Your new business has gone online yesterday and you have no clue how to reach out to your potential customers without spending a small fortune on ads and other forms of paid media?

That was just one of the many topics discussed at Elevate Digital’s first meetup “Growth Hacking: The Right Strategy for Your Business”, hosted at the wonderful Paperclip co-working space.

From inspiration to action, The Growth Hacking event covered all aspects of making a noticeable presence in the online market and what it takes to build your brand in this highly competitive world.

Moderated by Elevate Digital’s own CXO, Alexandra Tanya, the meetup was conceived as a panel discussion, bringing together a diverse group of business professionals/entrepreneurs with proven track records, to share their growth marketing strategies, and converse with each other and the guests about finding the right formulas that could take particular businesses to the next level.

Alexandra Tanya

 

Alexandra was joined in the panel by:

• Ben Quah, Global Strategy & Digital Marketing Director – M800
• Flo Jungbauer, ex-SVP Marketing – Universal Music Group
• Stevun Vongtontip, Owner of the 3 F45 Gyms and the Pioneer of the F45 concept in Hong Kong
• Aaron Weller, CEO – Elevate Digital & Miss Amara

The panelists

 

The group was also accompanied by Elevate Digital’s Head of Business Development, Bryan Smith.

The aim of the panel was simple: every single one of the participants in this discussion was given a chance to share their story, all the ups, and downs of developing and running a profitable business, while also being open to interact with the audience and provide answers from personal experience to some of the burning questions about growth marketing.

Stevun Vongtontip, the founder of the fastest growing franchise in history (faster than even McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts), expressed the importance of providing great service and making it possible for people to acknowledge why they are paying for a particular deal. According to Stevun: “If the customers see value in what you are offering – they will pay for it.”

Stevun Vongtontip

 

He also said that today’s business owners have to be clear about who their customers are, if they want to succeed. Stevun continued by explaining the role of social media, and how it has greatly influenced his success in Hong Kong.

Prior to the launch, Stevun used social media to target different audiences and adjust the content towards what would resonate with those particular groups. For instance, if he was targeting Hong Kong parents – Stevun would use client case studies of some impressive before-and-afters of new mums and their newly developed fitness abilities. That way of thinking and operating has helped Mr. Vongtontip become a proud owner of 3 franchises in just a couple of years, with a continuing membership and revenue growth of an impressive 10% month by month.

Just like Mr. Vongtontip, Flo Jungbauer also talked about social media and the importance of having the resources to actually try things more than once. Marketing, in a nutshell, is a game of test and measure. Flo expanded on his theme and underlined the importance of understanding your competitors, and how every business can examine methods employed by competitors, and emulate some of their successful strategies. According to Flo, proper competitor analysis can help businesses understand how their rivals operate and what they need to do in order to beat them (even when a particular competitor is a lot larger than them).

Flo Jungbauer

 

In a way, Aaron Weller agreed with Flo Jungbauer on the competitor analysis part, but he felt that performing a thorough market research before entering a particular niche or industry can really give businesses a great head start. Prior to the launch of his online e-commerce business, Aaron relied on market research to identify a hidden and unprecedented online demand for – rugs, of all products. After uncovering this demand, Aaron focused his further market research efforts towards understanding what the existing problems that consumers face when trying to purchase a rug online are, and then he set out to solve them.

Aaron Weller

 

The Global Strategy & Digital Marketing Director of M800, Ben Quah, also shared some points similar to Flo, while discussing the role of quality content in his strategy. He also explained how doing a lot of offline marketing, like event hosting, helped his company generate a lot of buzz around their business.

The crowd was captivated by Ben’s candid approach to developing quality relationships – reflecting upon his previous tactic of mass business card collection, to the current one, of leading with authenticity and only networking with 2-3 people that you could really strike a friendship with. He explains how this strategy alone has led to quality relationships and rewarding business partnerships.

Ben Quah

 

These are just some of the finer points of the event.

Unlike most panel discussions on the subject of growth hacking – this one was characterized by an open two-way channel of communication between the speakers and the audience, where the audience got the chance to share what they believed the term “growth hacking” stood for. The event also generated a lot of interest. Lasting just over an hour, the participants of the panel discussion and the audience had enough opportunity to truly interact with each other. The speakers helped everyone in the Paperclip event hall understand what is now and what is next in growth marketing, and provided advice on how to replicate some of the best performing practices in their own line of work.

Alexandra Tanya reiterated the business ideal that Elevate Digital holds true to with every client. As she explained, to her, and everyone else at Elevate Digital – growth hacking is simply a term used for understanding and adopting an authentic approach to your business and its unique set of circumstances.

These circumstances include your set business goals, the size of your business, your current position and planned course of development, as well as your unique customers and audience. If you are able to understand each of these aspects and find the right answers for issues posed by them, you have everything you need to craft a successful digital strategy.

“Growth Hacking: The Right Strategy for Your Business” is just the first out of many marketing events coming from Elevate Digital in Hong Kong. Alexandra and Bryan are extremely pleased with the turnout and thankful to everyone who came and participated in making this event great.

 

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