Why paid ads are the wrong first move.
I understand the appeal. You set a budget, you press go, people arrive. Except they do not, not reliably, and certainly not cheaply when you have no idea yet what messaging works or which audience converts. Google Ads in a competitive category can cost £3–£8 per click and still send you people who were never going to buy. Meta has gotten harder and more expensive for cold audiences since 2021. Running ads before you know what your customers actually respond to is paying to find out something you could find out for free.
The first 10 customers matter for a different reason anyway. They are not just revenue — they are intelligence. They tell you whether your positioning is right, what language they use about the problem you solve, what almost stopped them from buying. That intelligence is worth more than 500 website sessions from a targeting guess. You want those first customers to arrive through channels where you can have a real conversation.
Start with the people you already know.
This one feels obvious and gets skipped. Do not skip it. When I launched my first e-commerce business, the first four customers were a former colleague, a neighbour, a bloke from a football team I played for, and a friend of that bloke. None of them were my eventual core audience. All four of them told other people, wrote early reviews, and gave me honest feedback about what the packaging looked like.
The move is simple: write a clear, short message that describes what you are offering and what it costs, and send it personally to 20 to 30 people who might plausibly use it or know someone who would. Not a newsletter blast, not a group message. Individual messages to real people. Mention that you have just launched and would genuinely value their support or their honest opinion. Half will not reply. A handful will buy or recommend someone who does. That is enough to start.
The thing people resist here is that it feels embarrassing, or like asking for a favour. It is neither. You are starting a business. The people who know you and respect what you do are the most reasonable first audience in the world.
Google Business Profile: unglamorous and genuinely useful.
If you have any kind of local element to what you do — a trade, a shop, a service covering East Kent, anything — claim and fill out your Google Business Profile on day one. It is free, it takes an afternoon to set up properly, and it starts showing you in local search within a few weeks. I have seen small Canterbury businesses rank above much bigger national competitors for "near me" searches purely because they had a complete, well-reviewed profile and the national brand did not bother claiming theirs locally.
Fill in every field: opening hours, service areas, photos, a proper description with the services you actually offer. Set the primary category carefully — Google uses it as a signal. Then ask your first few customers to leave a Google review. Not with an incentive (that violates Google's guidelines and is a short-term mistake), but just by sending them a direct link to the review form. A business with six genuine five-star reviews and a complete profile will consistently outrank one with no reviews, even if the latter has a fancier website.
Facebook Groups: still working, often ignored.
I know. Facebook feels dated. But the local community groups in Kent — there are active ones covering Sandwich, Deal, Whitstable, Faversham, Canterbury and most of the villages between them — are where a surprisingly large number of owner-operators and local buyers actually spend time. The rule is: be genuinely useful first, promotional second.
Join the relevant groups for your area or your audience. Spend a week or two answering questions, offering a useful opinion, being a real participant. Then, when you do post about what you offer, you are a known name rather than a stranger dropping a link. Most groups have a weekly "promote your business" thread — use it, and do not abuse the general feed. A plumber in Deal who answered three tiling questions before mentioning his call-out charge will do better from those groups than one who posts a promotional graphic every Monday morning.
The same logic applies to more niche groups. If you are launching a food product, find the Kent foodie groups, the local market and farm shop communities. If you are a wedding supplier, the local wedding planning groups. The audience is already assembled. You just have to earn the right to be heard.
Partnerships with adjacent businesses.
One of the most reliable early-customer sources I have used across multiple businesses is a referral arrangement with a business that already serves the same audience but does not compete with you. A web designer and a local accountant. A pet groomer and a vet. A florist and a wedding venue. A bookkeeper and a payroll service. The overlap is obvious once you look for it.
The approach is straightforward. Identify two or three businesses in your area that work with your target customer. Reach out properly — not a cold email, ideally a warm introduction or at least a personalised message that shows you have looked at what they do. Offer to refer your customers to them, and ask if they would be willing to mention your service when it comes up naturally with theirs. No formal affiliate arrangement needed at this stage, no commissions to track, just a genuine reciprocal relationship between people who both benefit.
When I was working with a Kent retailer setting up their first online shop, the single biggest traffic spike in the first month came from a mention in another local business's customer email. Not a paid placement — just a genuine "we've been working with these people and they're good" from someone who already had an audience's trust. That kind of endorsement is harder to buy than most people realise.
Email your warm list early and specifically.
If you have been in business in any form before — a previous job, a freelance stint, a market stall, anything — you have a warm list of people who know you by name. A LinkedIn connection list, a phone contact book, old email threads. These people are not strangers. They have no reason to wish you ill. They are, collectively, the most responsive marketing asset you have at launch, and most founders never use it deliberately.
Send a short, honest email. Here is the rough shape: "I have just launched [X], which does [Y] for [Z kind of person]. If that sounds like you or someone you know, I would be glad to help. Here is where to find out more / here is a link to book a call." That is it. No graphics required, no email platform required at this stage — Outlook or Gmail and a plain text message work fine. You are not broadcasting; you are reaching out.
One note on tools: once you have a list worth nurturing regularly, something like Mailchimp (free up to 500 contacts) or Brevo (free tier is generous) is worth using, not least because it keeps you GDPR-compliant by handling unsubscribes properly. But for the first week, a personal email is fine.
Turn up somewhere in person at least once.
This is the one people resist most and the one that works most consistently in my experience. A physical presence — a market stall, a networking breakfast, a local trade fair, a demo afternoon in a café — forces a kind of honest feedback that no survey ever replicates. You see people's faces. You hear what question they ask first. You notice what makes them pick up the thing or click away from the page.
The Ashford Designer Outlet hosts small-business pop-up events. Canterbury has regular markets at the Goods Shed and off St George's Street. Deal has a weekly market that takes occasional short-term pitches. Faversham Market runs twice a week. None of these require a long-term commitment — most will take a day booking, sometimes for less than £30. Even if you sell almost nothing, the conversations are worth every penny of the pitch fee and every hour of travel.
The other thing in-person events do is force you to describe what you do in one or two sentences, out loud, to a stranger who has no obligation to be polite. If your first attempt at that description draws blank faces, you will know immediately that your messaging needs work. Better to find that out at a market stall than after three months of wondering why the website has no conversions.
What to do once the first 10 are in.
The first 10 customers are not the end of the job — they are the beginning of a proper understanding of what you have. Before you spend anything on ads, talk to as many of them as you can. Ask what made them decide to buy. Ask what almost put them off. Ask where they heard about you. Ask whether they would tell a friend, and if so, who.
That conversation, done with genuine curiosity rather than defensiveness, will typically give you the three or four things that actually matter about your offer — the words your customers use, the objections worth addressing, the channel worth doubling down on. With that in hand, any money you do eventually put into paid marketing will be working from a much better brief. And you will not be guessing.