While thinking about marketing strategies for our product Crowdnub (which I do 24X7), I played out this imaginary conversation with a smart and cynical-but-well-meaning Rodinhooder at 5 am in the morning in a semi-dream state.
Kiran Kumar (Me): Hey Rodinhood. We built a great product and customers love it. But we are in a situation that many successful companies have been and many Startups will be.
The Smart Rodinhooder (TSR) likes brevity so picks up only the italicized parts of my preamble and ignores the rest.
TSR:OK, so what is this ‘great’ product you built. Give it to me in just ‘20 words’.
(Seeing the emphasis on 20 words, I thought TSR sounded like a mentor on the ‘Power of Ideas’ Program)
Me:We built ‘Crowdnub’, a smarter Social App platform. With Crowdnub, you can build a rich custom-like Social App in minutes.
TSR: 20 words indeed. But platform and custom-like? Sounds a bit counter-intuitive. Explain.
Me: OK. If you are a brand manager or an agency who manages a brand on Facebook, and you wanted run something quick like a sweepstake or a contest, you would choose one of the many platforms that offer snacky widgets for sub-$50 a month. On the other hand, if you wanted to do something elaborate, like tell a story about a new movie or an automobile launch using a lot of content, you would build a custom application because the platforms have limitations.
TSR: So what are you doing different?
Me:Crowdnub offers the richness of a custom-app with the convenience of a SaaS platform.
TSR: How?
Me: Think of the the Social App as a pizza. It has two layers. The creative layer with which the user interacts with the content (toppings – images, videos, maps, polls, multiple choice, rating, user submissions, game-play type) and a social layer (pizza base – gamification, points, virtual and real reward distribution, OpenGraph actions, liking, sharing, the works).
Crowdnub provides a feature-rich creative layer with options seen only in custom-Apps on top of a robust social layer.
TSR: You said pizza and I am now hungry. Quick advice. Sell benefits, not features.
Me: Advice taken. When you use Crowdnub, you are using a next-generation technology platform. You are saving costs and time, big time.
TSR: Now we are talking. Why is your technology that good?
Me: You see Apps have a short shelf-life because APIs and policies of the platforms change constantly. The Tech too changes fast. There is always a better way to do things – a new language, a new standard, a better framework, a more robust database management system etc. To be on top of this all takes Technology to be in your DNA. Brands now take social seriously. If as an agency, Technology is not your métier, you may want to use Crowdnub next time, because tech is in our DNA.
TSR: And what was that about saving time and costs?
Me: On Crowdnub, you create one App and run campaigns for your different needs within that one App via a beautiful CMS. So if you have your content ready, you can create and run your first campaign in no time. Our pricing is variable, meaning you don’t pay a fixed cost but only for the number of days you run the campaign based on the features you select for the campaign.
There are a few other things too.
TSR: What features or benefits?
Me: Benefits
TSR: Go on.
Me: You see the dark side of Social Apps is that Users have to ‘Allow’ the App. Some users typically drop off at this point. With Crowdnub, since you are changing the campaigns in your App and not creating another App, Users who have allowed the App once will see your next campaign without any friction. Another positive is that all the user behaviour data is available to you in one App. This is a big deal if the brand cares about data. Crowdnub provides powerful targeting capabilities. You can show different content to different people in the same App.
TSR: The last one is a feature but I will excuse you. However, a ‘platform’ has limitations right? Brands always want something new.
Me: True. Crowdnub is flexible and allows for full customization. You can simply change the topping (say a flash/HTML game) and run it on the base (social layer). We can also customize the base per the brands needs.
TSR: Who are the customers who loved it.
Me: This is what Meghana Bhat, ECD, WebChutney said after using Crowdnub for their client Saint Gobain.
Crowdnub delivers what it promises, but what’s even more interesting is how easy it is to uniquely mix the rich features that platform offers. We were able to set up a quiz app within hours and the users responded by answering 99.6% of all the question that popped up in the app (only 0.04% clicked on the ‘skip’ button). Clearly, this is one of the easiest ways to boost engagement with a brand.
Khushboo Salian, Brand Manager of Wildcraft, India’s premier outdoor gear company, used Crowdnub and said this.
Crowdnub’s claims are seriously true. We couldn’t have done what we did in such a short span of time without Crowdnub. We actually launched our campaign just a few hours after our first one ended. Congrats to the Crowdnub team.
TSR:You guys seemed to have covered all the bases then. What was the situation you were talking about being in initially?
Me: Well how do we take this message to the larger audience; Tell them that the biggest challenge that the world faces is not malaria or malnutrition but the complexity of Apps.
TSR: You talk a little too much.
Me: Sorry.
TSR: Essentially you are saying your challenge is marketing.
Me: Yes. So what’d you do if you were in my shoes?
TSR: How much can you spend on Advertising?
Me: Zilch. We are a start-up.
TSR: What the $&%*. How can you spread the word without spending any money?
Me: But Alok said advertising is not marketing.
