencer’s credibility and connection with their audience, rather than large follower counts, is more efficient for early-stage products. Be sure to participate in the conversation and respond to comments to build relationships and trust.
Instead of participating in traditional acquisition channels like streaming or traditional affiliate marketing, we recognized our edge in finding influencers with a small following, but that following consisted of 1000 true fans. These fans wouldn’t interact with these influencers by clicking "like" on their posts or watching a stream for 30 minutes; rather, they would be in a group chat with the influencer, talking directly to them, 24/7. This proved to us that an influencer with 10,000 “true fans” would bring us more revenue than someone with 1,000,000 followers.
— Ishan Haque, Head of Business, Shuffle
To get our first 1,000 customers we sold NFTs by establishing a foundation of knowledge about our company and products, leveraging a few key opinion leaders to gain exposure, and participating in AMAs (Ask Me Anything) across social media channels with NFT collaboration partners.
— Jonathan Strause, Founder & CEO, Invincible GG
We identified influencer accounts that had been posting gambling content for two or three years, and had massive audiences, but weren't really doing much with them. We gave them a way to monetize, so it was mutually beneficial. Influencer marketing was almost like a shortcut while we in the background built out the app, the website, SEO, paid advertising, and the organic social following.
— Callum Broxton, Head of US Operations, Checkd Group (FlashPicks)
Checkd Group used influencers to seed the audience for their brand FlashPicks. Image: X.com
Strategic Partnerships
Focus on selecting partners whose brand and audience align well with your company's products. By leveraging these partnerships, startups can overcome initial challenges of visibility and reach.
We excelled at finding influencers to work with, but we failed to follow through on their funnel after signing them – it was like an influx of signups upon the first promotion by them, and then silence. To overcome that, we implemented a few retention strategies that included personalised offers, community races, and specific promotions that lasted for the duration of the partnership.
— Ishan Haque, Head of Business, Shuffle
As a startup, it can be challenging to gain traction alone. Adopting an attitude of “abundance” as opposed to “scarcity”, will allow you to leverage relationships and build at a far greater pace. We continue to actively seek out strategic partnerships with complementary companies, industry associations, and experienced individuals. These partnerships can provide valuable insights and resources but also help expand reach and credibility.
— Mike Adams, Founder & CEO, Caerus Risk Solutions
We realised that paid media wasn’t the best way to go about this and instead looked at partnering with established leagues and teams within the sporting space to drive awareness. Seeing green shoots from this, we ended up putting those partners at the front and centre of our games as it’s their brands that resonated most with customers.
— Jamie Mitchell, Co-Founder & Group CEO, Low6
Low6 put their strategic partners front and centre to build awareness. Image: iGamingBusiness
High-Touch Customer Engagement
Actively involving customers in the development of the product will encourage word-of-mouth marketing by delighting your existing customers and turning them into advocates for your brand.
We built a coalition of end-users to provide input during the development process. This began even before I raised funds. We gathered input on initial wireframes and our coalition of potential end-users caught the vision. This made early conversations with potential clients much easier since the compliance teams (end users) were excited about the product. We’ve continued this close collaboration with the end-user and it informs so much of what we do as a company.
— Joseph Martin, Founder & CEO, Kinectify
We are in constant communication with customers in different markets to hear in detail about their user experience. That includes all product aspects, from the signup to deposit and withdrawal process, how to understand the bonuses and loyalty program and any other issue that needed to be addressed. After hearing the customer feedback, we have done small and big changes to basically every touch point for the user.
— Anders Karlsen, Co-Founder & CEO, Sisu Group (ReSpin)
We saw that in our product journeys where many potential users would see our prices/odds on another web property or chat group, and come to our site with the intention of placing a bet, but had difficulty procuring a crypto wallet (or understanding what this was). The CEO or another member of our leadership team reaches out to every single one of these users to try to ease the learning curve and onboard them to the site. This isn't a scalable solution, but is highly important to do and valuable in an early stage company to learn about your customer base.
— Varun Sudhakar, Co-Founder & CEO, BetDex
Travel, go and meet your clients, understand what they want. This industry can’t be conquered from behind a computer screen.
— Carl Ejlertsson, Founder & CEO, Octoplay
Early on, we realized that helping customers navigate the many common pitfalls of registering, funding, and betting with online operators was more challenging than expected. Due to the complexity of passing KYC checks, linking reliable payment options, and even navigating difficult to understand app interfaces, our hand-to-hand concierge services were uniquely positioned to support customers and operator clients alike. We overcame these challenges by dedicating ourselves to becoming the resident experts on our operator products in order to properly represent them with customers, and also seamlessly guide those customers through their respective journeys, regardless of their previous betting experiences.
— Jai Maw, Co-Founder & President, Betting Hero
We found when working with customers, taking the extra time to get to the root of a practical outcome has been really beneficial for both ourselves and the customer.
— Graham Cassell, Co-Founder, Circle Squared
We had to very quickly focus on being more 'hands-on' with customers engaged with unfamiliar sports and less traditional formats - both from a marketing and trading perspective. Be prepared to dive extremely deeply into how your vision translates into customer (revenue) upside.
— Joseph Dunnigan, Founder & CEO, ALT Sports Data
We actively engaged with our community, soliciting feedback, and incorporating user suggestions into the Owner's Club development roadmap. By fostering a sense of belonging and ownership among our customers, we cultivated a loyal user base who were invested in our success. We also created trust through transparency about our game operations and how the NFT drops and sales would happen. This ensured that our customers felt confident in the fairness and integrity of our virtual horse races.
— Jonathan Strause, Founder & CEO, Invincible GG
We pride ourselves on receiving feedback and then pushing an update the next week to address it. We pride ourselves on receiving feedback and then pushing an update the next week to address it. Generally, we place a higher priority on repeated feedback to ensure we’re solving and adjusting to the most critical issues raised by our player base. … Announce that you’ve delivered on feedback not only to the customer who sent it but to everyone else. You never know who was going through the same issue but didn’t raise it or someone who will see it and decide to try out your site because of it.
— Ishan Haque, Head of Business, Shuffle
Shuffle founder engaging with the crypto gambling community on popular forum Bitcoin Talk. Image: bitcointalk.org
Incentive-Driven Acquisition
This strategy focuses on using various incentives to attract, engage, and retain users. Methods include offering early access, implementing referral programs, granting exclusive benefits to early adopters, and providing loyalty rewards. Commonly associated with B2C businesses, surprisingly some B2B startups are trying this too.
We leveraged the anticipation and excitement of our waitlist by offering early access to those who signed up. This created a sense of exclusivity and urgency, encouraging people to join and engage with our platform.
We implemented a strong referral program that rewarded existing users for bringing in new customers. This not only helped in customer acquisition but also fostered a sense of community around our platform.
— Jacob Fortinsky, Founder & CEO, Novig
Typically, we have used exclusivity as the reward for an early adopter. I think this is now more important than ever because if you look at innovation over the last 15 years - betting in-running, cash out and bet builders - in each case once 1 operator proved demand every operator copied within months.”
— Jonathan Power, Founder & CEO, Voxbet
We involved potential users early on in the testing of the product when it was still in its initial development phase, and received a lot of useful and early feedback from these users. When we launched and started facilitating real-money wagers, we also incentivized many of these early users to amplify our messaging and refer additional users to our product. This worked out quite well as the early users had been involved in testing of the product, knew it intimately and could speak with a credible voice.
— Varun Sudhakar, Co-Founder & CEO, BetDex
We were building our Discord and Twitter communities and selling our first 1234 NFTs to these engaged users to secure participation in our beta, which required NFT ownership.
— Jonathan Strause, Founder & CEO, Invincible GG
We have built a loyalty and reward engine for ReSpin, which includes various mechanisms, like pending bonuses and cashback.
— Anders Karlsen, Co-Founder & CEO, Sisu Group (ReSpin)
One example of the loyalty program from the ReSpin casino. Image: ReSpin
Market-Specific Localization
This approach involves tailoring products, marketing strategies, and customer interactions to specific regional or cultural contexts. It requires a deep understanding of local demographics, cultural nuances, and consumer behavior, and often involves employing local talent for insights and language skills.
We learned fairly quickly that localization has to be very specific in the US market. From a paid media perspective, the importance of making things bespoke to the general interests of a certain demographic and a certain territory was something we hadn’t experienced in the UK market, where there’s more of a ‘monoculture’.
We've seen it during March Madness, where we are targeting advertising towards teams that play in states—and even teams of the rivals of the in state teams. For example, we run ads in North Carolina, with an angle of Clemson losing, rather than a North Carolina team winning, so we're able to build out much more personalization and depth to our outreach.
— Callum Broxton, Head of US Operations, Checkd Group
Try to dominate one underserved market where there’s not a defined leader. In our case, we bootstrapped our early growth in Japan. By attempting to market to many different regions, you’ll need to learn and understand all the nuances that come with localization, culture, acquisition channels, etc. Instead, master the one market by hiring people who speak the native language, provide localised support, make your brand match the tone of their culture, and consume the same content that they do to understand pockets of the internet where they hang out.
— Ishan Haque, Head of Business, Shuffle
We had a conviction that unlike the European and Asian markets, where sports betting had been in existence for some time built around sports like soccer, we believed that the opportunity in the United States market was profoundly different. We understood the opportunity was tied to US sports in the US market because the cadence of sports like football, baseball, and basketball is much different than that of soccer, whereby there are much more in-game scoring and a lot more singular events throughout a matchup and that could paint on a blank canvas and create a whole new category of in-play wagering and gamification.
— Chris Bevilacqua, Founder & CEO, Simplebet
The micro-betting business is uniquely suited to the US market. Image: Gambling Insider
Strategic PR
Create high-quality content that educates, entertains, or inspires your target audience. Develop a content strategy that aligns with your value proposition and addresses the pain points of your potential customers. Publish blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, or podcasts that showcase your expertise and provide value to your audience. Distribute your content through various channels, including your website, social media, email newsletters, and industry publications.
We also planned the announcement of the business meticulously, we built a 3 month launch plan with the purpose of entering the industry with maximum impact, every week was carefully planned, including brand teasers, go-live PR, conferences, celebrations, license announcements and a lot more. It’s not enough to have a powerful message if nobody hears it.
— Carl Ejlertsson, Founder & CEO, Octoplay
We engaged in traditional strategies such as pursuing selective PR opportunities, engaging with well-known affiliates in the industry, etc. to attract users to our product.
— Varun Sudhakar, Co-Founder & CEO, BetDex
Our promotional activities were carefully choreographed to make a memorable impact. At industry conferences, my partner and I adopted a distinctive appearance that resonated with our brand's ethos. Dressed in attire that reflected a blend of professionalism with a rebellious edge - black jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts adorned with our logo's skulls, complemented by black denim jackets featuring custom artwork - we personified the spirit of our brand.
— Matt Ferreto, Co-Founder & COO, F*Bastards
At the ICE London 2024 conference, FBastards did a ‘Partners Lotto’ promotion where customers could win prizes. Image: FBastards
Summary
The top strategies to try and acquire your first customers:
Leverage Your Network
Targeted Influencer Marketing
Strategic Partnerships
High-Touch Customer Engagement
Incentive-Driven Acquisition
Market-Specific Localization
Strategic PR
As a founder, your task is to review this list and choose two or three options that seem promising. Experiment with them, and if they’re successful, continue using them. If they aren't effective, try different options. Remember, most startups experience significant early growth from only one or two channels. Focus is important, so don't try to use too many strategies at once.