How A Startup Increased Its App Submissions By 400% In 4 Months. - A User Success Story

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1 How A Startup Increased Its App Submissions By 400% In 4 Months - A User Success Story

2 As the new kids on the block in the world of app discovery portals, Nick Hopper and Chris Baird from Crozdesk faced the unavoidable challenge of reaching out to different target groups and getting developers to list apps on their site. Traditional channels proved to be too slow for this dynamic startup. They then integrated Crowdfire's growth features into their social media strategy. Read on to find out how this not only helped them propel their Twitter presence to new heights but also generated an exponential rise in app listings.

3 Born At LSE Tired of wasting time scouring the web for the best applications for his research project on SaaS applications, Nick Hopper, an IT and Innovation postgrad student at the London School of Economics, founded Crozdesk with one aim in mind - to give the world an online search and comparison platform for the best web applications. The startup, started in June 2014, is designed to make finding web apps or tools that fit your requirement perfectly, an easy task. Additionally, Crozdesk helps developers showcase their apps to their target user base. It is no wonder then that the year old startup has been deemed as the Yelp of web apps and startup tools.

4 The Big Social Pain Point As a web app library, social media was an important aspect of Crozdesk's outreach strategy. Social media is not just for sharing content. It is also incredibly powerful for finding and connecting with the right user base. This was a fact that Nick, and Chris Baird, the business development incharge at Crozdesk, recognised early on. Securing a strong user base is crucial to our ultimate success. We needed to find a way to find these user groups in an efficient manner possible. Like all start-ups we were limited by the resources we have Chris Baird, Business Development

5 However, it wasn't an easy task gaining mileage on Twitter. How to ensure their Twitter account does not get lost in the chaos? How to identify potential users out of the millions of Twitter users? Finally, how to effectively and efficiently reach out to these user groups who would not only be interested in Crozdesk but would also engage with their marketplace? These were the challenges that they faced when they tried to expand their Twitter presence. Creating a strong user base was essential. Combined with the fact that, like all start-ups they had limited resources, this was a social media pain point that the young company struggled with.

6 Enter Crowdfire The Crozdesk team set out to address this pain point by using subreddits and word-of-mouth. However, as useful as these channels were, they were sluggish and ineffective at reaching out to different user groups. As luck would have it, they attended a growth hacking meet-up in London later in 2014 where an attendee recommended Crowdfire to them. They wasted no time and began using it right away. At the time Crozdesk had about 100 followers on Twitter. By the time they left the meet-up, they had already doubled that number.

7 Their chief challenge lay in efficiently finding target user groups. Crowdfire's Copy Followers features proved to be a powerful ally here. By combining his knowledge of the SaaS marketplace industry with the targeted power of Copy Followers, Chris found and followed Twitter users who were following their competitors. Knowing that these users would be interested in their service, it made sense for him to subtly make these potential users aware of Crozdesk. This strategy was powerful, for Copy Followers not only guided Crozdesk to this treasure trove of potential user groups but also gave it a way to interact with this massive audience.

8 To take their user engagement strategy up a notch, Nick and Chris then employed the Automated Direct Message feature of Crowdfire. Stacking up Twitter followers is futile if the resource of followers is not utilised in the right manner. Crowdfire s tools and statistics have been instrumental in connecting us with new users for our business that we might not otherwise have found. The feature I love the most is the auto DMs. We use this feature to directly support and enhance our marketing campaigns - getting new app listings, promoting a blog post, or just spreading the word about our platform! - - Nick Hopper, Founder

9 Impact From 100 followers in January to over followers in May, Crozdesk has seen a phenomenal rise in growth. The powerful combination of their inherent knowledge of the SaaS marketplace and Crowdfire's tools like Copy Followers and Automated DM has helped Crozdesk cement its place in the world of app libraries. Chris followed a two-pronged approach with Crowdfire. He used the Crozdesk account to generate more followers and he used Hopper's account to target relevant users like web designers, web developers, entrepreneurs and founders.

10 This approach powered Crozdesk's Twitter presence and they now generate as many as 400 new, relevant followers every day. The goal of using Crozdesk on CrowdFire was to get the number of web application submissions on our site to 25 per week.and we hit that target. Everything is now a growth rate of 5 times Chris Baird, Business Development The start-up s success doesn't stop at that. By capitalizing on the personalization offered by the Automated Direct Messages and combining it with other factors, Crozdesk exponentially increased the number of app submissions they got. From their humble beginnings of 5 submissions a week to more than 25 to 30 a week in May, the rising startup saw a whopping 400% increase in app submissions.

11 The Road Ahead For a startup that's barely a year old, has a team strength that runs in single digits and that has not done any major marketing, Crozdesk has come a long way. Chris has just begun experimenting with the Keyword Follow feature of Crowdfire by using keywords such as 'growth hacking'. He'll be using it to further narrow his search for Crozdesk's target audience.

12 The thing is we're really early stage and our competitors have been around for a while. We re trying to achieve scale and we are trying to continue to build the content on our site so that people can get a great choice of web apps. CrowdFire has been a major resource in helping us realize that goal of 25 submissions. We'll be deciding what our next goal is and I know that CrowdFire will definitely feature in our next strategy, whatever it is.

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