8 business growth lessons we can all learn from Paylater, Cowrywise and Piggybank.
By: Wole Ogunlade
Tags: Nigerian Writing, Startup Lessons, Marketing, Copywriting Tips, Growth Strategy

8 business growth lessons we can all learn from Paylater, Cowrywise and Piggybank.

Savings and investment apps are gaining momentum. You can apply their business strategies to grow your business too. Wole Ogunlade Feb 22, 2019·4 min read

There are more than 13 savings and investment apps in Nigeria.

These apps make it easy to save and invest money with higher interests than banks. In a recent article, TechPoint published a roundup of leading savings apps in Nigeria.

After reading that article I decided to automate my savings.

But, before making my final selection, I checked out the platform and studied their growth strategy. After my analysis, I started using 3 of the apps.

In this article, my goal is to share with you 8 growth strategies used by some of the apps and how you can adapt those growth strategies to your business.

1. Design your product to solve major issues facing your users.

Before you launch, your first goal is to find out the core problem users want you to solve with the product.

In the case of these apps, the problem is helping people develop savings habit.

As a result, the main product feature created helped users to automate monthly savings and discourage impulse withdrawals.

2. Let your homepage show users what they will get.

When users visit your websites, they really want to know how your product is the solution to their needs. For example, a typical user looking for savings app wants one of few things; (1) how much interest they will earn (2) how secure their savings will be (3) how easy the automation process can be.

Your homepage should make it easy for them to choose you, based on the promises you want them to deliver to you.

Read more juicy details in explosive article.

3. Learn to infuse storytelling into your strategy.

With business storytelling, your goal is to share experiences that resonate with prospective users. I spoke about this at the SME Clinic session of TechPoint Build.

(Hint: I gave away free resources worth $700 to the participants. You can grab it here)

4. Ask for testimonials.

Asking users to share their testimonials is one of the best form of marketing for you. This is because word of mouth is proven to do better than any paid marketing channel.

And the best time to ask for testimonial is when someone just had a good experience with your product or service.

Make sure that prominently display testimonials of satisfied customers on your website.

This makes new customers to be convinced of your offer, especially if they have connections with or can relate with the experiences of the person sharing the testimonial.

Like testimonials, getting endorsements from celebrity, influential personalities and brands give your product a better appeal to target customers.

5. Host events.

While you can hack your growth by attending or speaking at other people’s event, hosting your own event brings your existing users and potential customers together into the same room and makes it easy for you to indoctrinate them.

The setting of the event could be professional or fun. What matters the most is bringing your audience under one roof.

6. Create online community for your niche.

Like physical events, online communities gives your brand the opportunity to moderate discussions that will ultimately lead to new business leads for you.

These community can be built on platforms like Whatsapp group, Slack channels, LinkedIn group, Facebook pages and Twitter.

The best result is achieved when, instead of focusing on your product, the community focuses on interactions that benefit both your customers and your business. Imagine the positive value of a Facebook group that is focused on investing or building savings culture.

This benefits everyone, not just the business.

7. Educate your users.

One of the key engines of hacking growth is educating your users.

Imagine the impact of teaching financial planning to an audience who will use your product to automate what they learnt from the guest financial expert.

This can be done via blog posts, live events or even webinars, podcasts, Facebook live and YouTube videos.

8. Keep in touch.

Your users want to hear from you. Sending out weekly reports and newsletter is part of strategy that connects you with their everyday choices.

Having a strategy to collect emails of potential customers who are yet to purchase offers the best opportunity for you to share your offers until they are ready to buy. That’s why I love newsletters.

Final thoughts.

The time I spent researching these savings app helped me to see the strategies some of them adopted to build trust with their target customers.

You can apply these lessons to your accelerate your business this year. That’s something I can help you with.

You can reach out to me for a free 30 minutes growth session