New Business, New Product:
3 Proven Models for Landing Your First Clients

After 15 years working with startups and launching new products and companies in tourism, healthcare, and specialized B2B services, we have identified a pattern: projects fail not because the product is bad. They fail because founders apply scaling methods where launching methods are needed.

Still unclear? We'll explain everything with real-life examples from our practice.

Time required for thoughtful reading: 25 minutes.
What you save: months of wasted work and unnecessary trial and error.

The most critical phase in any new business isn't growth or even profit—it's proving viability. Before thinking about 100 clients, prove to yourself and others that you can attract at least 10. Before investing in complex marketing infrastructure, make sure your new product deserves to exist.

We constantly see the same mistake: founders with zero clients already planning elaborate marketing ecosystems with websites, social media activity, and advertising campaigns. This approach burns resources without providing meaningful feedback.

Instead, we have developed three specific market validation models based on real work with clients from different industries. Each solves particular launch problems and creates the shortest path to your first paying customers.

Our models aren't just field-tested. Their core goal is to achieve results quickly with minimal investment. Not to launch million-dollar marketing campaigns, but to build a solid foundation for a new business or product. The models are built on respect for a startup's time and resources. Or as we often say: do less—get more.

Best suited for: experience businesses, premium services (such as healthcare or B2B), tourism projects.

Client description: A startup offering premium tours combining travel with professional and personal development. Not just tours, but premium trips that organically blend yachts, hiking, and strategic and psychological sessions with mentors.
The project founder approached me for a marketing strategy. His initial plan: attract travel bloggers who would promote tours for commission.

The mistake: Without reviews and photos from actual tours, trust in the company was, as you can imagine, completely absent. No blogger will advertise an unproven tourism product to their audience just for a percentage of sales.

Moreover, a blogger is not a salesperson. Their business model is media-based, not commercial. Bloggers earn from advertising, not direct sales of others' products.

As a rule, bloggers—especially popular ones—find it not only uninteresting but also "uncomfortable" to position themselves as salespeople to their audience.

Instead of chasing reach and elusive bloggers, we developed a different model for the project: creating and distributing evidence of product quality.

• Find several bloggers from the professional and personal development sphere (not travel) and offer them free participation in a trial tour. These should be respected experts in their field, not just lifestyle bloggers. Yes, the first 1-2 tours will definitely run without profit or with minimal cost recovery. This is a necessary investment in the final product packaging.

Here we must emphasize that proper initial packaging of any service involves not only DESCRIPTION and OFFER, but also IMPLEMENTATION EXAMPLES (cases and reviews). As marketers, we help new businesses with both.

• In exchange, bloggers agree to give honest reviews, prepare content, and share materials, but only if the experience truly proves worthwhile.

• The result of the test tours—a carefully prepared library of authentic content: from photos to live stories and video testimonials from journey participants. This is proper comprehensive product packaging!

This method lays the foundation for long-term growth.

By focusing on authentic experience and its documentation rather than mass advertising, we create key elements of successful tourism marketing: quality evidence, visual materials, and a product improved based on real feedback. This strategic base allows tourism offerings to grow through word-of-mouth and targeted promotion among the target audience.

Of course, launching a new product isn't limited to working with influencers. We completely reworked the project's positioning, rebuilt the website, created presentations and warming materials. All this became part of the sales system through demonstrating product quality.

However, the model's essence remains. Products like thematic travel or expensive medical services should be packaged and sold using social proof of product quality. Without this, you won't have a real business capable of generating profit.

Let us give another example of a client who also benefits from this model.

It's a medical clinic in Cyprus offering an unusual service: post-surgery and long-term illness rehabilitation, body restoration, chronic fatigue elimination through hyperbaric oxygenation.

The service is rare, little-known to the general audience, so the social proof model is very appropriate in this case.

Best suited for: medical services, wellness programs, diagnostic products, software

Client description: A medical startup developed a comprehensive blood analysis service providing deeper health insights than standard tests. In the personal dashboard, you can not only view detailed test results with explanations for each indicator. Clients can assess indicators dynamically, receiving personalized lifestyle change recommendations.

The mistake: More precisely, there were at least two mistakes.

First—rather general, superficial information on the website about the service composition, its features and advantages. It was assumed that the target audience (athletes, health enthusiasts) already understand the importance of monitoring various body parameters.

Second mistake: initially the startup set only two price levels for tests: expensive and very expensive.

Without established reputation and without understanding the advantages of this particular service implementation, potential clients aren't ready to pay high prices, regardless of general understanding of health monitoring necessity.

Our team completely restructured their approach

1. First, we turned the website into a Knowledge Base about the service. Instead of a so-called sales landing page, we developed a full information-commercial website.
2. Second, we developed a sales funnel from the "Interest" stage to the "Return for repeat purchase" stage. Before our involvement in the project, it was assumed that website visitors would click the "Buy" button and this simple action would comprise the entire sales process. Of course, nothing like that happened. We developed a multi-stage sales cycle that included stages: a) Awakening interest b) Proving effectiveness c) Low-cost trial product d) Main product e) Return for repeat testing
3. We developed a basic "Foundation" package priced 60% lower, designed for clients' first acquaintance with the service and collecting feedback.
4. Developed a feedback collection system for continuous product improvement based on real user experience.
5. Developed a model for interacting with health and sports professionals who can offer the service to their regular clients.

This approach lays the foundation for building trust in selling a medical service.

For such products, it's important not just to describe the service, but to reduce skepticism to insignificant levels. The client's first experience should be maximally comfortable and safe. Hence lots of warming, explanatory materials and a test package at break-even level.

