Solved: Getting Early Adopters (Proven Paid Ad Strategy)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's a tough spot to be in, having built a great piece of software but now facing the challenge of getting it into the hands of your first users. It's a problem I see all the time. A lot of founders think the hard part is building the product, but honestly, getting those initial early adopters is often where the real battle begins.

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running paid ad campaigns for a lot of software companies. The good news is there's a proven path to follow. It's not about shouting into the void; it's about being strategic, understanding your customer's deepest pains, and making them an offer they can't possibly refuse. Let's get into it.

First things first, let's kill a sacred cow: Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Forget every bit of advice you've read about creating an 'Ideal Customer Profile' that looks something like this: "Sarah, 35-45, works as a marketing manager at a mid-sized tech company, lives in a city, earns £60k a year...". This is utterly useless. It tells you nothing of value and leads to the kind of generic, bland advertising that gets ignored. You'll burn through your budget trying to talk to 'Sarah', but 'Sarah' doesn't exist.

To stop wasting money, you have to redefine your customer not by who they are, but by the problem they have. You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your ideal customer isn't a job title; they're a person staring at a problem so frustrating it keeps them up at night.

Let's make this real. Imagine you've built a new project management tool. Your ICP isn't "project managers". It's a Head of Operations who is terrified of her best team members quitting because they're burned out from chaotic workflows and constant context-switching. Her nightmare isn't 'needing a better PM tool'; it's the £50,000 cost of replacing a senior developer and the project delays that will make her look incompetent to the board.

See the difference? One is a bland demographic. The other is a visceral, emotional pain point. When you understand the nightmare, you understand their motivations. You know what language to use in your ads, what features to highlight on your landing page, and what promise will make them stop scrolling and pay attention.

Your first job, before you even think about an ad platform, is to interview potential users and dig until you find this nightmare. What is the one problem that, if you solved it, would make them look like a hero to their boss? What's the hidden cost of them *not* solving this problem? Once you've isolated that, you have the foundation for your entire marketing strategy.

Your offer needs to be built to solve that exact pain

This leads directly to the next point, which is probably the single biggest reason I see software advertising campaigns fail: a weak offer. An offer that doesn't provide enough value, or an offer that's presented to an audience that has no real need for it. It's a fundamental lack of demand.

I've seen so many founders spend years developing what they believe is the perfect product, packed with features, only to launch to the sound of crickets. They chased a cool idea without first validating that there was a desperate, urgent need for it.

A successful offer, especially for new software, has three components that you must get right:

1. It focuses on a specific audience. By defining your audience by their nightmare, you've already done most of the work here. Your messaging becomes laser-focused and incredibly relevant. You're not just another tool; you're *the* tool for people with *that specific problem*.
2. It identifies and agitates that urgent problem. You don't sell software; you sell a solution to a deep frustration. You sell the end of their nightmare. This emotional connection is what drives people to take action.
3. It presents a clear, tangible solution. Your software needs to be framed as the bridge from their current pain to their desired future. This means turning your service into a product with a clear name, defined deliverables, and a simple path to getting started.

This is why understanding the nightmare is so critical. It informs every part of your offer. Your software isn't just a "platform"; it's a "10-Hour-a-Week Time Saver for Burnt-Out Operations Managers." It's not just "analytics software"; it's "The Dashboard That Prevents Surprise Budget Overruns." This clarity makes your offer tangible, less risky for a buyer, and much, much easier to sell.

The Pre-Launch Strategy: Build a Waitlist That Actually Converts

Before you even think about a full-scale launch and spending significant money on ads, you should build a waitlist. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. A waitlist isn't just a bucket for emails; it's your first community and your most valuable source of feedback.

I wouldn't start promoting a waitlist unless you meet one of these criteria:
a) You're at the MVP stage and want to gauge real-world demand before you build out the full product.
b) You're about to start accepting a cohort of beta testers.
c) Your actual public launch is imminent (within a few weeks).

The goal is to build anticipation, not let people forget who you are. The mechanics are simple: create a compelling landing page that shows off the software (even with mockups), clearly articulates the nightmare it solves, and has a single call to action: "Join the Waitlist." You could sweeten the deal with a special offer, like a lifetime discount or extended free access for early adopters.

