We partnered with BAMF 4 months ago to grow our brand from nothing. They increased our business contacts, our media & press contacts. Since then we have grown to a full-fledged company.
Jeff Houkal, CEO of Invincibowl
Startup growth can be difficult.
But, it isn’t rocket science.
If you have an innovative offer and a good strategy, getting a consistent number of leads can be achieved.
That’s exactly what Jeff had to go through a couple of months ago.
He had an innovative product that was generating a lot of buzz.
But he decided that it was time to strategize to take his growth higher.
Who Is Jeff?
Jeff Houkal is a man of many talents.
He hails from an engineering background, is an avid entrepreneur, and is also involved in the entertainment industry.
For his clients, he is also the CEO of Invincibowl, a company that provides “invincible bowls” for cannabis aficionados.
Drawing from his expertise, he found a problem with bong bowls – they break.
So he went out and designed an indestructible product.
And, it was well-received.
But, launching a new invention is just the first part.
What Was the Challenge?
Bong bowls aren’t anything new.
But, he had a niche that was starting to develop a large following.
If he didn’t strike soon, it was only a matter of time before people started copying his product and marketing.
There weren’t any active outbound campaigns generating him leads, too.
For him to succeed it was time for him to reach out to the “press” and make his product known to all.
And, we mean everybody.
Here’s What He Needed
What Jeff needed was a growth boost.
- He really needed PR contacts – this means cannabis influencers and other outlets
- He needed to aim for virality with his LinkedIn posts to gain traction
- A client website
We were essentially taking a startup and launching it centerstage because it deserved the spotlight.
How Did Jeff and BAMF Pull It Off?
Client Website
Jeff needed a website that would serve as his e-commerce base and he needed one fast.
So, we mobilized both our creative and web development teams to get cracking.
The first order of business was incorporating his branding elements into his website, it needed to stand out.
Once we picked the themes, it was now time to focus on the user.
Drawing from our experience and the data that we’ve gathered in the past, we focused on a couple of critical elements.
- Customer experience and user interface
- Site speed
- Responsiveness
- Mobile-first design
Once we got this pushed out, it gave Invincibowl a permanent home online and prospects somewhere to go.
Viral Content
It wasn’t enough that there was content related to his product.
He needed content that would establish him as a thought leader.
So, we dived in and started talking to Jeff.
We extracted his voice, his thought, and his heart.
We wanted to know what his message is and then we combined that with solid data and research.
You see the cannabis communities have a lot of room for evergreen content, so we took his voice and merged it with content that would appeal to his target audience.
Once we were done with that, we added a lot of mobile optimization and used the BAMF recipe along with our in-house content hacking team to hack it out.
We got him the traction for his initial posts that led some of them to go viral.
In just a month, traction was steadily rising, and it didn’t stop as you’ll see from our results in the next section.
Press
The cannabis community is a community that’s well connected.
When Jeff was first starting out, he didn’t have enough collaborations going for him.
To add to that, he was still relatively unknown.
This had to change fast.
In this community, getting the right people to notice you made all the difference. Press outlets here are we received and had large volumes of traffic.
We started with a photoshoot.
It was a new product after all and it needed a little glitz and glamor.
We made sure that that we had a stock of photos that we could use for an extended campaign and still remain fresh.
Then it was time to create a targeted outbound campaign that prioritized certain segments of the cannabis news industry. This allowed us to create tailored campaigns built for each of the prospects.
Using the content that we were releasing plus the follow-up messages that were tuned to each response, we were able to layer a lead nurturing campaign to push leads into conversion.
Results
Invincibowl had a lot of potential, and we wanted to make sure we unlocked every single ounce of it.
We had a brand awareness strategy that was tied into our content release campaign so we capitalized on the uniqueness of the product.
In the first four months, we were able to rake in an 11,864 percent increase in the number of LinkedIn views they were getting.
When we first started out with Jeff, he was already getting views, but that wasn’t enough.
By leveraging certain topics and using optimization techniques we got the number of LinkedIn views to steadily grow.
But, it doesn’t just end with content.
Jeff also needed to get more connections to collaborate with more people.
We put him on an outreach campaign that was tailor-fit for his needs. Using the techniques we talked about earlier, we were able to get him a connection acceptance rate of almost half of the invites that he was sending out.
The reply rates were also astonishing.
More than a quarter of the people we were messaging were replying.
This meant that the personalization was working and the messaging was resonating with his prospects.
All of this meant nothing if there were no calls coming through.
In just 5 months, his startup got 113 qualified sales calls.
And, some of these calls were with prominent names in the industry.
For a niche within a niche, Jeff was steadily making progress and growing his brand.
And, this was the plan from the beginning.
Jeff Houkal
Takeaways
Startup growth is all about momentum.
If you have an innovative product and people are genuinely interested you need to use that to your advantage.
But first, you need to build some traction.
Proper brand awareness campaigns and outreach will do that for you.
Once there’s traction, building momentum becomes easier.
That’s when your growth propels you to new heights.
And, that’s exactly how Jeff did it.