TSR: (Cusses Alok under the breath “Need to teach this Alok fellow a lesson. Maybe I will pan him anonymously on Quora this week”.) OK my friend, here is what you do…
juiiii..juiiii…peep…peep..
At this point, I wake up and realize that it is not TSR but my year-and-half son driving his imaginary car in bed.
So if you are that TSR I have been talking to in my sleep (never mind the shoe size), please leave your comments below or write to me at kiran (at) adeptocorp (dot) com with your ideas. Appreciate your help.
—
Kiran Kumar is the Co-founder and CEO of Adepto Solutions. The first Product company set up by ex-Googlers in India.
Tejas Patel
No suggestions at this stage but enjoyed reading the writeup. Thanks.
Kiran Kumar
Ha ha. Thanks Tejas.
Deepak Mittal
Hi Kiran,
One of the things you can possibly do is to ride on the market reach of the apps developed on your platform. Give a discounted pricing in exchange of a few campaigns to promote your platform via campaigns running from within their app scope. (if I’ve correctly understood from your post that campaigns run within an app instance on a platform)
Since the platform is addressing the social space, I believe it will have elements and widgets of social virality, throw up a percentage of impressions promoting your platform in the campaigns that get delivered via any of the apps built on it in return of either better pricing/free usage to the app maker. The discovery of the platform should happen by the app creators from within the app user fraternity.
Just like a shopping cart maker invariably would use its own cart to sell the extensions and showcase its features, capitalize on using the platform features themselves as one of the means to promote it to those who will eventually pay for it.
Best Wishes, we’d experiment with it sometime soon!
Deepak
Sandipan Nath
Dear Kiran,
Storytelling is not everyones cup of tea.
And you have made ur mark!… introducing your product in a brilliant wrapped up story, explaining major benifits.
Personally I’ve enjoyed it. And believe, others too have. Best of luck 🙂
Kiran Kumar
Hi Deepak, thanks for your comments. We do include our branding and link back to the Crowdnub site for the standard app. One conundrum is that the end-users of the app are not the buyers of the application, the brands are. So for a B2B2C model like ours, the back-links aren’t that needle movers.
Shahnawaz Khan
Kiran: Very nice read & I enjoyed reading it.
I think apart from Brand Managers, it’s actually the digital agencies who could be your real buyers/customers. I think it is Digital Marketing folks take the decisions (on behalf of the brand) on what platform to run the campaign on. It is the digital agencies (who work on retainership basis) who come up with the campaign ideas, get those vetted by brand managers and then fine-tune/choose one or more campaign to run. Now the campaign can be part of a bigger brand strategy and i think brand managers will be less of decision makers on what platform to use.
So, you will need to get partnerships with Digital Agencies (and similar marketing agencies) to have your platform as the platform of choice for launching campaigns. Now the drivers & needs for them could be very different (price, value, ease of use, support etc etc — apart from platform adding value to the campaign) from the needs of the brand manager (campaign success and increased awareness, impressions etc etc). So, your pitch and message for these two important stakeholders needs to be slightly different
Few Suggestions:
Many more suggestions but we can discuss over a cup of coffee 🙂
PS: I love the site & can see ‘n’ number of add-ons that can be built on top of this 🙂
Kiran Kumar
Shahnawaz, a wonderful reply. Thanks much for your insights. At the moment, we are talking to both brand managers and digital agencies to see what is that they are looking for.
Shahnawaz Khan
In continuation to my above post, few other suggestions:
I had a behind-the-scenes look at your site (by creating an account :-)) and suggest the following:
Kiran Kumar
Shahnawaz, you are The Smart Rodinhood I was talking to in my sleep. Let’s have coffee. Please reach me on kiran at adeptocorp dot com.
Pawan Deokule
Dream Talk – nice theme
Its always better to have a conversation than a discourse, Kiran it is part of the digital ethos to have a conversation and your writing style has beautifully put your idea into comprehension.
While design can help you move from a tech strong world and advertising seems like an easy answer, the much elluded truth is that sometimes all the easy solutions never seem to work.
If you were to put your TG in perspective, look at what drives their sales. If you are trying to make a sale, perhaps you should help your clients make their sales. This becomes a compelling reason to buy your solution.
Marketing is about creating compelling reasons for consumers to consume and not buy a product.
Sales is then only logistics and consumer satisfaction or a perception of value for money.
All the Best!
Kiran Kumar
Thanks Sandipan. Glad you liked it.
Kiran Kumar
Pawan, thanks for your comment.
“Marketing is about creating compelling reasons for consumers to consume and not buy a product.” Well said.
There is no doubt that the best product is one that impact sales directly. But it is futile to believe your product is one such when it is not. Some of the best and popular SaaS products (Mailchimp, Freshbooks) are ‘Enablers’ than ‘Impacters’.
asha chaudhry
trhs enterprise calling planet kiran adepto kumar…
do you copy?
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/announcing-the-november-tee-winners
:))))))