So I had an interesting conversation the other day with a lovely lady who heads the growth team of a leading startup in Nigeria, our discussion was around startup customer acquisition and retention.
I just wanted to share some insights from that conversation with everyone.
For startups, customer acquisition and retention are the lifeblood of the business, the ability of a startup to quickly scale its customer acquisition as well as have a plan of action for retention will mean the difference between life and death – literally – for that startup.
So how do you acquire customers in a country like Nigeria? Some of the internal challenges facing startup marketers in Nigeria are:
- The product was probably not built in-house/locally; hence the marketing team has no connection whatsoever with the product or with the team that built it.
- Marketing isn’t crystal clear on who the target audience is, what their preferences are and where they congregate.
- There is a lack of clarity on who the ideal user of our product or service is, there’s a lack of focus on what matters to the customer and hence total confusion on how to find and engage this ideal customer with our product/service.
- Budgets are limited (as if that stopped anyone) and the investors’ only obsession is with sales and more sales.
These and many more challenges keep startup founders up at night, however the important thing to note here is that startup success can be linked to two very important factors.
- An overriding obsession with the customer (delivering the most superior product or service to them)
- Marketing campaigns that are customer driven, customer fueled.
Customer Obsession
Being obsessed with your customer is in itself a hack, I know the word might be cliché in startup circles, but it does exist and the reason is that not many businesses are out to truly satisfy a need and are obsessed with how to help the customer.
So if your startup happens to fall in the category of those truly obsessed with meeting the pain point of your customers, you’ve already hacked the system in your favour and the benefits are,
- It will force you to know your customers inside out, thereby obeying the first law “Thou shall know thy customers.”
- You will have a singular laser focus on breaking down any barriers to delivering your product or service to the customer e.g. Marketing budget limitations, infrastructure/logistic challenges, clash of egos and viewpoints. All such challenges will eventually be overcome because your startup has the right mindset.
- This obsession with the customer will force your team to continuously look for better ways, better features and better iterations of your initial product that will then be the driver of long-term growth for your startup.
Customer Driven Marketing Campaigns
In all my years working within the digital marketing space, the most effective marketing for startups or for any other type of business for that matter are marketing campaigns that are customer driven or customer fueled.
Startups in Nigeria groan and curse, if only they had the marketing budgets of Jumia or Konga, they would scale faster.
While not undermining the fact that having a marketing war chest will ease the pressure on startup founders, of its own a marketing war chest is nothing, without the expertise, persistence, experience of the people who will allocate the budget and what platforms they will decide to use.
Even Konga had to learn their lessons and their new marketing campaign #FoundOnKonga with a more streamlined focus on the customer and a beautiful new video to go with it is already seeing the kind of traction that they should already have been seeing long ago, the only difference here, is that they switched focus to the customer for this campaign.
Before I give some examples of other customer driven marketing campaigns, let me also address a particular issue that all startups tend to have. The issue of Growth.
In the beginning, I said startups live or die by their ability to acquire customers, however there is a misconception surrounding startup growth. Rapid, unsustainable growth is just as bad as no growth to a startup.
Ideally, growth should be organic; because of self imposed pressures and limitations startup founders put themselves in pressure cookers, hence their obsession for growth also becomes their downfall.
By all means strive for growth whilst keeping costs and operating expenses low and you will realize that even a 5% growth rate would keep the lights on and smiles on the faces of your employees.
Somehow, startups have been wired to think that if they don’t conquer the world, be in 3 continents and 52 countries, that somehow they aren’t a big success, it’s the same scam that allows women to dress half naked to public events all in the name of Fashion. Think different!
Back to our marketing campaigns
Referral Marketing; if your startup hasn’t or isn’t currently setting up and leveraging of referral marketing, then you need a new marketing team.
The most famous referral marketing has to be the referral magic executed by Dropbox.
Inspired by a similar program by PayPal, Dropbox increased sign ups by 60% and in the space of 15months went from 100,000 to 4,000,000 users, with a whooping 35% of daily signups coming from referral marketing.
No online ads, no social media marketing or traditional ad spend could ever have driven that type of growth. They instituted a double-sided referral program, where both the referrer and the referee were given free space on Dropbox. For the finer details of that campaign click here.
What to think about starting with a referral marketing campaign
- Leverage technology, there are tons of referral marketing applications that deliver end to end services at the fraction of the cost to your team, if they decided to handle it all manually. They help with landing page set up, referral marketing links, and referral rewards etc. Automating that process means you and your team can focus on strategy and testing to see what works best.
- A double-sided referral campaign has been proven to get more results than a single sided campaign. Depending on what service you offer, look for additional value to present to your existing customers when they refer a friend and also give the friend that has been referred something free, making it a win-win for both parties, make that win-win-win, cause you also win as the company.
- Use the most effective distribution platforms For a tech based business, email is undoubtedly your platform of choice, reach out to all existing users via a well crafted email marketing campaign that communicates the benefits of your referral program.
- Remember, referral programs do not create demand, they amplify it.
Influencer marketing; so your startup wants to quickly spread word about their cool new product, leverage influencers.
Your ideal Influencers are personalities that have been able to amass a following that best fits your ideal customers, reach out to multiple influencers that fit this persona and watch them amplify your content.
Low cost and brutally effective, albeit, with some hard work on the part of your team in looking for and negotiating with the right influencers.
All marketing is brutal; don’t know why anyone wants to be a marketer.
Editor’s note: Alexander Edem is Head of Digital Strategy at Amplify Digital Agency. He helps brands make the most of new media platforms while creating memorable digital experiences for their customers. He can be reached at alex.edem@amplify.ng.
