This series of TFWL has been a long time coming.
Throughout these several weeks, many things have been going on; lessons were learnt; and emotions were felt. We just piloted our Facebook apparel trading community group the FliccXchangers Community; where the bigger, ultimate vision is that of a world which creates and shares 100x happiness for all to enjoy through barter. While this is only but a baby step in us executing on our vision, there are already certain things which I have learnt (and am in the midst of learning to manage & negotiate).
Let me cut to the chase to my learnings.
My Learnings
- Knowing what story to tell in which channels is important.
The first step is to identify where your potential early adopters are. However, knowing that alone is not enough- they may claim to love and be willing to use something which has been described to be extremely similar to your product- but how do you then convert them and sell them what you believe to be the best for them? I guess saying that your stuff is the best is not sufficient- what matters is whether you are able to address their pain points and prove to be capable to solve an unfulfilled need of theirs. So, what is your story? How are you going to tell it, and where are you going to tell it? I myself have several versions of the similar story running through my head, each of which I can retell in a different way to different people. Who is your target audience and which version of the story will they be most likely to resonate with? That is something that we need to think about.
Where do we tell these stories? Are the channels going to be relevant? I am a believer of the importance of getting quality users on board my community. More on that in Learning Point 4 further on in this piece.
2. Word-of-mouth marketing is the best tool there is to attain credibility and virality.
I think it is easy to rely on a lot of paid media in a way that pushes your message out there to the masses. But while investing in marketing is still a necessary expenditure, there is nothing that really beats the idea of relationship marketing- where you leverage on organic network effects to popularise your product. However, it is really easier said than done- because the challenge lies in sustaining a long-term relationship beyond mere user acquisition. The golden key lies in being able to find a method to retain these initial users who signed up because they were your friend, or did it out of goodwill — but to instead, get them to love your product and be your brand advocates.
I suppose — as mentioned in Learning Point 1, the value of a product speaks for itself. It really depends on how much value you are able to create for the user, be it in terms of the amount of relief you can bring to their pain, or the degree of personalisation that you are willing to offer in terms of relationship management. We are still figuring it out, but that is my theory — to get word-of-mouth not only for acquisition purposes, but more importantly getting people to use and then get their friends to use it — whatever it may be. That is the next level that we need to get to.
3. It is important to always search for what may drive someone to do what you want him or her to do, in the context of your product.
Right now, I am always trying to figure out how do I drive more members of the group that I am managing to make their first trade — because it just hasn’t happened yet. While people are listing their stuff, no one has already made any real transactions just yet. There’s always that sense of slight frustration when we are trying to hack our way to develop the platform that we have to something that flourishes with tangible network effects. The situation becomes one of we have set up the infrastructure already. How do we motivate people to start exchanging value on this site? We realise that there are actually more competing factors than we may conceive to exist- for example, time (people’s lives may be already occupied with work, family & school) being one of the main reasons, other competitor apps, and so on. There is a need to revisit the core behavioural drivers to always try to inspire greater steps to be taken towards action, and attain stronger top-of-mind positioning overall.
There is still a lot of work to be done in this area, and I’m continuing to learn how to optimise, optimise & optimise.
4. You have a choice who you want to let into the community you are creating. In fact, determining who gets in at the very start may very have deep implications on how your community will look like when it scales in the future.
There is always a temptation to scale fast and quickly, but it does go against my gut when I start to just want to boost the numbers & ignore who exactly I am getting into the community. There’s always a dilemma between quantity and quality, and I actually did cull some members who I feel that the community will not add much value to — and vice versa. Ultimately, I believe that it is your choice who you want to let in, and there are no obligations there. I think we can do what feels right, and follow our gut. And my theory is that whoever you let into the community now determines how it will evolve to be in the nearer future.
Sam Altman said that all you need are 100 users who love you — and I think there may be good starting point to work with. I’d probably take 100 hardcore users over 1,000 lurkers at any day.
5. When everything seems to stagnate, there is probably only one thing to do: look for solutions, and keep moving forward.
It does seem that things are not moving, and we may be stuck in some way in certain instances. And this is where some form of doubt might seep into your consciousness — which I will gladly admit it did for mine — and stop you from having the courage from moving forward. I think there should rather be an excitement to be felt pertaining to the fact that we now have a problem to solve, and we can work towards examining how things can be done better. Or that all we need is a bit of patience, and we should continue executing on what we think makes the most sense — and continue persevering. We just got to keep moving forward. I guess that’s the bittersweet nature of entrepreneurship that we have to embrace head-on, in an as honest fashion as we can because we can then grow and thrive from these challenges.
This is actually something which I am learning and savouring in vivid detail right now: the raw and uncomfortable position that I am being put in knowing that things are not working as well as they should be. With faith, self-belief, and a rational mind, we move forward stronger everyday.
I hope you do too!
Thanks for reading! Let me know what your thoughts may be — I’m more than willing to take some time off my busy schedule to have some beers with anyone interested to talk about growth, learning, entrepreneurship, and life in general. Hit me up yeah.
Stay tuned for TFWL #4. Have an awesome week of learning ahead!
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