How to Find Your Marketplace's First Users

Building a collaborative marketplace is complex. You need suppliers, users for those suppliers, and ambitious plans to bring them together on your platform.

But those ambitions can be difficult and costly to realise. They can demand a great deal of time, manpower, or money. And you may not have all of these at the start.

So before you reach a thousand happy users, you will need to reach a hundred satisfied ones. And before that, you need to find ten pleased ones.

The road to 1,000 users starts with just 10!

Many entrepreneurs immediately think of complex strategies involving SEO, content marketing, viral content, and PR work to reach thousands of users.

Unless you have already built an audience through a blog or a previous project, you will need to find a few key people to win over to your cause.

Identify the needs of your users and suppliers

First, draw up 3 lists: one for people who could offer their service, rental, or products on your platform; one for people who might want to use the services on your platform; and one for organisations that already have access to those users.

Example: if you are Airbnb and you target conference attendees directly, you will struggle to reach all of them. Instead, contact the conference organisers to offer their attendees a way to find accommodation that is cheaper and more authentic than a hotel.

If you have a carpooling app and want to attract concert-goers, find the concert organisers and offer a more convenient way to get their merry participants home safely.

For a final concrete example, let us imagine we are BlaBlaCar at the very beginning. As suppliers, we might think of friends who travel regularly, or travellers with a spare seat in their car. As users, we could target students heading home for the weekend, friends travelling to a concert, or holidaymakers without a car. As existing organisations, we might list universities and university associations, concert organisers, travel bloggers, and Facebook travel groups.

Identify the needs of your users and suppliers

Now that you know who you are going to help, another list is needed to answer these two questions:

• What problems do my users and suppliers face?
• How can I solve them, and with what benefits?

Here are 9 benefits that generally resonate with most users and suppliers:

1. Earn more money: Finding suppliers will be far easier if you can show them directly that it will earn them money (for example, Uber, Airbnb, BlaBlaCar).
2. Save time: Everyone loves efficiency, and many are willing to pay for it (for example, getting a taxi after 2 minutes' wait instead of 15).
3. Look good: Everyone wants to present themselves well, to be seen in their best light. Does your platform showcase your suppliers' offering better than other platforms?
4. Less risk: You can reduce your users' risk by offering a "satisfaction or money back" guarantee, appropriate insurance in the event of bad conduct, and so on.
5. Nothing to manage: The more your platform enables automated management, the more appreciated it will be. For example, imagine Amazon handling delivery and payment for products that private individuals sell on their site.
6. An expert point of contact: Professionals appreciate platforms that speak their language. If you can, demonstrate that you understand their needs.
7. Practicality: How can they get in touch with you? How quickly do you respond?
8. Clarity: Users are not looking for your point of view — they want a solution. The faster and more clearly you show them what they gain by joining you, the better.
9. Reliability: Do you pay on time? Do you offer support quickly to users facing a problem? Even the smallest detail can create and sustain a good impression.
10. And much more: Qualifications, fun, reputation, authenticity, and so on. Clearly display all the qualities of your platform that your users could benefit from.

Let us return to the Airbnb example. Their double list would look like this:

• As a group of suppliers: friends with unused beds at home. Their problem: the mortgage to pay. The benefit you can offer: helping them earn a little money to pay off the mortgage more quickly.
• On the user side: travellers. Their problem: overpriced hotel rooms and being cut off from local residents. The benefit you bring them: saving money and having direct contact with locals.

These lists will help you prepare the pitch you will deliver to your first users.

The invitation email to your platform

Many marketing approaches will have an effect. But to get started, a mailing will be more than sufficient.

Find the users and suppliers you want to work with. Find their email address and introduce them to your platform. This will directly and easily put you face-to-face with potential suppliers and users, and will allow you to find out whether they are interested. Simple to implement, this approach is also quite effective at attracting qualified prospects to your platform — from both the supplier and user sides.

What would such an email look like for Airbnb?

Email subject: Jeanne, I'd love to help you rent out your rooms

1. (Introduction): Hi Jeanne, I came across your room rental listing on (Name of the site) and noticed that you have been using the internet to promote it.
2. (Offer): With my team, we have created a platform for renting out rooms like yours. I would love to help you promote your offering to our users and to travel agencies with travellers heading to (Jeanne's city).
3. (Benefit): This would increase your number of guests, reduce your marketing budget, and free up time for you to better look after your visitors.
4. (Foot in the door): We can discuss this in more detail, but I'd first like to know whether this could already be of interest to you as it stands.
5. (Call-to-action): If so, could I send you a few ideas on how I could help?

This example is broken down into 6 parts. Let us see how to adapt it to your own market:

Email subject: Write a complete sentence to make your email stand out. Be clear. Do not try to create mystery.

