Are you building a marketplace? An Uber/Airbnb for X?

[brandi3167]

@kenhui A bit of all of that. I contacted everyone at first whether they did complete their listing or didn't. There are too many now to email everyone but I still do it reasonably often. A lot of people who completed respond. Most who did not don't bother, nearly all in fact. My analysis therefore is on only a small percentage but nearly all are interested but don't have the need right now. That's quite understandable but home swaps are not like organising a hotel: you do need to plan in advance. A reasonable percentage have come back and listed later, presumably through continued marketing, seeing others who have done it, and having a later need.

 

[sammypants]

@kenhui Start out by aggressively marketing to a smaller core group of people. Facebook started by targeting Harvard students, then all colleges, then everyone. Uber started by only targeting San Francisco.

 

[vemvem]

@kenhui Hey! I am part of a team building 2 sided marketplace in non formal education. We are just working on the marketing and customer acquisition plan.

Although we are still in the works, I think the best way to start is to have a minimum viable customers of both. For example we have students, training programs and employers on our customer list, all dependable on each other. What we did was that we went and signed letter of intent with 100 training programs, and set up a # of scholarships for the students. And now we are building our beta version, so we can provide real value to employers, with which we will be going after them.

So it is kind of a mixed game, but definitely dont do it with fake users. As soon as you have the minimum number for each customers, try to identify with them and offer them something extra. With the communities we had special benefits, for students we give them scholarships. As for employers, we will give some discounts or other value.

Try to be engaging and use the network effects. Referral programs, giveaways and other sorts of growth hacks worked for me on previous business models and we are going to try them again.

I am happy to continue with this discussion. This is a very interesting topic.

For those interested this is the product that i mention: ifwhenthen.com

 

[kenhui]

@vemvem Hey! Thank you for sharing this. ifwhenthen seems very interesting and it definitely touches a nerve. Have you heard of Jolt?

 

[vemvem]

@kenhui Nope not really. I am going to check it.

 

[kenhui]

@absolucid13

That's a standalone service but once running it's easy to offer employers using your software a way to find new staff.

Is that like.. LinkedIn meets SAP..?

 

[angerry]

@kenhui Hi @kenhui,

Customer acquisition is definitively a major challenge for all businesses. If you are building a marketplace, the challenge is heightened.

There are a few different ways to combat against this issue but a lot of it depends on what your marketplace sets out to accomplish/facilitate.

1. Target a hub city first and then build from there. Instead of releasing nationwide, focus on a singular city and drill down on your supply and demand. (supply being the mobile app's worker - demand being the actual consumer)
2. Venturing to trade show type events and seminars where you are able to present your idea is also a great idea. This will allow you to not only market your mobile app, but get some people interested in your idea. Word of mouth is a great means of advertising that goes leaps and bounds.
3. Create a landing page (generalizing your idea) and promote it via typical modes of advertising. Think social media. On your landing page, have a sign-up spot for both potential workers in the future and consumers who are loving the idea and want to be notified when you launch.
4. Influencers. Depending on how deep your pockets are, you can get in touch with social influencers who can both market and subsequently draw in a massive crowd. Again, this depends on your industry/niche altogether.
5. To backpedal on point 3, you can partake in massive advertising and gradually build a potential client base, all the while getting potential workers who are interested in gearing up and working for your mobile application. This has proved to be effective for a plethora of mobile apps - some of which have "unicorned."

[sup]Excuse any typos. On mobile.[/sup]

 

[kenhui]

@angerry Thanks for the useful tips! Which are some of the mobile apps are you referring to on 5 ?

 

[angerry]

@kenhui Uber is your main winner here. Lyft as well. Viber.

 

[skylove90]

@kenhui Following. These are good questions

 

[pastorburnz]

@kenhui There is quite a difference between offering a real life service and providing an online service to connect people. It all comes down to cost of acquisition of supply and demand. You must meet demand with supply, and not lose money. If you're going to take a hit, then you better be prepared for it.

 

[arijumak]

@kenhui I am building a marketplace and this section is very helpful for how we are going to acquire customers. We have been going to pitch competitions for funding so that’s pretty cool. We are planning to go live in January 2019 with a beta. Fingers crossed that we are selected to display at the end of the month. I know an event allow us to get the world out! Looking forward to reading more sound advice here

 

[kenhui]

@arijumak Good luck with the competitions! What business are you in? Can you explain the general purpose of your marketplace?

 

[arijumak]

@kenhui Thank you! We are the Airbnb for rest stops! We are allowing homeowners to turn their bathrooms into temporary rest-stops for people who taking road trips, have been displaced, delayed canceled flight, etc.

 

[kjcm]

@kenhui Yes we built a product sharing marketplace and launched last week. Its simple how it works, seller lists an item, any user can share the product to their following on the marketplace or to their external social networks. When someone shares an item and it leads to a sale, that person earns a 5% commission from the sale.

The whole point is to help sellers sell faster and help people discover products they never thought would exist.

We are currently DMing sellers over Depop, Instagram, Etsy, going to local pop ups, and using our networks to get sellers. We want to focus on sellers because we need content for other users to share. Its a numbers game to be honest. We DM about 200 people a day and try to network as much as possible to get sellers on our platform.

Our current challenge is increasing our conversion rate. We could focus on a certain market and limit the marketplace or just keep pushing out content and keep trying to acquire users. We aren't using Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Reddit Ads because we aren't there yet and are still trying to create a network effect on our marketplace.

We'll keep you guys posted. Check out the marketplace while you're at it and join our journey!

 

[kenhui]

@kjcm Congrats for the launch and good luck!!! It's looks great, and I really like the concept too! Simple and logical. Few questions: (1) What is your business model? It it commission based? Or is it payment per listing? (2) How did you find sellers? Did you approach them before the launch? How did you convince them? (3) Did you create supply yourselves? (4) Are you doing any marketing or are you relying on the sellers to create network effect?

 

[kjcm]

@kenhui We have a fee per transaction model. We are currently approaching sellers, focusing on supply. We met them after launching and we told them how the marketplace works and that we will create their store for them saving them time. We did create some supply ourselves so the page wasn’t empty. (Reddit style) We are approaching sellers directly and relying on sellers to onboard their affiliates. We make their affiliate process easier.

 

[thelma877]

@kenhui I'm working on one. I can find workers for this particular market in universities, so I'm attempting to do just that. I'm hoping they'll be receptive since students are broke and this is a good way for side cash on their own schedule.

We're going to start small in a single city/area around a university and go from there. The first customers will be friends and family that will receive their service for free, and we'll cycle through them with the workers so it appears like there's a stream of clients coming through. At the same time, we'll work toward getting real clients (not sure how yet.)

 

[tanner2452]

@thelma877 I've worked in a couple two sided marketplaces that employed college students. Definitely good, especially if you can appeal to their sense of higher purpose and wallets. The downside is they turnover really quickly when they get busy with school or graduate.