This week’s theme for the Startup chronicles, aka “Why some Nigerian businesses fail,” is delusion. We hope that you are both entertained and educated by this story.
A certain founder had one million combined followers on social media to whom he dished out business advice regularly.
Then he launched a new product. It was a novel idea and his vision was to sell it only online. He splashed pictures of the launch on his social media pages and got many likes. The business recorded some sales in the first few months after which sales began to dwindle.
So, he summoned his marketing and sales team for a meeting. The team told him that they needed to sustain the buzz. In addition, while the product was novel in the market, it could be imitated so the company had a temporary competitive advantage. As such, it was advisable to penetrate the market quickly. Also, the customers were phygital so the company needed to adopt an omnichannel approach.
The founder told his team that the company did not need to advertise because he had a strong personal brand and that his brand was already doing the advertising for the business. The team argued that the target audience was not necessarily his social media followers. More so, less than 10% of his followers saw his posts because of the social media algorithms. Consequently, the company needed a digital marketing campaign, at the least, that would deliver wider reach and drive trial and conversion. But the founder ignored their advice.
Less than a year on, another company poached the founder’s staff and launched a similar product. The company built a wide retail network and invested heavily in marketing communications. The strategy worked.
The product became a household name and the challenger brand became the market leader. The CEO of the challenger brand became the toast of the town. Then the founder began to sulk and write on social media that he recruited traitors who sold his idea to the competition.
𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆
Don’t get carried away by vanity metrics. Your social media followers are not necessarily your customers, and social media likes do not equate to sales. You could easily lose your first-mover advantage if you do not make strategic marketing decisions.
Originally posted on LinkedIn
