Rev-ing up Local Language Immersion — Experiment #5

Introduction

My name is Adam McGarity and I am the CEO of The Language Finder (Twitter: @languagefinder). I am part of an experimental incubator that gives startups and entrepreneurs funding in exchange for testing and sharing Lean Startup hypotheses. Here is the link to my original Trello hypothesis card. adamberk helped me run this experiment with funding and mentorship; John Sechrest also helps me on a regular basis with mentorship. Finally, a big thanks to my wife, Nicky, for her support with this.

This experiment was based on the results of my last experiment (#4) , where I used a limited Facebook ad campaign, a landing page, and a contact form to test the level of interest for a “Japanese Immersion Day” (JID) in Seattle…a series of destinations and interactions that keeps attendees using Japanese all day long. From that experiment, I got enough clicks to think that I was on right track with the concept. So I decided to commit to actually running the JID event.

For Experiment #5, here was my hypothesis: “I believe that through a combination of social media, Facebook ads (max $1 per day) and personal networking (cold-calls, emails, follow-up meetings, and MeetUp groups), at least 6 Japanese learners (intermediate/advanced proficiency) will sign up and participate in a “Japanese Immersion Day” in Seattle at a price of $80. I aim to complete this experiment by July 1.”

Logistics

As my central point of focus, I created an event on Eventbrite to share info and manage ticket sales. All my promotions pointed to this page.

I created a Facebook Event (pointing to Eventbrite), and boosted it with a Facebook Ad Campaign…$1/day for 37 days focused on age 18+ English speakers within 50 miles of Seattle who have an interest in Japanese language.

To bring more Japanese people into contact with our group, I created a second event on Eventbrite and a FB ad promotion ($1/day for 15 days, for people with Japanese as their default FB language). This ad was in Japanese, only covered the glassblowing studio tour, and cost $20/person.

I went to two Japanese MeetUps and talked with people about what I was doing: creating a foreign language immersion experience in Seattle. After getting to know the MeetUp organizers, one of them posted JID on their MeetUp group page (reaching about 2,600 members). I’m honored that they trusted me enough to do this…it was a HUGE vote of confidence, and helped make this event successful.

I put in a LOT of legwork and preparation finding out who speaks Japanese in the community. I worked hard at building partnerships with local individuals, businesses, and organizations. Among these were a Japanese Coffee & Tea House, a couple of Japanese shops, a Nichiren Buddhist Temple, a glassblowing studio, a youth hostel, and a Japanese chef. Then, I built an agenda for our group that gave attendees the opportunity to use Japanese in a different way at each destination on our agenda (8 locations total).

During this prep time, I stayed active on the Facebook Page…posting intro pictures and videos for the people and places JID attendees would encounter. And I created a private group for attendees, where they could get language prep materials and resources.

Results

This was my first experiment where I proved my core hypothesis correct. Ten people registered for JID at $80 each (eight of them attended). I interpret this result as a strong first signal that some adult language learners want something more real than a classroom, textbook, or an app. And perhaps they want something still more structured than a language-focused MeetUp.

Aside from my core metric (ticket sales), I was pleased at some other indicators: The main FB ad campaign reached 1,472 people, got 128 clicks, for a CTR of 8.6% ($.29/click). To me, this confirms a strong level of interest in the concept of Local Language Immersion, going well beyond the people who attended.

Less successful was my attempt to attract native Japanese speakers to come along on the glassblowing tour at $20 each. That FB ad campaign reached 765 people, got 12 clicks for a CTR of only 1.6% ($1.25/click)

Commentary

For JID, I was determined to give attendees a unique and great experience. That was a LOT of work, and a lot of details mingling with a lot of ambiguity …and I LOVED it. This was the first concrete step towards my dream of an awesome language academy: The perfect blend of real native-speaker interaction, effective instruction, and innovative tech support.

After the event, I sent a feedback survey to the attendees, and 3 of them responded with a high level of detail. I’m truly grateful for that…detailed feedback is rare and valuable. There were a fair number of positive comments to encourage me. But it was still really tough to take some of the more critical comments, such as “Don’t just give us an itinerary and send us on our way. It feels lazy”. That one stung a bit, but still, it’s something I can learn from…how to better align customer expectations with event planning.

Ultimately, I interpret their time and effort to comment on the JID feedback survey as an sign that they care about the concept of Local Language Immersion. It confirms that I’m on the right track, even if I didn’t get this event perfect.

Also, a note about revenue…JID brought in $800…and I spent exactly that much on the event! I briefly thought I’d generate a small margin, but some extra incidental expenses came up on the day of JID that wiped that out.

No matter…I’ve already identified several ways to manage my expenses better next time. And that’s part of the beauty of treating JID as an iteration of learning…I basically just learned a TON for nothing more that the cost of my time.

Next Steps

In this experiment, I focused on Japanese learners in Seattle. I’ll probably set up another, more limited event for Japanese learners (1 or 2 destinations instead of 8).

But for the purposes of testing my assumptions, I’d really like to see if the same type of event is attractive to French adult learners in Seattle. I’m choosing French for the same reason I chose Japanese…two people learning French have already expressed an interest to me for this. So I’ll replicate my last 2 iterations with some minor modifications:

Stage 1: “I believe that through a combination of Facebook ads (max $1 per day) and personal networking (cold-calls, emails, and follow-up meetings) I can get 10 people to sign up for email updates about an upcoming “French Immersion Day” in Seattle. I aim to complete this experiment by July 21.”

Pending success with Stage 1:

Stage 2: “I believe that through a combination of social media, Facebook ads (max $1 per day) and personal networking (cold-calls, emails, follow-up meetings, and MeetUp groups), at least 6 French learners (intermediate/advanced proficiency) will sign up and participate in a “French Immersion Day” in Seattle at a price of $150. I aim to complete this experiment by Sept. 1.”

Thanks for reading, and I’d appreciate any constructive thoughts or questions you might have. I look forward to sharing my next post.