Once you have emails, your job is to keep that list engaged. Send them regular updates, show behind-the-scenes progress, ask for their feedback on features, and make them feel like insiders. When you're ready for beta testers, they're your first port of call. By the time you launch, you'll have a core group of evangelists ready to go.

To get people to sign up, you can start with organic channels. Post your landing page on platforms like Betalist, Product Hunt, and Indie Hackers. These are full of early adopters actively looking for new tools. Find relevant social media groups (on Facebook, LinkedIn, or even here) where your ICP hangs out and share what you're building. Paid ads can work here too, but they're generally better reserved for post-launch when you have a product people can actually use and you can measure the ROI more directly. I've seen clients get thousands of signups this way before writing a single line of code for the final product, completely validating their idea.

Post-Launch: Using Paid Ads as the Accelerator

Once your software is live and you've got some initial traction (even just from your waitlist), paid advertising becomes the fuel to pour on the fire. It's the fastest way to get predictable, scalable growth. But it costs money, so you need a clear plan to monetise your users. The basic maths has to work.

For B2C apps, you might be looking at a cost per signup or install of around £1-£5. For B2B software, that cost is significantly higher, often starting around £20 and going way up from there. One B2B software client we work with sees a cost per registration of around $2.38 on Meta, which is exceptional, while another on LinkedIn sees a cost per lead of $22, which is more typical for highly targeted decision-makers. The point is, your revenue per user (or your LTV, which we'll get to) needs to be comfortably higher than your cost to acquire them.

Your first big decision is which ad platform to use. This goes right back to the nightmare. Is your ideal customer actively aware of their problem and searching for a solution, or are they unaware that a better way exists?

A) If they are actively searching → Use Search Ads (Google & Apple)
This is the lowest hanging fruit. You're targeting people with high intent. They've literally typed into a search box that they need help. For software, Google Search Ads are a must. You'd bid on keywords your ideal customer might search for, like "accounting software for freelancers" or "tool to automate social media posting". Apple Search Ads are also brilliant if you have a mobile app, as you can capture users directly within the App Store environment. One of our clients, an app in the sports and events space, got over 45,000 signups using a mix of platforms, and Apple Ads were a key part of that early growth.

B) If they are NOT actively searching → Use Social/Display Ads (Meta, LinkedIn)
This is where you interrupt their day with a message so relevant to their nightmare that they have to pay attention. For most B2C and many B2B software products, Meta (Facebook & Instagram) is the place to start. Its targeting capabilities are immense. For very specific B2B targeting (e.g., "CTOs at SaaS companies with 50-200 employees"), LinkedIn is the go-to, but be prepared to pay a premium for those leads.

How to Actually Target Your Audience on Meta Ads

This is where most people get it wrong. They either go too broad and waste money, or too narrow and can't find anyone. The key is a structured approach, moving from cold audiences to warm audiences as your account gathers data. I usually prioritise audiences in this order, which you can think of as a funnel.

For a brand new software account, you'll start at the Top of the Funnel (ToFu). Your best bet is Detailed Targeting. This is where your research into your ICP's nightmare pays off. You don't target "Business". You target the niche podcasts they listen to, the industry newsletters they read, the competitor software they already use. If your software helps eCommerce stores, you don't target "Amazon". You target interests like "Shopify", "WooCommerce", or people who are admins of a Facebook retail page. You have to think: what interests are people in my target audience *more likely* to have than the general population? That's your sweet spot.

As soon as you have enough data (at least 100 conversions, but ideally more), you can create Lookalike Audiences. This is where you tell Meta, "Find me more people who look just like my best customers" or "Find me more people who look just like the ones who signed up for a trial". These are often your best-performing cold audiences.

Then you move into retargeting (MoFu and BoFu). You show different ads to people who have visited your website but didn't sign up, or people who started the signup process but got distracted. This is where you can recover a huge number of potential users who just needed an extra nudge.

The key is to test, test, test. Set up different campaigns for each stage of the funnel, and within those campaigns, test different audiences against each other. Turn off what doesn't work and scale up what does. It's a process of constant refinement.

Your Ad's Only Job: A Message They Can't Ignore

Once your targeting is sorted, you need an ad that speaks directly to the nightmare. This is not the place for feature lists. You need to grab them by the collar. For B2B software, my favourite framework is the Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Describe their current world. Paint a picture of the frustration, the pain, the nightmare they're living in right now.
• After: Describe the promised land. A world where that pain is gone. What does that feel like? What are they able to achieve now?
• Bridge: Position your software as the simple, clear path from the 'Before' to the 'After'.