The task is not so much to earn a lot immediately, but to form a stable and growing customer base that will return for repeat tests and recommend the service to friends.

Another project of ours with a similar model is Algom: a medical information and reference resource for doctors based on evidence-based medicine. It was developed in collaboration with Finnish company Duodecim.

However, doctors are skeptical of marketing promises and highly value their authority among colleagues. Loud advertising with promises of "revolution in medicine" will only cause rejection.

We designed the entire journey of a potential user—from first product acquaintance to subscription registration:

1. Reach—getting familiar with the idea that such services exist
2. Warming—explaining why it's useful and how it works
3. Engagement—demonstrating real advantages with specific examples
4. Conversion—registration for trial period
5. Retention—support and user development after registration

For each stage, our team developed specific types of content and messages, understanding that you can't immediately ask a doctor to register without first explaining the service's value. Additionally, all new users received free 30-day access to almost all features of the new service.

Best suited for: highly specialized products, technical solutions, "enthusiast" products.

Client description: a new titanium bicycle manufacturer wanted to increase sales and enter new markets. Initially they planned to invest in an advanced website and large-scale digital advertising.

The problem: Titanium has a unique ability to absorb road vibrations, providing more comfortable riding, especially on long distances. However, the audience of such equipment buyers is quite narrow. The material itself is expensive, and its processing requires special equipment and skills.

Titanium bicycle fans are a special "caste" of enthusiasts who can elevate or destroy a manufacturer's reputation if they don't like something.

Cyclists, especially in the premium segment, are extremely knowledgeable about the subject and treat newcomers with distrust. Additionally, the market is dominated by established brands with decades of history.

The mistake: The manufacturer seriously expected to conquer the market with regular advertising and an e-commerce website.

We proposed an alternative approach based on demonstrating expertise:

1. Develop deep technical content about titanium manufacturing processes, engineering advantages, and materials science—topics that passionate cyclists value.
2. Instead of broad advertising, find respected YouTube channels about bicycles and provide them samples for long-term testing and honest reviews.
3. Create a private community where interested cyclists could directly communicate with engineers and the production team.
4. Form an expert-entertainment newsletter for titanium fans: from company news and model reviews to developing tourist routes.

This strategy represents a long-term approach to market entry for specialized products. The approach creates a foundation for sustainable growth in enthusiast markets.

The focus is on technical expertise and community building rather than traditional marketing. This method considers how demanding enthusiasts make purchasing decisions for highly specialized products.

Another project with a similar promotion model is, surprisingly, the T-SPOT.TB tuberculosis test.

The main "competitors" of T-SPOT.TB are the familiar Mantoux and Diaskintest. Their advantages: recognition, established reputation despite all shortcomings, free of charge.

T-SPOT is not just paid, but quite expensive, which is unacceptable for many parents. At the same time, parents actively discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various tests in chats, ready to dive deep into the issue, understand nuances, listen to expert recommendations.

We developed a test promotion program that included the following tasks:

1. Tell the target audience about the test, its features and advantages.
2. Generate interest in the topic of alternative tuberculosis testing methods.
3. Provoke a lively audience reaction.
4. Attract visitors to the project website where they can get more information and choose a medical center for testing.

Although each model solves different tasks, they're all based on fundamental principles:

1. Test first, then scale: Prove that your idea works with a small group before investing in growth
2. Focus on the first 10 clients: Attracting first clients requires completely different approaches than growing from 100 to 1000
3. Create evidence: Nothing sells as convincingly as confirmation that your solution works
4. Collect feedback: First clients are essentially your product development team
5. Choose the right channels: Go where your ideal clients already are, not where it's easier to launch advertising

One pattern we constantly observe when launching new projects is particularly telling: when founders rely exclusively on internal resources for marketing, they often fall into the trap of expensive experiments and endless strategy changes.

Why an outside perspective is decisive?

When you're completely immersed in creating your product, objectivity becomes practically unattainable. The main value of an external marketer isn't in executing tactical tasks, but in the ability to:

1. See the founder's blind spots: As the tourism project example shows, founders often overestimate what drives their audience. An outside view quickly identifies these mismatches before money is wasted.
2. Break the "strategy loop": Many startups endlessly change marketing teams and plans without real action. As an external consultant, I focus on quickly attracting the first 10 clients, not on ideal theoretical plans.
3. Apply experience from different industries: Solutions that worked in medicine might work for tourism, and vice versa. My experience across different spheres provides pattern recognition that internal teams simply can't have.
4. Provide clarity and focus: The most valuable service isn't always adding new marketing activities, but cutting the excess. I help clients determine the shortest path to confirming product viability, often reducing planned marketing expenses by 40-60%. I'll repeat my principle: my promotion models are based on respect for a startup project's time and resources. I often say: do less—get more.
5. Accelerate the learning cycle: With proven methodology, we compress what usually takes 6-12 months of trial and error into 60-90 days of focused work.

The return on investment is obvious: targeted external marketing approach usually saves businesses tens of thousands in misdirected marketing expenses at the initial stage. Instead of endless experiments, we apply proven models adapted to your specific business model.

If you've read this far, the topic is relevant for you. Are you preparing to launch a new product or business? I offer three collaboration options:

1. Free 20-minute launch readiness audit: A focused conversation to identify your key problems and opportunities during launch. I'll suggest main options for solving your tasks.
2. Full one-hour go-to-market consultation: Deep working through your situation with individual recommendations.
3. Comprehensive help with market entry or product relaunch: Full support from market validation planning to implementation.

The difference between successful and failed launches isn't luck, but a properly selected methodology.