• The introduction serves to explain how you came across this person and why you are writing. You need to personalise this opening and know your leads in advance. Be creative — do not simply say "I found you by chance on the internet".
• The offer shows what you can do for them. Explain one or two of the most relevant features of your platform. If possible, mention any success you might already have — for example, how much your users earn on average, or how prominently your suppliers are featured.
• The benefit translates the offer into a concrete advantage for your prospect, showing them what they gain by joining you. In our example, we are therefore not talking about a simple "rental platform", but rather about how to increase their number of guests, reduce their marketing costs, and save time.
• The foot-in-the-door is a psychological technique that involves getting someone to agree to a low-commitment request with the aim of getting them to agree to a more significant request later. Here, it is about finding out whether the person is interested and willing to discuss it, rather than asking them directly to sign up to the platform. It is also a way of removing any potential pressure on the prospect: you are asking for no heavy commitment and simply want to talk.
• The call-to-action, finally, must push the prospect to say "yes". There should always be only two options: yes or no. No open question such as "What do you think?" — at this stage, your prospect may well have no opinion on the matter, as they do not yet know your offering well enough. "Could I send you a few ideas?" is therefore more appropriate.

Why is this approach effective?

• Little competition — or none at all. This method allows you to approach prospects who are rarely (or never) solicited. When you are the only person offering them something they want, you win by default.
• Short-term results. Quick feedback is important to know whether you are on the right track and to stay motivated.
• A measurable action. No ambiguity here, such as "let's go to this trade fair and see what happens". Here, if you contact 100 prospects and none of them is interested, you know immediately that some things need to change.
• Anyone can do it. You do not need a great deal of experience, money, or an extensive network. This approach requires "only" a little time and effort.

Repeat the process for your first users

Now that you know how to attract suppliers to your marketplace, it is time to do the same with your users.

Again, let us take the Airbnb example and see how to reach conference organisers.

Email subject: John, I'd love to help you find accommodation for your attendees

1. (Introduction): Hi John, I heard about (Name of the conference) and noticed that your attendees were struggling to find affordable accommodation nearby.
2. (Offer): We have created a platform for renting rooms from local residents. I would love to help attendees who have not yet found comfortable and accessible accommodation.
3. (Benefit): This would certainly convince those potential attendees to make the trip and come to the conference.
4. (Foot in the door): We can discuss this in more detail, but I'd first like to know whether this could already be of interest to you as it stands.
5. (Call-to-action): If so, could I send you a few ideas on how I could help?

You can again adapt this text to your own situation.

To make your offer even more attractive, you could even provide them with an exclusive discount code giving 25 to 75% commission every time a user rents a room on your platform with it. This represents guaranteed profit for them with minimal effort, and you gain new users — a perfect win-win.

What if they are not interested?

Once you have spoken with them on the phone and explained your offering in detail, your prospects may still decline your proposal.

Do not panic — this is perfectly normal. In such a case, you still have the option of changing their "no" into a "yes", or finding ways to improve your offer. After a rejection, ask them what they want, what they feel is missing, and promise to provide it if at all possible.

In this way, you will become aware of objections and problems you had not considered or not yet addressed. Something to fix immediately for your online prospect or to improve for your next outreach.

Getting your users to spread the word

At this point, you have done a considerable amount of work and should be seeing your first results. To set a snowball effect in motion, it is time to go back to your satisfied suppliers and users.

Ask them whether there is anything you can improve for them and whether they could tell people they know about your platform.

If they are happy with your services, they will direct more prospects your way. If they are not, they will tell you how to improve the platform.

Here is a template email along these lines. Personalise it to suit your own audience and personality. Do not copy and paste it as is; if every marketplace uses it, it will lose all impact.

Hi (User's name),

We wanted to thank you for (the action the prospect took; for example: renting a room on our platform). We are grateful that you chose to travel with us and I am delighted that you were able to (mention the benefit you created; for example, travel at a lower cost).

Now that you have used our services, I would love to know if you could share your thoughts.

If there is one thing you would change about (your marketplace's name) to make it better for you, what would it be?

We are doing our very best to improve and would be truly grateful if you could take a few minutes to share your perspective.

Thank you again,
(Your name)

PS: We would love to help even more people in your situation. Perhaps you have friends who could benefit from a platform like ours. Could you introduce us to a friend who might be interested?
[Optional: If you forward this email, they will be able to take advantage of the discount code XXXXXXX and you will both receive a 5% discount on your next booking].

This type of email will encourage your users to send you new users and will let you know how to improve.

From there, you can start over from the beginning and find new prospects to continue expanding.

To summarise the key steps we have just covered:

• Draw up a list of prospects (suppliers and users) for your platform.
• Identify their problems and the solutions you can bring them.
• Reach out to suppliers and invite them to your platform.
• Once the number of suppliers is satisfactory, reach out to organisations connected to users.
• Once you have satisfied users, ask them to spread the word.
• Repeat.

At the start, this will take more time than an SEO-based strategy, for example. But these three types of email will allow you to reach an initial niche target, refine your offering, and get your first ten happy users. After these first 10, you will be able to reach 100 through partnerships, then 1,000.

Moreover, while this approach may not be the trendiest, it is achievable for everyone. And no one uses it. Yet it allows you to stand out and delivers measurable results very quickly.

(Freely translated from Marketplace Academy)

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