How we got more than 1000 users in 7 days
How we did it and so can you…
We launched Offrd on the evening of 4th April and couldn’t have asked for a better reception.
In the last 15 days we have had more than 2500 signups on the platform with more than 1000 signups in the first week.
This is an effort to tell you what we did and how you can do the same to reach your first 1000 users in the shortest time possible.
To give you a brief introduction, Offrd helps startups hire non tech talent via challenges specifically created for that role.
- Create Enthusiasm: Before we launched Offrd, there were a lot of people in our circle who were looking forward to it as we had told them, we are on the verge of launching something new. We gave just about enough information to let them know the space we’re looking at (recruitment) but never gave away the whole picture. This kept our friends (some of whom are social media influencers) intrigued and involved in the process.
Creating and building a movement around the new venture played an important role in getting people excited and making them look forward to it.
2. Pilot: We ran two pilots with YourStory before the launch. It helped get the word out and validated our assumption that people are willing to submit solutions to challenges.
Running pilots proved to be a booster both in terms of validation and reach out.
3. Building a list across platforms: Recruitment is a tough space to crack. One of the most important things in this space is having enough high quality users to serve your customers. Hence, we started experimenting with LinkedIn. The idea was that even in the worst case scenario we should have at least 100 high quality users on the day of the launch.
As it turns out, LinkedIn is a great platform to share updates and get favorable results!
Knowing which platform can work for you and targeting it as per the way it works on that platform is important to make the most of it.
4. Preparing for launch: One of the tricks missed by a lot of companies is that they don’t have a set date to launch.
When your team members don’t know which day is going to be the ‘make or break day’, you are just beating around the bush and will never be able to create a movement (both internally and externally).
Internal: All the team members knew that 4th of April, 7:30PM is when we announce the venture through blogs and social media. If the platform screws up, so be it. For the entire week before the launch, Nagesh (our CTO) and Utkarsh (our rock star intern) spent sleepless nights to get things to as much of a stable state as possible. While Niti (CMO) & I were busy putting everything else in place — right from on boarding companies, writing blog posts, designing social media graphics, making a list of Facebook groups to push our content to, making a list of friends whom we will ask to share the news, so on and so forth.
External: Letting your friend circle know that launch is going to happen at a certain day and time is important. Without 200–300 of your friends looking forward to your new innings, it is going to be tough reaching critical mass in shortest time possible.
4. Launch day: Our blog post was ready a couple of days before the launch and we had intentionally made the cover of the Medium post in a way that when it gets shared on Social Media, image is the most evident aspect that makes people to take a note. At the tap of a button went our blog, social media posts from individual team members (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter), posts on our own social media and yes we ran an ad that day on Facebook and LinkedIn (though with not any satisfactory results).
All of this went out on a tap and we were not jumping around creating it at that point of time.
All our social media looked like this:
5. Being Shameless: We got late by 15 minutes to launch Offrd and it finally happened at 7:45PM. Being entrepreneurs who never hesitate to ask people for help we went about sending a message to hundreds of friends and below is what it looked like within 12 hours, this is only a handful. Our launch post was shared more than 100 times by people in our network. This is also driven by the fact that all of us have been consistently involved in giving back and as they say good karma always comes back :)
People share your updates on social media because of at least one of these two things:
- Direct benefit — You have done something for them in the past or they see you as someone who can be helpful for something in the future
- Coolness by association — Your new venture make them look cool. This happens when the venture is innovative and something that is not very obvious
Please note that neither of the above reasons is morally wrong. It’s just how human psychology works!
The Social Media blitzkrieg ended up creating more than 5,000 impressions within 24 hours.
Generating excitement around the launch via a countdown (both internal and external) was perhaps the most important aspect of the build up. Keeping everyone engaged via social media sustained that excitement and made everyone feel a part of the whole process. On launch day we saw the returns of our hard work.
6. Result: In seven days we stood at more than 1000 sign ups, 15,000+ impressions and countless messages from companies/candidates alike expressing this was much needed.
Conclusion
A flight needs tremendous acceleration for take off, same applies for a consumer facing startup. The much needed acceleration happened because we prepared and planned for it and most importantly had people cheering for us.
We have taken off and it is only the start of our journey. The cruise is going to be a long and exhausting one and if all goes well, we will land safely.
With the hope that you continue showing us your love.
Love,
Prashant Sharma
Founder and CEO, Offrd
If you liked the post, you know what to do!
