MON(FX)

How we got 300+ users in a week

As I mentioned earlier, my partner and I launched UNCForum.com this past week. Over the course of five days and an intense marketing campaign, we were able to get more than 300 users registered and using the forum. Here’s how we did it:

Saturday

Mike (my partner) and I met at a coffee shop Saturday afternoon to discuss our game plan and strategize the launch of a local, niche product in a closed community. I had just graduated and Mike is still a senior, so combined we have a lot of contacts within the campus community. On Saturday we decided that we should start off with our Facebook friends, inviting each one of them to an event they could either accept or decline. This way, our first pilot group would hopefully be people we knew rather than complete strangers, people who were more willing to post a topic or reply to a thread.

We also decided to give something away: an iPod nano. It would take more than luck and begging to get people to register for the site - they needed an incentive. We picked a relatively inexpensive commodity a lot of people desire and decided we were going to randomly select a person who had registered for the site within a certain time period. This was the principle idea on which we based our marketing campaign.

Sunday

We printed off close to 4,000 quarter sheet fliers and headed to Fall Fest, a campus event in which students walk around a closed-off portion of a local street enjoying free food, listening to live music and learning about all of the student organizations. Instead of simply handing out fliers and having people trash them, however, Mike and I decided we would try something to really get their attention. We put our sense of shame aside and wore ridiculous superhero costumes, complete with capes and under armor (tights) sporting the UNCForum.com logo. It worked, and while we only had time to hand out 2,000 or fliers, many people were left with a positive impression of our site. Our user base grew by about 60 users in that one night (breaking 100 total).

Monday

Starting on Monday, I showed up in the Pit, our campus “hotspot” where most students travel through during their day, to hand out fliers during the lunch hour rush. I handed out about 500 or so fliers to hungry students as they walked in our dining hall. We had another 50 or so users register that day.

Tuesday

This was our big day. We gathered about 20 of our close friends and gave them each a stack of fliers. We then headed down to South Campus, the biggest residential area at UNC. There, we split up into teams and plastered each building with fliers. We made sure to slip a flier under each and every door, in elevators and on some bathroom doors. Our user base grew by almost 80 in that one night.

Wednesday

I was again present in the Pit to hand out fliers to students eager to get into the primary campus dining hall. I passed out at least a few hundred fliers and then was off to prepare for a feast we held in order to thank all of the participants who helped us out the previous nights. Dinner was fairly cheap and consisted of burgers, hot dogs and a delicious baked pasta dish. Of course we also had salad and homemade garlic bread to top it all off. Our user base continued to grow that night, however not nearly as fast as the night before, as we had given out a lot less fliers.

Thursday

Mike and I spent most of Thursday handing out fliers in more dorms and buildings, making sure to hit a lot more rooms to insure people would see our message. Again, our user base grew by 50 or so users, taking us past the 300 milestone.

While 300 may not sound too impressive for the number of fliers we gave out, one must consider a few different factors. Many people simply threw the fliers out along with the multitude of other informational slips of paper they constantly receive. Some read it before throwing it away, maybe checking the site in the future or even forgetting about it altogether. A few probably saw the flier and went to the site immediately or soon thereafter to check it out. An even smaller number probably saw the flier, considered going to the site and eventually did because they either got another flier or was somehow reminded about UNCForum.com.

Regardless of how they came about the site, advertising is strictly about repetition. It’s completely possible to make someone like something they probably don’t need if they see it enough and that other people are using it. We feel like we have created a useful (albeit simple and easy) tool for our fellow classmates, so hopefully they won’t mind the constant spamming of their brains with our fliers and emails.

Some tips to consider if you’re targeting a local market:

• Give users some kind of incentive
• Constantly bombard them with your info/URL
• Use your current network or friend circle to spread the word
• Don’t give up! If things slow down, start them back up

Anyways, we took a week off to get back to our lives for a bit and noticed a slight stagnation in growth on the forum, so I’m back in Chapel Hill to kick start it all over again. If you have any ideas to help us spread the word and get people interested in registering, please share!!