Building A Mobile Platform Around My Lifestyle Brand — A Product Case Study
An idea for building a self-sustaining mobile platform around my entrepreneurship lifestyle brand Billion Or Bust.
Story time…
We (my business partner and I) started Billion Or Bust in 2015 as a lifestyle brand for minority entrepreneurs and creatives. As creatives/entrepreneurs ourselves, a lot of the examples we had of shakers and movers in that world didn’t look like us, and we weren’t the only ones who felt that way. We created the brand with the intention of highlighting the entrepreneurs and creatives from backgrounds that are often overlooked.
What’s with the name? Our mission for Billion Or Bust was to inspire a billion underrepresented entrepreneurs and creatives to pursue their dreams and goals, and to collectively generate billions of dollars in the process. And as an entrepreneur, A million isn’t cool anymore, you know what’s cool? A Billion! (shout out to Sean Parker/Justin Timberlake).
With any brand in the social media age you have to do more than sell a product, you have to build a community and you have to essentially become a mini media company.
What we know now as important keys to growing a business, didn’t exist or were little known secrets in 2015. It’s safe to say we experienced a lot of trial & error, several false starts, and a couple of pivots.
Billion Or Bust has had tons of iterations as we tried our hand at the media side of the brand, looking for any way to put the name on the map. In that experimentation, we unknowingly created the pieces (or at least the blueprint) to the puzzle we were trying to build all along.
Be More Like Red Bull
Red Bull has held the keys to success in this new age well before it was the cool thing to do. They created an entire ecosystem around their brand of energy drinks, one that has amassed into an empire of media brands, sporting events, and even a few professional sports teams. They are a product study dream. They are what I see Billion Or Bust becoming, but in the business space.
OK! Story time is over, let’s get to the idea.
Like I mentioned before, Billion Or Bust (BOB) has dabbled in a variety of spaces:
- Video Content (vlogs, docu-series’)
- Editorial Content
- Physical Products (Apparel, Mugs, Stickers, etc)
- Audio Content (podcasts)
Each of these separate spaces on a separate platform, fragmenting the experience for our target audience.
The Problem:
The majority of our content is viewed on mobile devices, and 90% of it is viewed on platforms that we do not own. This means that we have to adhere to the rules and regulations of those platforms and can lose our distribution on those platforms if the owners see fit. Plus they’re getting all the data from our core audience.
Also, this fragmentation makes for a horrible community-building experience. If we were to offer memberships, our members would need to have logins for multiple websites, and limited customization. This is not ideal.
Solution:
Eliminate the fragmentation by merging every piece of our puzzle into one mobile platform. We want to place all things BOB into one mobile app. This centralizes the experience and allows us to own the platform and have 100% control over monetization.
Risks/Assumptions
Assuming switching our digital focus to a mobile-only platform will help draw the majority of our current users to engage more with the brand, we face the risk of leaving a lot of potential users on the table by creating an ecosystem away from the major social media platforms.
Defining Our Target Audience
Entrepreneurs: Specifically minority (Race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) entrepreneurs, but we welcome all to partake.
Goal: to learn as much about entrepreneurship as possible from people who look like them and understand their point of view. To create a successful business the correct way.
Creatives: Individuals who may not be entrepreneurial by nature, but want to make a living as a creative.
Goal: to get exposure to new ways of using creativity to fund their lives. Acquire entrepreneurial principles to help understand the business side of being a professional creative.
User Feedback
We ran a customer feedback survey to get data on what our current users and target audience are looking for in a multifaceted platform. Some of the Key results we gathered are as follows:
- 80% of respondents wanted Video and Audio content
- 60% of respondents preferred short actionable articles. (0% response for Long-form)
- Want access to events, (especially member-only events if subscribing)
- Quality over quantity when it comes to content, but it should also be consistent.
- Balance of male and female representation in the content
A lot of this feedback was spot on with many of our assumptions when creating content channels, however we often got away from something before it had the opportunity to reach its full potential. The customer feedback helped confirm some of the initial hunches we had for our content strategy.
The BOB App will have 4 Core Verticals in the MVP:
- Featured Content
- Media Content (Audio/Video)
- Short-form Articles
- Shop
Featured Content
The featured vertical is the default landing on the home screen, This vertical features the newest and trending content on the platform. It features the top pieces of content from each vertical in one, allowing users to quickly stay abreast of the most popular content on the platform and join the discussions.
Video Content
Video content is a major component to our overall content strategy, we have several docu-series’, shorts, and talks under our BillionOrBust TV sub-brand. We will continue our original content strategy on the app, bringing in other content creators to help fill out the variety of video content within the vertical
From the “Home” flow, users can swipe over the the video vertical and scroll to view the most recent video content.
Audio Content
Audio content was also a popular content type that our users wanted more of, This vertical will house all of Billion Or Bust’s original podcasts as well as audio versions of talks from our network of entrepreneur influencers.
From the “Home” flow, users can swipe over to the audio vertical and scroll through the most recent audio content. There is a comment section to help promote engagement on the content in addition to doubling as another metric along with number of streams.
Short-Form Articles
Short form content will probably be re-purposed into weekly tips, or be released into a monthly digital magazine format within the app. This idea is still in its infancy as we figure out our written content strategy moving forward.
We do know that the Magazine style content will be for subscribing members only. There will also be member/subscriber-only content in other verticals.
From the “Home” flow, users can swipe over the the Articles vertical and scroll down into the cards view where they will see the most recent editorial content.
Shop
Product is the core of Billion Or Bust as a brand, A shop experience is paramount. Subscribers/Members will benefit from discounts and special product drops accessible directly from the app.
From the “Home” flow, users can swipe over to the shop vertical and scroll to view the most recent product stories.
So how are we going to get paid??
Monetization will come through product sales and memberships. We plan for our membership program to be evergreen, perks will be added as we grow our network of partnerships.
Additional Membership Ideas To Explore:
- Access to member-only events
- Access to a network of co-working spaces
- Access to office hours with an entrepreneurial mentor
- Online course or webinar access
I believe the app can be the digital base for a real-world ecosystem, Membership fees will ideally function similar to an Amazon Prime membership
A Question for the Audience:
How much would you pay for a membership to BOB (monthly/yearly) if it included the perks listed above? What perks would you want to see included to make a membership worth while?
Let me know in the comments.
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