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BUNK: 100,000 USERS THROUGH LOCALISATION
How Sam Parr helped drive his first 100,000 users through localisation...
Niall Ratcliffe
January 07, 2024
Morning!
Christmas is over. Work is back. Niall is drowning.
For anyone (like me) who also had a hectic first week back at work, use this moment to take a deep breath.
Right, now let’s get you through a cracking breakdown about how Sam Parr used localisation to get his first 100,000 users - it’s more fun than it sounds!
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
Every brand wants exposure.
So they post across social channels, run paid ads, utilise PR. All to get as many eyes on them as possible.
Granted, they want the right people to be seeing their brand, but most of all they’re just wanting more eyes on them.
Which leads to them using broad targeting that a large demographic can relate to.
And I thought that was the best way to go about it.
Until I heard Sam Parr explain how he used localisation to get his first 100,000 users for his company Bunk.
The general concept ↓
Rather than going after 1 million people with a campaign… why not go after 10 groups of 100,000 people with much more targeted campaigns.
It hooks people better
It leads to more action
And often better results
Well that’s exactly what Sam Parr did and it led to Bunk getting acquired in under 10 months.
Here’s exactly how he did it:
Step 1: Localise
If you’ve spent any time on Facebook over the last 10 years you will have seen all the crazy BuzzFeed articles that get shared there.
"20 things only people from Manchester will get”
“10 things that let you know your northern”
They’re all over your feed.
These article never perform amazingly, but what they do is get every single person in that area to click it.
Sam Parr noticed this and decided to run similar campaigns for his company Bunk.
Quick context: Bunk was a roommate matching app that got labeled “Tinder for roommates”
So he began creating infographics of roommate stereotypes.
With his most popular being “The typical roommates of San Fransisco”.
Where they broke down stereotypes of people from “The Marina”, “The Mission”, “Pacific Heights”, and all the other areas of San Fransisco.
Click to see the full graphic
The infographic specifically targeted everyone in San Fransisco and then got even more specific with the breakdowns of each area.
It didn’t apply to everyone, but you bet people from San Fransisco stopped to read it - just like the BuzzFeed articles.
But the concept was just the start.. there was another 3 key steps that made this drive app downloads.
Step 2: Optimise For Virality
The problem with the old BuzzFeed articles was the fact they weren’t shareable. Yes, the headline was great, but no one wants to share a link on their feed.
On the other hand, Sam’s version was extremely shareable. It had visuals, an infographic, and it’s funny.
People want to screenshot and share it on their feed too.
But that wasn’t the only “growth hack” they used.
They also added a “Secret spot” & “Probably find them at” for every person they stereotyped.
They used that spot to highlight a restaurant in each area who they would then tag when the graphic went live.
9 times out of 10 the restaurant would reshare the graphic to their followers and create a mini ripple effect of all the different restaurants sharing it.
This gave the graphic an omnipresent feeling as if the whole of San Fransisco was talking about it.
Step 3: Integrating Their Product
Having a campaign get seen & shared by people is great, but if it doesn’t result in any ROI for your business - it doesn’t matter.
But this did for Bunk (or Apartment List - who acquired them).
All because of two things:
It targeted their ICP
They were going after young-ish people who were open to house sharing with others in the area.
The format & tone of these pieces was perfect to attract that audience.The “Average budget”
The simple addition of the average monthly budget in each area allowed the entire graphic to be tied back to what they do.
It got people thinking about who they would want to room with and an idea of what budget they’d have to put forward.
It was simple, but I think without this they wouldn’t have acquired the 100,000+ users they did from the campaign.
Step 4: Scale
Once this took off in San Fransisco they just began duplicating the exact same campaign for other key areas they wanted to target.
Like this one for the typical roommates of Manhattan.
With everyone that got released, they got more shares, more press coverage, and more users.
They created a way to get 1000s of users in any location just through a simple bit of localisation behind an awesome campaign.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
Localise - Create graphics or articles that only certain people will read. Heavily personalised, highly targeted.
Optimise for virality - Don’t just make the campaign clickable, make it shareable.
Integrate the product - Find a way to make your product part of it.
Scale it - Once it works, scale it across different markets/geographies.
A key thing to note is that although Sam decided to go after certain locations, you could easily do the same thing for niches.
“50 things only real estate professionals will get”
“10 things you’ll only laugh at if you work in PR”
I’m pretty confident these would work just as well, it would just be harder to get the campaign in front of those people.
I think I’m going to have to give this one a go!
Before you switch off, reply and let me know your favourite marketing campaign you’ve seen recently!
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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