A Marketing Executive Explains how a Successful Networking Platform is Launched
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If you're involved in the beauty, fashion, and lifestyle sector - or have a general interest in networking - you've probably already come across BFROW: an innovative networking platform for creatives and brands in the industry. The executive behind the platform's highly successful launch is BUROW's Head of Marketing at the time, Anastasia Vitruk - a serial entrepreneur in the fashion industry and a recognized marketing expert.

A Paris-Dauphine, Columbia University, and Y Combinator Startup School graduate, Anastasia has a long record of delivering strategic growth in key roles at top global firms, including Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy and Yigal Azrouël, Inc. Over the course of her education and professional career, she has won several awards, including the prestigious Columbia Business School Case Competition Award - first place for Saks 5th avenue personalization strategy development.

Since 2019, Anastasia has been sharing her expertise with future entrepreneurs as a Startup Accelerator Mentor. Today, she's giving us a crash course on what it takes to launch a successful networking platform.

It all starts with finding the right niche and providing a solution to a business or social need. New social issues arise all the time, and it's up to a keen entrepreneur to spot an opportunity before someone else does. Think about Dress X - a digital fashion retailer - or BFROW as examples of solutions to the current issues caused by the COVID pandemic.

The next step is learning the behavior of prospective customers. Anastasia suggests that direct customer research including surveys, focus groups, and UX studies is the best way to go. "Start using MVP as soon as possible and test it on the audience," she advises. "Always check the website map with Yandex metrics or Crazy Egg to follow the user experience and constantly improve your website."

Alongside consistent improvements and tailoring the service to suit the needs of the customers, Anastasia stresses the importance of active promotion and customer engagement from day one. Partnership with  well-selected influencers is a key for success. They spread the word about your project, attract active users to the platform and create a loyal audience for you. "You can promote for free through others," she says. "Hire an intern whom you'll train to select the right audience and who can contact your potential users through Instagram - at least 100 people a day. Connect with your potential users through FB groups. Create Telegram channels. Connect through blogs, LinkedIn, specific websites where your users are. Be one of the users and track the whole way from the beginning to the end."

Social media and blogs aren't where promotional efforts end when getting a social networking platform out there. Anastasia's approach involves a lot of focus on more traditional methods of marketing and PR, too. "Create networking events from your company, invite trend setters so they can talk about you, participate in conferences and attract influential people to your platform," she advises.

Keeping with the subject of influential people, networking platforms can gain a lot from brand and influencer deals. Anastasia suggests keeping these collaborations to a maximum of five per month. As well as reaching out to the right influencers, marketers should also contact editors within the industry with a press release about the project. 

When the time comes for the networking platform to expand, Anastasia identifies social media ads as the key to scale - highlighting the importance of the right advertising with well-optimized targeting. This is Anastasia's primary area of expertise: she achieved immense social media growth for BFROW,  with increases of up to +290% in impressions and +676% in engagement within just three months. How did she do this with a minimum budget? "Find the right target through A/B testing," she advises. "Specifically, run ten different tests by audience cohort  in the first week with $1000 of total budget for a week, then five ads for two weeks totaling $3000, and finally three ads for a month for $5,000 -10,000, depending on your budget. The goal is to obtain CPA (in this case action equals subscription) which equals less than 30% of the subscription cost. Although this budget is relatively small for launch, you can successfully work with it. 

Speaking of budgets, what about securing funding for a networking platform? "Find investors in the industry. Try to connect with them first, and only then and create a pitch deck - no more than ten slides," Anastasia says. "Always keep in mind what type of investors you need - are you looking for seed or Series A funding? You lose equity when you complete seed rounds, but you require advisors - so focus on what you need the most." 

Last but not least, what's the most important component of launching a networking platform and what final piece of advice can Anastasia give to entrepreneurs looking to start their own platform? "People who are using your platform are the most important component, because they are spreading the word about your project," she states. "Start with yourself and observe your own connections. Be open to people. Create a brand that's strong and personal to you, with a good reputation, to unify people around your idea and help them discover new solutions."

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