How startups like Dropbox, Airbnb, Groupon and others got their first users.
This post is a translation of an article from reddit and is a squeeze of the most interesting facts about what steps were taken by well-known startups in the first months of its existence in order to attract the first users. Some tips in the article may seem obvious, but in general, the selection of stories seemed to me quite interesting, and therefore I wanted to share it.
Under the cut of the history of companies such as Dropbox, Reddit, Quora, Foursquare, Groupon, Tinder and Airbnb.
In 2008, Dropbox actively fought to attract new users. They launched a campaign in Adsense, but to no avail. For every $ 300 spent, they attracted one user paying $ 99 per product. After some time, Drew Houston and his team decided to try something else.
Drew made a simple four-minute video that showed how Dropbox works. The text description of the service was not very impressive, and against its background the video worked amazingly. An important aspect that is worth mentioning is that the video was made specifically for the community, which was going to present it. Drew was a member of Digg and knew what kind of things would be warmly received in this community. If you take a closer look, there are many references to popular memes in the video, such as test plan reports (in the original TPS report ) and Tom Cruise. It had a lot of popular jokes in the community, due to which he saw quickly hit the top. The next day, Dropbox already had 70,000 new registrations.
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Another Dropbox solution that we can apply in the marketing of our own projects was to provide additional services for social activity. Dropbox launched an extensive campaign during which you could talk about the service on Facebook and Twitter and get an additional 128 MB of disk space for it. This was what the users really wanted. As a result, 2.8 million invitations were sent in the first 30 days.
A more complete history and some details can be found here (English) .
Quora and reddit solved the problem “empty site = no users / no users = empty site” in a similar way. The founders of both services spent the first months filling them with content on their own.
In the case of Quora, the creators simply asked and answered many questions from their own accounts. Reddit had a more interesting approach. Instead of simply using their own accounts, the founders of the service created fake users, so that everything looked as if links were published by different people. In the form of posting links, the third field was “User Name”. According to Steve Hoffman, co-founder of reddit, several months passed before there was no need to publish news on their own in order to fill them with the main page.
At first, they also tried to keep all users in one place. At that time, reddit did not have subsections, and Quora was mainly focused on technology. Instead of sharing users, they tried to keep everyone in one place, creating the feeling that the community is larger than it really is.
Quora and reddit report (eng) .
Foursquare took the old idea of ​​location-based applications and added some interesting features that really attracted attention, such as badges, for example. The opportunity to become a “mayor”, that is, a person who is mainly celebrated in one particular place, quickly fell in love with users and became a habit.
Foursquare also provided facility owners with extensive user experience. After this or that business had a page on Foursquare, the owners had the opportunity to interact with users who were noted in their establishments - whether they wanted to just chat with the most active visitors or reward such people with something.
And the last, most significant part of the growth of Foursquare, was their strategy of moving from city to city. Each time, expanding to a new city, they acquired a huge number of new users, thanks to the "word of mouth" effect ("have you heard that you have earned a four square in our city?") And coverage in local media.
Foursquare Report
I really like the story behind Groupon, as this is a great example of what we are talking about so much in this section of reddit ( r / Entrepreneur ). Start in the local market and make the minimum viable product.
Groupon started as locally as possible. Its creators walked around the building where they rented the office and suggested that people register. Their first promotion? Pizza for half the price in the restaurant on the ground floor. From here came the first 500 users.
After that, they settled on local products and services. Because large companies like Amazon or Wal-Mart were able to negotiate very low prices, even the largest group shopping sites could not compete with them in selling things like televisions or telephones. Instead, Groupon focused on unique local business products. Many of these small institutions had no marketing at all, so Groupon's proposals were lured, which allowed the startup to bargain at much more attractive prices.
Following the MVP strategy, Andrew Mason did not want to waste time developing a full-fledged platform around the idea of ​​Groupon. Instead of building a big team like the one he had in his first venture business, he brought together several people and brought up a WordPress blog to which this team published offers. Coupons were sent to personal email and no one in the company had a clear understanding of their role or position. They spent their first months trying to see how many users they could attract, as quickly as possible, to test the viability of the idea. And only when it became clear that they felt something big, they became involved in the business side of the company.
One last thing: Groupon focused on offers that were social in nature. They organized promotions for cafes, restaurants and cinemas. All these places belong to the type of places where you invite other people; This naturally led to the popularization of the website.
Report on Groupon (English) .
There are 2 key points in Tinder. It began as a local service and was deadly simple.
