CHENNAI : Ever since we crossed 1,000 subscribers in one day on our July anniversary, we had been wondering on how to sustain this growth. Growing sales on one special day is not easy, but growing sustained growth for an entire month is rather very difficult. At least it is quite difficult while you are still climbing the mountain. When you have reached the top, you can now see the slopes and slides and rocks and crests across the trek and figure out answers to what to do, when to do and how to do for the growth hacking. Alright! So here’s what worked for us!
Most of us are selling something or the other — be it food, apparels or content — what is equally important as the product quality is the distribution channel. A good book written and stored in a closet, that no one has ever heard or seen of is of no use. A proper distribution channel is required to take your masterpiece to the world.
Similarly, any product needs a proper distribution channel to reach your target audience. For us, we realised Jio Chat as the best platform to reach vernacular audiences. We revamped and launched our channel on Jio Chat app. Within first three days of launch, we had crossed a thousand subscribers and we realised that the platform had a lot of potential. We were initially promoting comics on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram etc but this was a surprising channel for us.
Now, when we look and analyse what went right, it is easier to see that understanding who your right target audience is crucial for the growth hack. And it is equally important to understand which platforms this target audience will be frequenting, is also prominent for the growth. Due to Jio phones being sold at grassroot level, a lot of vernacular population had already been using its native apps — especially Jio Chat. Also the beauty of this app is that you can use the app directly to take the transfer on your web platform. Another key was to give relevant content to them.
A lot of our followers simply loved the horror comic — 13 Days and we have been giving them just that. The question then arises is that — Why did other platforms didn’t do as good? Instagram with its English-language-centric hashtags used to help us reach quite a lot of international art enthusiasts but when it comes to penetrating tier 2 and 3 cities in India and reaching vernacular masses, the platform isn’t as effective.
For Facebook, while we have a good fan following on page and rapid activity on the group, it is difficult to reach new people in a targeted manner, unless of course you pay Facebook for ads — which for a start-up isn’t the most affordable solution. Hope you too will find some idea on finding right distribution channel, determining target audience and reaching them with relevant content.
You can reach Rajeev on
Rajeev@TBSPlanet.com