The idea for this article came from a YouTube video titled ‘Growth Without Ads- Is This The End Of The Ad World As We Know It?’. The speaker, Kunal Shah, founder of Cred, has some really interesting points and I suggest you do check this video out (you will find a link to the video below).
Shift to Digital
So over the past decade or so, the way products and services are being marketed globally, has undergone drastic changes. The advent of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. has given people the power to connect and market their products at fraction of the cost.
Every business today is looking to create an online presence, trying to capture its user’s attention online and add a human touch to the existing brand by engaging in things like brand banter.
Free Growth
In its early stages, a start-up, given the resource constraints, tries to obtain its first customer mainly through no cost marketing tools. These include running engagement campaigns to increase product awareness, ensuring that customer feedback has high visibility in terms of reviews/ratings, creating community of targeted users etc. The people who end up trying the product after these marketing efforts (in case they like the product) end up spreading a good word of mouth.
A positive word of mouth is by far the best and the most effective way of marketing (this is of course debatable) for a start-up. This is because of the trust factor involved. You as a consumer are more likely to try a product if it has been used and recommended by your friend.
The Big Question: Is growth without paid ads possible?
One may think, Does there exist a marketing technique figured out by some Marketing Guru to propel a start-up into massive growth and that too without any paid ads?
The answer to that is a BIG YES! But it has nothing to do with advertisement.
What Kunal argues in the video I mentioned above is that every product that is being created today is being created to increase efficiency and overcome some kind of hurdle that the consumer is facing. For example, Uber, a services created to overcome the inefficiencies of existing taxis. If we were to rate the efficiency (out of 10) of a Kali-Peeli Taxi v/s that of an Uber, the delta i.e. the difference in the efficiency on an average will be greater that 4.
∆e>=4
The possibility of growth without ads for these delta 4 products is amazingly high because of something called as UBP (Unique Bragworthy Proposition). When people experience a delta 4 product they are much more likely to share it, because the experience of that product is much superior than what currently exists in the market. Therefore people are more likely to share it because they get sought of a Social Currency for sharing such products.
Therefore the answer to the big question is not some marketing formula, rather it is creation of a product that solves an existing inefficiency, which helps overcome an existing hurdle and creates a superior product experience.
Kunal also states, that in case you create a product which is not delta 4 (but less), for e.g. Buying shirts online. The chances of creating UBP is very less. Moreover, you will need to spend some amount of money every time you want growth.
(To understand this concept in more detail: Click Here to watch the video)
Canva a Case study: 10 Mn users in 3-years without paid ads
After having heard what Kunal had to say, I decided to look for companies that had made big without much of paid advertisements. I wanted to look for examples that were not mentioned in the video. This is where I discovered Canva. For people like me who before this did not know what Canva was, to put it simply, it is platform that helps people design a range of documents such letter heads, social media posts, resumes etc through its drag and drop interface.
What strikes me the most about Canva is the fact that as per their founder Melanie Perkins, Canva does not do any sought of paid sponsorships or affiliate program or paid acquisitions. Contrary to the popular decision by start-ups their spending towards Social Media Marketing has been minimal. Their strongest driver of growth is Word of Mouth and organic search by people who have design needs.
In my opinion Canva did these 2 things right:
- Solve a customer problem efficiently. Tools such as Photoshop are difficult to use by noobs. Canva identified this problem and solved it using an efficient interface. (Is ∆e>=4 for Canva? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below)
- The majority for its effort have gone in to create a superior user experience. Canva has constantly tried to listen to what users have suggested and integrate that with its platform.
In case you are thinking to start on your own, just remember, try to solve a customer problem as efficiently as you can and focus on the product that you are creating. A superior product will go a long way than some paid advertisement. The chances increasing customer acquisition is far more through a great product than a paid advertisement.
I hope you enjoyed the article! Take care, until next time.
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That was really insightful, Kunal has got most logical way of thinking, Paid promotion can bring customer to the website but it is word of mouth that helps to convert lead into customer.
Coming to the Canva example, I have used Canva 1 year ago to design poster of my business, the website is aptly design for naive designers, it certainly enjoys delta of >4.