The app did an excellent job, based on the old idea of ​​online dating and completely reworking it. Instead of groups of people and the search system, an image of one person just appeared in front of you and you were flipping it left or right. By and large, this is the very idea that made HotOrNot and Facemash services popular, but transferred to mobile devices. Such mechanics helped to solve the problem that users often encounter on traditional dating sites. If you are an attractive girl, then you are inundated with messages. If you're not the luckiest young man, then most of your messages go unanswered. Due to the fact that in Tinder you cannot send messages to people who did not like you in return, both of these problems are largely resolved.
And no less interesting, Tinder also began as a local service. For such applications, having 50 users concentrated in one place is much better than having 5000 users scattered from each other. My favorite part of Tinder's strategy: they held exclusive parties at the University of Southern California. To get to it, it was necessary to install Tinder on your phone. You can imagine how many conversations around the application they received as a result.
Report on Tinder (eng) .
Also of interest is the Airbnb strategy. Unlike reddit and Quora, an approach with artificial sentences for them would not have worked. That's why they acted a little differently. They used a platform for growth, on which there were already many offers of free houses: Craiglist. A lot of people who have placed ads on their homes on Craiglist have received weird emails from the “big Airbnb fan”.
Each letter came from a semi-anonymous Gmail account, like Jill D. The thing is that these messages worked. Many people began to publish ads about their homes on both sites, which solved the problem with users who came in search of housing and found only an empty website. Finding offers for a site like Airbnb was much more difficult.
As a note, another thing that helped them at the start was going around the homes of their users and helping with photographing. They moved from $ 200 a week to $ 400, after they updated the site with new photos for each offer. Perhaps it does not look so impressive against the background of the money that Airbnb makes today.
Report on Airbnb (eng) .
The whole point of this compilation is to see what startups have done that have become successful, and decide which of these we can apply in our own marketing. Here are a few key points to think about:
Under the cut of the history of companies such as Dropbox, Reddit, Quora, Foursquare, Groupon, Tinder and Airbnb.
Dropbox grew from 5,000 to 75,000 registrations in one night
In 2008, Dropbox actively fought to attract new users. They launched a campaign in Adsense, but to no avail. For every $ 300 spent, they attracted one user paying $ 99 per product. After some time, Drew Houston and his team decided to try something else.
Drew made a simple four-minute video that showed how Dropbox works. The text description of the service was not very impressive, and against its background the video worked amazingly. An important aspect that is worth mentioning is that the video was made specifically for the community, which was going to present it. Drew was a member of Digg and knew what kind of things would be warmly received in this community. If you take a closer look, there are many references to popular memes in the video, such as test plan reports (in the original TPS report ) and Tom Cruise. It had a lot of popular jokes in the community, due to which he saw quickly hit the top. The next day, Dropbox already had 70,000 new registrations.
')
Another Dropbox solution that we can apply in the marketing of our own projects was to provide additional services for social activity. Dropbox launched an extensive campaign during which you could talk about the service on Facebook and Twitter and get an additional 128 MB of disk space for it. This was what the users really wanted. As a result, 2.8 million invitations were sent in the first 30 days.
A more complete history and some details can be found here (English) .
How reddit and Quora solved the chicken and egg problem (lack of content and users)
Quora and reddit solved the problem “empty site = no users / no users = empty site” in a similar way. The founders of both services spent the first months filling them with content on their own.
In the case of Quora, the creators simply asked and answered many questions from their own accounts. Reddit had a more interesting approach. Instead of simply using their own accounts, the founders of the service created fake users, so that everything looked as if links were published by different people. In the form of posting links, the third field was “User Name”. According to Steve Hoffman, co-founder of reddit, several months passed before there was no need to publish news on their own in order to fill them with the main page.
At first, they also tried to keep all users in one place. At that time, reddit did not have subsections, and Quora was mainly focused on technology. Instead of sharing users, they tried to keep everyone in one place, creating the feeling that the community is larger than it really is.
Quora and reddit report (eng) .
Foursquare
Foursquare took the old idea of ​​location-based applications and added some interesting features that really attracted attention, such as badges, for example. The opportunity to become a “mayor”, that is, a person who is mainly celebrated in one particular place, quickly fell in love with users and became a habit.
Foursquare also provided facility owners with extensive user experience. After this or that business had a page on Foursquare, the owners had the opportunity to interact with users who were noted in their establishments - whether they wanted to just chat with the most active visitors or reward such people with something.
And the last, most significant part of the growth of Foursquare, was their strategy of moving from city to city. Each time, expanding to a new city, they acquired a huge number of new users, thanks to the "word of mouth" effect ("have you heard that you have earned a four square in our city?") And coverage in local media.
