Growth hacking has dominated the marketing and business space since the beginning of this decade, as business owners wish for a resonated strategy that sells their products or services. Alatbywema, the pivotal digital bank in Nigeria, employed strategic growth hacks insights to redefine customer acquisition and brand awareness with a groundbreaking approach.
Alatbywema modelled its customer acquisition and brand awareness using twin approaches: prosumers and ambassadorial force. Another exciting thing is the incentives and payment structure for the two forces as its convener of the product. This ingenious growth hack strategy stands as a beacon of success, which propelled its digital bank to unprecedented heights, setting a benchmark for innovative customer acquisition and brand awareness.
The Unprecedented Growth Hack
Funding new customers’ accounts with non-withdrawable amounts is in no way unconventional. Financial institutions have exhausted it. Paypal establishment enticed the customer by doing the same. What makes Alatbywema’s approach different is that it allows the withdrawal of funds (#500) coupled with the convenience of free doorstep-delivered ATM cards. For example, the prosumers (professional consumers) and campus ambassadors are decisive in amplifying brand awareness and driving customer acquisition. Many students opened the account for three reasons: avoidance of long queues in the bank, free ATM cards, and the withdrawable #500. Alatbywema practically gave out handouts for banking with them.
Who are the Prosumers in marketing, and how did Alatbywema source them?
The word prosumer was coined in 1980 by Alvin Toffler. As it stands, prosumers are professional consumers. They are like regular buyers or users of a product or service, but because of their interest and knowledge about the product or service, they sing the praises of them. What differentiates prosumers from consumers is professional skills or interest in the product.
For Alatbywema, they selected these people and customised their structure and operation as brand advocates. Prosumers, having experienced and embraced the product, became evangelists, amplifying the brand’s reach. The vital element here is identifying individuals who resonate with the target audience, encouraging genuine connections that transcend traditional marketing boundaries.
- Targeted Identification: Alatbywema strategically identified prosumers capable of engaging with the intended demographic. The graduates who understand the needs of students seeking a hassle-free digital banking solution, the brand tapped into the power of these evangelists who traversed the institutions and authentically connected with the students to increase brand awareness and customer acquisition.
- Referral Code Incentives: They made referral codes for every customer. The referral code system does not only empower the prosumers to earn on every customer registered using the same code, but every customer. Ordinary customers might not be as versatile as prosumers who had registered under the auspice of the Alaltbywema marketing team. However, earning through the referral for them might be productive. This approach transformed prosumers into proactive brand advocates, and the system incentivised prosumers by providing them with a commission based on the number of accounts opened through their referral codes.
- Payment Structure: Alatbywema’s foresight extended to compensating prosumers as bona fide contributors to the brand’s growth. Weekly payments based on the number of accounts opened established a symbiotic relationship, turning customer acquisition into a lucrative avenue for those seeking employment opportunities.
Creating Campus Ambassador Programme
Implementing a growth hack strategy, including the integration of campus ambassadors, further exemplifies Alatbywema’s innovative approach to customer acquisition and brand building. This programme created a network effect that fueled exponential growth and bolstered brand awareness.
- Branded Merchandise: Alatbywema understood the power of tangible incentives. Campus ambassadors, equipped with branded shirts, became walking billboards, subtly endorsing the brand in diverse university environments.
- Monetisation Opportunities: A dual-purpose strategy expanded the ambassador network and employed students indirectly, making the brand an integral part of their professional journey. Alatbywema cleverly transformed the ambassadorial role into a revenue-generating opportunity for students. And customer acquisition and brand awareness for Wema.
- Hierarchical Growth: It didn’t stop at individual campus ambassadors; the organic evolution of the programme saw successful ambassadors becoming prosumers, creating a hierarchical structure that multiplied the brand’s reach and impact.
Adoption of Hack Growth Strategy
Our analysis of brands within the financial institution or fintech can adapt and re-adjust this hack growth strategy. Discount and freemium are the prominent adoptions, but they are likely to exhaust their relevancy now or soon because prospects could use multiple email addresses to access the same free trial multiple times without buying. The revelation about free trial might not have gained traction. Businesses’ readiness to find and establish unprecedented approaches to hack growth other than discount and free trials is more necessary than ever to boost revenue and expand capacities.
Because of some critical disruptions in consumer behaviour (although it’s argued that consumer behaviour changes now and then), only businesses with the right innovation and disruption growth hack will build a new customer base and lead a change.
Meanwhile, businesses are more in demand of growth hackers (marketers) to improve sales and distribution without building sellable products. To proactively prepare for growth hack adoption, a strong product or service is a must.
“In a growth marketing, experimentations and continuing strive towards principles that work for acquisition and relations building are necessary ingredients— discount and referral may just be the starting points. The unusual or innovative way of making the usual assumes a new sense of the unusual creates an ambience of innovation and growth. .”
Richard 2023.
Taking the next opportunities
Businesses have the privilege to innovate and adopt unprecedented growth hacks. As a company, it can start by experimenting with many growth hacks that fit into its market and service or product. For the experiment, a business should analyse and evaluate to measure growth and values. If the business does well using two, then adopt the experiment into a strategy for growth. In addition, Alatbywema needed to stop the strategy at a time. Perhaps it’s built the customer base or for a too-churn rate was higher.
Nevertheless, for brand awareness, the strategy established Wema and re-oriented the youth against the misconception of calling Wema Bank an ageing bank for only the old.
Because there is a new narrative around the brand among the financial institutions today, the fintech companies integrate the Wema account for payment gateway. The elements every company needs are strategy and persistence to experiment and adopt.
Alatbywema’s growth hack strategy is a testament to the potency of blending targeted marketing with a structured incentive system.