9 Steps, I Reached the First 100 Clients for a Startup by Social Media Marketing
—From Specific to General. IF I CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU!
Extreme LOW Customer Acquisition Cost
Thanks for your interest to my story.
My name is Chanjuan Zhang, an NYU master’s candidate in Integrated Marketing. In the summer of 2014, I did an internship in a startup, CRUM Real Estate, to brand and market the company to China without any foundation. In three months, I acquired 200 followers on Company Weibo, connected with more than 100 clients, and gained over $28,000 revenue to the founder, Ramon Crum.
The marketing cost of customer acquisition in this whole period was $315.
Sounds crazy?
Nope. Just 9 steps.
Remember, I CAN DO IT SO CAN YOU.
1. Establish Domain Social Media Platform
I chose Weibo, the “Chinese Twitter” as domain platform. After signing up, I read the first-6-month posts of 9 main competitors and other 20 popular accounts to enlighten myself.
Do market research and analysis of target audience behavior before choosing domain social media platform.
It’s really hard to start posting. What and how we could post on it?
It’s not suitable to do what our successful competitors are doing now, because they already have customer base but nor do us.
See what successful competitors did before, and do better than them.
2. Try Multiple Connection Channels
We paid $20 for Weibo Membership to gain the access to advanced features such as sticky post. In the top post, I provided different channels to contact me: Weibo, message, QQ, Wechat, Email, and a questionnaire for their apartment renting expectation.
To my surprise, more than 30 people filled in the questionnaire, and one third of them didn’t use any other connection channel.
A person checks Email once a day may always be online for Wechat, while a person hesitates to contact you may spend more time doing a questionnaire.
Recommend questionnaire tool:
You never know which connection channel is the most preferred by your customers, unless you try all of them.
3. Content Marketing
I regularly posted 6 pieces of work on Weibo a day, 3 for apartment sources from the company, 1 for renting information, and 2 for other topics international students care about such as Visa and air ticket. For questions clients asked me lots of times, I did interviews with the Founder, Ramon, and wrote articles about renting information in New York.
Variety of social media pre-schedule tools allowed us to maximize the impression by posting at specific time. For pre-tweet tools, my SEO Professor Matthew Capala recommends hootsuite.com and buffer.com. More options please see: 10 Apps To Schedule Future Tweets on Twitter.
Best Buy does similar things in an old campaign. It provided free online tech supports and Q&A for different kinds of digital devices and sold large amount of product to those asking questions.
Give away free content to target audience and provide product and service at the same time.
4. Create Credibility
I positioned myself as an intern in the company and an NYU master’s candidate in all posts, but not an anonymous customer service representative. I used voice chat rather than text as much as I could, to make my clients hear my sincerity and trust me. They knew I stood on the same side with them.
My personal social media accounts were transparent to all clients who contacted with me. I wrote an article about my personal recommendations for apartment renting and posted it on chasedream, a forum that most international students visit regularly before they come abroad. The post was via my personal account which records my past 2 years valuable posts. I connected my first client here, and then the second, 10th, 20th…
I knew Ramon is a great broker and we could provide satisfied service. You established your business and you know it is trustworthy.
“Be personal, Stand Out from the Crowd”—Stuart McKeown
Brilliant Article, almost summarized what I did:
“The Startup Guide to Finding Customers” — Stuart McKeown
It’s not about making you and your company reliable; it’s about you, a person always reliable. You worth trust.
Take full use of your personal reputation.
5. Showing Up
“80% of SUCCESS is Showing Up” — Woody Allen
I added tags as much as possible to each post, and responded to hot topics on Weibo everyday via the company account. Apart from the regularly 6 posts, I reposted popular topics with valuable comments. Topics were not limited to real estate or international student. Our post gaining most impression was about, Shake Shack.
It says our boss Ramon took us waiting 2 hours for special Shake Shack burgers, and our photo was posted on Shake Shack’s Twitter. I connected 5 popular Weibo accounts which had thousands followers and focus on “eat and play in New York”. As a result, we gained 33,000 impression and 20 reposts, 19 new followers in one day.
To be honest, I knew little about SEO and link building at that time, but it was the implementation of some basic SEO and link building idea affected the result.
This semester, I attend the SEO/SEM class provided by Matthew Capala in NYU and it helps a lot. I highly recommend it.
Take use of trends and hot topics on social media, and build links with popular accounts as much as you could.
6. Don’t Forget Video
Extract of the first video we did for clients.
Unprofessional, right? I know.
But this video showed details of the apartment, for those who wanted to sign a lease before they come to New York. This apartment was signed for this video, and all other clients wanted this kind of video after it!
Customers want to see the real, not advertisement.
Do you know YouTube is the second large search engine now, while the first is Google?
Use video, no hesitation!
7. Customer analysis
I created an EXCEL to record the data of all clients. Apart from their basic information and requirement for apartment, I also recorded the connection channels, contact times, and summary of each touch point and then analyzed the record one by one. I contacted clients via their preferred channels once a week , a frequency I think would not bother them nor lose opportunity, until this client signed a lease with us, with our competitors, or by himself.
I found the best way and timing to present our price and service process. In addition, from the way they asked me questions, I could expect the conversion rate of this connection. Recorded data also helped me to keep tracking each client.
Analyze each of your customer, before you have large enough sample size for SPSS.
8. Promotion and Reward
I did a lucky draw in early August, the time that last group of international students in fall semester started to rent apartment. One chance a day, rewarding free airport pick up. Everyone wanted to join had to follow company account first and repost the lucky draw.
We spent $295 for airport pickup.
One third of the lucky people became our customers.
Have a grateful heart, everyone will be rewarded.
Step 9. Repeat and Persist
A Regular Apartment Source
0 repost, 0 comment
726 impression.
No comment doesn’t mean 0 Impression.
Repeat. Persist.
May you succeed!
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This post is part of Inbound Marketing Clinic, a research project at NYU SPS