Foursquare Report
Groupon started with local MVP strategy (minimum viable product)
I really like the story behind Groupon, as this is a great example of what we are talking about so much in this section of reddit ( r / Entrepreneur ). Start in the local market and make the minimum viable product.
Groupon started as locally as possible. Its creators walked around the building where they rented the office and suggested that people register. Their first promotion? Pizza for half the price in the restaurant on the ground floor. From here came the first 500 users.
After that, they settled on local products and services. Because large companies like Amazon or Wal-Mart were able to negotiate very low prices, even the largest group shopping sites could not compete with them in selling things like televisions or telephones. Instead, Groupon focused on unique local business products. Many of these small institutions had no marketing at all, so Groupon's proposals were lured, which allowed the startup to bargain at much more attractive prices.
Following the MVP strategy, Andrew Mason did not want to waste time developing a full-fledged platform around the idea of ​​Groupon. Instead of building a big team like the one he had in his first venture business, he brought together several people and brought up a WordPress blog to which this team published offers. Coupons were sent to personal email and no one in the company had a clear understanding of their role or position. They spent their first months trying to see how many users they could attract, as quickly as possible, to test the viability of the idea. And only when it became clear that they felt something big, they became involved in the business side of the company.
One last thing: Groupon focused on offers that were social in nature. They organized promotions for cafes, restaurants and cinemas. All these places belong to the type of places where you invite other people; This naturally led to the popularization of the website.
Report on Groupon (English) .
Tinder
There are 2 key points in Tinder. It began as a local service and was deadly simple.
The app did an excellent job, based on the old idea of ​​online dating and completely reworking it. Instead of groups of people and the search system, an image of one person just appeared in front of you and you were flipping it left or right. By and large, this is the very idea that made HotOrNot and Facemash services popular, but transferred to mobile devices. Such mechanics helped to solve the problem that users often encounter on traditional dating sites. If you are an attractive girl, then you are inundated with messages. If you're not the luckiest young man, then most of your messages go unanswered. Due to the fact that in Tinder you cannot send messages to people who did not like you in return, both of these problems are largely resolved.
And no less interesting, Tinder also began as a local service. For such applications, having 50 users concentrated in one place is much better than having 5000 users scattered from each other. My favorite part of Tinder's strategy: they held exclusive parties at the University of Southern California. To get to it, it was necessary to install Tinder on your phone. You can imagine how many conversations around the application they received as a result.
Report on Tinder (eng) .
Airbnb used another platform (Craiglist) to attract first users.
Also of interest is the Airbnb strategy. Unlike reddit and Quora, an approach with artificial sentences for them would not have worked. That's why they acted a little differently. They used a platform for growth, on which there were already many offers of free houses: Craiglist. A lot of people who have placed ads on their homes on Craiglist have received weird emails from the “big Airbnb fan”.
I am writing to you because you have one of the best deals on Craiglist in the Tahoe area, and I would like to advise you to publish it on the largest rental site on the Internet, Airbnb. The site already has 3,000,000 visits per month!
Each letter came from a semi-anonymous Gmail account, like Jill D. The thing is that these messages worked. Many people began to publish ads about their homes on both sites, which solved the problem with users who came in search of housing and found only an empty website. Finding offers for a site like Airbnb was much more difficult.
As a note, another thing that helped them at the start was going around the homes of their users and helping with photographing. They moved from $ 200 a week to $ 400, after they updated the site with new photos for each offer. Perhaps it does not look so impressive against the background of the money that Airbnb makes today.
Report on Airbnb (eng) .
Instead of conclusion
The whole point of this compilation is to see what startups have done that have become successful, and decide which of these we can apply in our own marketing. Here are a few key points to think about:
- Make a video that explains the essence of your service, if the text alone does not cope with this task. If you are making a video, make sure that it is focused on the audience to which you are going to present it.
- The best way to ensure that your new community does not resemble a ghost town is to fill it yourself. Using the reddit approach with fake users or following the Quora path, forming a team of active participants at the start depends on what kind of community you are building. In the case of a service like Quora, where the author’s reputation and qualifications are important, the approach with fake users would never work.
- Do other services have a user base to which you could refer? Try using the Airbnb approach and see if you can attract some of them to your website. But at the same time it is important to remember: what you offer should be better in some parameters than existing analogues.
- In many of these stories, locality is key. It is much easier and cheaper to focus on a subset of people than to try to get everyone.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/234027/
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