How I marketed a tech startup to 15k+ active users in 6 months!🚀
I joined Wylo in December 2020 as a marketing intern and found my way into becoming a full-time marketer.
To give context, Wylo is an interest-based social networking platform where you can network with like-minded people, join super niche communities and explore content, articles, and resources based on topics you love.
But how did I make this happen? Let me segregate and explain.
🚀Phase 1: Spreading Awareness (Dec 2020 - Feb 2021)
I started being active on social media channels like Instagram, Linkedin, and Twitter at the beginning.
Also, I joined a few Facebook & Telegram groups and contributed some useful resources and write-ups from my side. This was for the purpose of plugging in Wylo at a later time.
When you start being active and creating content, it becomes important to make sure you execute basic tasks that make up the foundation of the main strategy. They were as follows:
- Selected a color palette to follow for branded content.
- Decided on a pattern to be followed for my content strategy. For instance, Wylo is all about like-minded networking and community building. Hence, I chose educational mixed with humorous content with the help of kickass carousels.
- Posted 5 stories daily and engaged with the help of polls, AMAs and business quizzes.
- Wrote articles on Medium by launching original publications by Wylo and cross-posted them on Facebook and Quora groups.
By doing this, I built a strong substratum i.e content portfolio for the brand.
💡Tools used :
Canva for designing
Buffer and Later for scheduling
Pinterest and Peppertype.ai for content ideas
Signal for auto-tweeting medium articles
🚀Phase 2: Reaching out (March 2021 - April 2021)
It was important to attract quality creators and micro-influencers who had the capability to add value to Wylo with their exclusive content.
I collected a list of some potential creators from Instagram, Buzzsumo, Linkedin, Quora and segregated them based on their categories.
Reaching out to them was a tedious task as I didn’t have any incentive to offer.
I created a framework from scratch and followed it for 2 straight months.
Here’s the framework:
Appreciation them - Help with resources - Engage with their best content - Suggest alternate social media channels - Ask for feedback - keep in touch
💡Other hacks :
Collaborating with Instagram pages for paid promotions.
Answering Quora questions related to Wylo’s essence with an intent to educate.
💡Tools used:
QuestionPro for finding the best Quora questions and answers
Buzzsumo for finding niche influencers
🚀Phase 3: Going all in!! (May 2021 - Present)
One of the biggest turning points of Wylo’s journey was when we closed the pre-seed funding round by one of the best community-driven brands in Asia.
And as they say, with external funding comes loads of responsibilities!
It was time to go all-in and launch something really cool. That’s when we revamped our official website and launched Wylo’s official YouTube and podcast channel.
I reached out to a bunch of startup founders (more than 200 to be precise) for 1-1 interviews and interviewed them. As a result, that garnered hundreds of leads for Wylo.
As the general awareness was spreading, we felt an enormous need to find suitable audiences for the app. I found some niche communities related to entrepreneurship, designing, and coding, and started asking for their individual feedback through bulk messages.
The conversion rate for this strategy was surprisingly good (close to 15%).
After spending a lot of time on organic content, it was time to spread our wings to social media ads. We tried running a few campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, & Instagram seemed to work really well. On the basis of quirky ad copies and targeting tier-1 and tier-2 cities, we managed to maintain the CPI to 5 rupees!
As of now, I am extensively focused on finding community-driven platforms and collaborating with tech startups in the form of long-term partnerships.
💡Tools used :
Zoho CRM for sending bulk emails
Phantombuster for scraping groups and sending bulk messages
TubeBuddy for optimizing YouTube growth
Lusha for finding emails of any individual on Linkedin
The journey of 6 months has been nothing but life-changing.
One thing I have surely learned is that the life of a marketer never ends. It keeps on running with the cycle of innate curiosity and an appetite to experiment like a pro.
If this made you think and wonder or even if you found my journey helpful from a marketing/growth hacking pov, please leave your suggestions and take a look at Wylo. I am sure you won’t regret it!
