[saimiam]

(FD - Not a marketer, just a coder who's trying to hack marketing for my own startups. If you want, we can brainstorm together offline.)

I'd stop spending and reserve the remaining 100k to buy me my first client.

Ads, email, and phone calls are too bloodless. You need to get in front of potential customers, make them engage with you person to person, and make a home in their instant-recall memory queue - if they think security, they should recall you.

Even if they never buy from you, if they recommend you to a peer, they've given you a patina of credibility that no online marketing effort can match.

How to find these customers to engage?

1. Seminars, conferences, lunch and learns, talks, even shareholder meetings(!)

2. Tell everyone you meet that you are looking to make industry connections

3. Followup followup followup..and don't forget the "Thank you" note after every meeting.

When you interact with people, listen 2x as much as you talk. Make sure you have an ask from everyone you meet - "I need...", "Is there anyone else...", "Love to hear your specific criticisms of my product..."

a) people love critiquing things. Listen politely and don't try to correct them. If they hate your product and say they'll never buy it, move on. If they find something good in it, start moulding their opinion in favor of the product.

b) make your success their problem but asking "How can I get you to..?", "If you were in my shoes, what would you..?" This gives you a window into their thinking and it makes them your champion with others if they see that you've done what they suggested.

[throwaway3141pi]

Thanks for the advice. For conference/seminars, I attend almost all of them. But you can't meet key decision makers there or get to talk to them. They are too closed and not open to talk to "vendors".

If you mean that I organize an event, thats costly, not sure if it will have good ROI.

I always listen to people and learn from them. Honestly probably around 12 features of my products came from potential clients and by listening to them.

[saimiam]

I'd refer you back to this -

> Even if they never buy from you, if they recommend you to a peer, they've given you a patina of credibility that no online marketing effort can match.

Marketers have this rule of thumb that you need between 3-7 touchpoints before your target becomes a customer. So, after one interaction with someone at a seminar, you are about 1/5 the way towards making the sale.

Don't lose heart - marketing and sales is as much, if not more, about the grind as it is about the product itself.

Don't organize events.

Also, there's a difference between listening for features which can usually be asked as "What" questions and questions which are designed to get your counterpart to solve your problem for you. I'd recommend a book called "Never Split the Difference" on how to ask questions to make the other person work for you without them even realizing it. It's by an ex-FBI hostage negotiator. His insights were used to save lives and personally, I found the book useful.