2018 was a big year here at Clariti. If you have been following our startup journey, you know that we are a new communication software focused on context-based business communications. Last year was what we like to refer to as our “trial and error” year. We tried tons of different marketing tactics including organic marketing and paid online advertising. Some tactics were successful, and others not so much. We learned so much with some of the main learning points being what platforms are good for tech businesses, what content performs the best, and how to grow your followers. Today we’d like to share some of our insights with you, so you can skip through most of the R&D. That’s right, we did the hard work for you!
If you’re looking to increase your website traffic, gain followers, or just simply wanting to read a good story, read on!
Social Media Following
Increasing our impressions on social media was a huge goal for our company in 2018. At the beginning of the year we developed basic social media accounts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but we were not seeing much traffic on these accounts. We were posting frequently, but we felt like our message was getting lost in the masses, and we needed content that was going to make us stand out. We strategized for months and kept coming back to the same question. When you think of a company you care about, what content do you want to see from them? Promotional, product heavy content? No! You want to see deeper inside their company. You want to feel like you know the employees, their culture, and what a day in the life of an employee is like. That was our big “AHA” moment. We flipped our content, especially on Instagram, to be much less promotional and we focused on a fun, upbeat theme. We wanted content that showed our culture and our Clariti team so that our audience could really get to know us!
After just a few weeks of adapting our content to be more personal, we saw big results. We were able to post way less because our content came with more substance, and the followers and likes started trickling in. We transitioned from a startup constantly plugging its product, to a startup with a likable personality that just so happened to also have a cool product. Our followers now are higher than they’ve ever been and we’re continuing to aim our social media content in the same transparent nature in 2019.
Before
After
Website Traffic
“What gets measured gets improved.”- Peter Drucker
As the above quote mentions, our first step was to start measuring our website traffic. We starting tracking our visitors using Google Analytics. Once we started tracking our website traffic we knew we were on the right path. We focused on a few strategies and could see their success through a heavy increase in web traffic.
Here are some of the strategies we followed to see the increase:
- Paid Campaigns
- Social Media Channels: Promote content on various social media channels
- Varying content
Like we mentioned previously, we started our marketing efforts with all organic posts. Our reasoning behind our seemingly “stingy” ways being that we wanted to see how much growth we would see from social media and word of mouth alone! As mentioned, our social media growth began slow and after a few months of seeing an insignificant number of website visitors from our social media channels, we decided to put some money into social media advertising campaigns. We ran a few campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and we’re shocked by how much of a difference it made. We barely put any money into advertising, yet the little money we added more than tripled the amount of visitors to our website. It was rewarding to see that our content was resonating with our audiences, and even though it wasn’t the goal of our paid advertising campaigns, we even saw an increase in sign ups for our web-based communication software.
Now that we knew this marketing strategy was successful, we decided to go back to the drawing board and really try to improve our app; so that when it is 100% ready we know the best way to market our product. Like we said, 2018 was full of marketing experiments!
2018 Summed Up
Although our growth was relatively small compared to big software companies, as a small business and startup we decided to focus on the small wins. Every time we achieved small milestones, for example gained another hundred followers or a new sign up on Clariti, we made sure to celebrate. Usually the celebration took place over fun team lunches, and we even had a holiday party! Here are some pictures of us celebrating our small gains.
Remember to stay positive and focus on all the things you have accomplished rather than the workload ahead. We are starting 2019 off with this mindset. So far this year has been good to us with increases in followers, web traffic, and sign ups. We are hoping for another year full of growth, learning, app developments, and daily accomplishments…no matter how small. We’ll keep you updated on our progress all year long through our blog and social media accounts, so be sure to give us a follow and subscribe to our blog!