Here’s how it works for a fictional FinOps SaaS:
Before: "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out. Another awkward conversation with the CFO."
After: "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see exactly where every dollar is going, and waste is automatically eliminated. You look like a genius."
Bridge: "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

This structure works because it's based entirely on emotion and transformation, which is what actually drives people to act.

The Conversion Fallacy: Stop Paying Facebook to Find Non-Customers

This is a short but absolutley vital point. When you set up a new campaign on Meta, it will ask for your objective. Many new advertisers, thinking they need to "build the brand," choose "Reach" or "Brand Awareness." This is a catastrophic mistake.

When you select "Awareness," you give the algorithm one simple command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm is very good at its job. It will seek out the users in your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutley, positively least likely to ever sign up for your software. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No other advertisers want them. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

As a new software business, you need users, not just eyeballs. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem. Therefore, you must *always* choose a conversion objective, like "Leads" or "Sales" (or a custom conversion for trial signups). This tells the algorithm to find the people within your audience who are most likely to actually take the action you want. Yes, your cost per impression will be higher, but you'll be paying for potential customers, not just passive scrollers.

The Most Important Metric You're Ignoring: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

How do you know if your ads are profitable? The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a great customer?" The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

This single number will change how you think about your marketing budget. It tells you the total profit you can expect to make from an average customer over the entire time they use your product. Once you know this, you can make intelligent decisions about how much you can spend to get them.

Here are the components you need:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much do you make from one customer, per month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue (after accounting for costs like servers, support, etc.)?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is simple: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's run an example. Say your software costs £100/month (ARPA), your gross margin is 80%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month (churn).

LTV = (£100 * 0.80) / 0.05
LTV = £80 / 0.05 = £1,600

This means each new customer is worth £1,600 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is at least 3:1. This means for a customer worth £1,600, you can afford to spend up to £533 (£1,600 / 3) to acquire them and still have a very healthy business model. Suddenly, paying £50 for a trial signup doesn't seem so expensive, does it?

This maths is the key to scaling aggressively. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to confidently invest in acquiring high-value users.

Finally, You Must Delete the "Request a Demo" Button

This brings us to the final, and most common, failure point in B2B software advertising: the offer on your landing page. The "Request a Demo" button is possibly the most arrogant Call to Action ever created. It presumes your prospect, who is likely a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than schedule a 30-minute meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction, it offers zero immediate value, and it instantly positions you as a commodity vendor they need to waste time evaluating.

For software founders, you have an incredible unfair advantage here. Your offer's only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. The gold standard, without question, is a free trial (with no credit card required) or a generous freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them experience the transformation from their 'Before' state to the 'After' state. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You won't be generating 'Marketing Qualified Leads' for a sales team to chase; you'll be creating 'Product Qualified Leads' who are already convinced and asking you how they can pay.

I've worked on so many software campaigns where this one change was the difference between failure and success. I remember one B2B SaaS client who we helped get over 1,500 trials on Meta Ads alone. Another saw 5,082 trials at just a $7 cost per trial. And we helped a medical job matching SaaS reduce their Cost Per Acquisition from a painful £100 down to just £7. None of that would have been possible if they were hiding their product behind a "Request a Demo" wall. You have to let people experience the magic first.

This entire process, from identifying the nightmare to crafting the perfect low-friction offer, is a strategic journey. It requires a deep understanding of both marketing psychology and the technical details of ad platforms. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about building a predictable engine for growth.

Your Path Forward

Getting your first users is a methodical process, not a lottery. It involves deep customer empathy, strategic positioning, and disciplined execution. Rushing to run ads without laying this foundation is the fastest way to burn your startup capital.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a step-by-step plan:

Navigating this can be complex, and getting it right from the start can save you thousands of pounds and months of frustration. This is where professional expertise can make a huge difference. With years of experience specifically in scaling software companies through paid advertising, we can help you bypass the common pitfalls and implement a robust growth strategy from day one.

If you'd like to discuss your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can review your software, discuss your goals, and give you some tailored advice on the best path forward. It's often a really helpful session for founders to gain clarity and a solid action plan.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh