For me I found my first potential customers using hashtags on social media sites. This helped me to find a small but dedicated group to the issue I was focusing on. Where I found my largest demographic of potential customers was dedicated Facebook groups. This won't be true for every situation so it's important to know where your potential customers are at and what their interests/habits are beforehand so you can have an easier time finding them.
My first customers were from Product Hunt and Linkedin. I also have a newsletter service of people who basically buy my products. They never opted for services till now. I have joined the slack grp of the products that I use Figma/protopie/Adobe/Blender/webflow. So I get clients from their discord or slack without even asking. If they need me they simply DM me. I send them to memberstack where they buy subscriptions. Billing taxes and invoices are auto-handled and I think it is easier and less stressful than emails. I track everything using Jira and Trello and for emergency purposes, I share my WhatsApp number too. I also nurture my clients like babies ๐ฅน.
Honestly speaking finding a good client is like finding a girlfriend/boyfriend. The process is similar ๐.
BTW I'm open to dating. Anyone interested can send me a DM (Links are in bio) ๐
My rule is simple: Be where your clients are, everything else will flow on its own ๐
Be in front of as many people as possible. They will start telling their friends about you, making you the go-to person for your products or services. Branding gains you loyal customers.
Through word-of-mouth, SEO, and organic social media! It really depends on your industry and product though. I'm in B2C, so I wouldn't use LinkedIn for this, but for other products that do B2B LinkedIn would make perfect sense. Also, cold outbound could work better for B2B as well.
I'm currently in the middle of getting the first few customers for my SaaS but I'd say looking at your contacts is the first place to go
Especially if its a tool that is widely used and is applicable to a lot of people, start with your contacts - family, friends, colleagues and other people who know you
Just ask them to try and if they like it, ask them:
'Do you know someone who can benefit from this?"
We would target people in high-end coffee shop in downtown Houston and approach them saying we are students building our first business (yes we were) and used the opportunity to interview them and create connections.
when we launched we had some of the same folks refer others.