Client
EmptyCup
Services Provided
Objective
EmptyCup is a Bangalore based ‘interior design app’ revolutionising the interior design space. When we started working with EmptyCup, they basically didn’t have a digital footprint at all. We took over their account when they just had 140 followers on Instagram. The goals were simple,- Grow their Social Media following
- Create High Quality Content
- Generate Leads
Results Achieved
► 15000+ followers. (9K+ Followers in 40 days)
► 24.9K+ Content Interactions. (65% Growth)
► 16000+ Profile Visits in 30 Days
► 5000+ Post Likes in 30 days
► 4500+ Story Views in 24 Hours
► 1.7M+ Impressions in 30 Days
► 2500+ Instagram Saves in 30 days
► 500+ Instagram Shares in 30 days
► 200+ Unique & Posts Created
► 1000+ Leads Generated
The Challenges 🎯
#.1 High Quality Content Creation
EmptyCup is an interior design startup and their content them is mostly educational content around the design space. Now in order to create content for an interior design company there are only two prerequisites,- You need to be an interior designer yourself so you can educate people around design.
- Be really good at design.
#2. Content Strategy & Growth
Identifying the audience who loves the content that we were creating and also finds it valuable, because if you create generic content posting mockups and before and after photos like every other design company, You will never be able to achieve the numbers that we do.
So it was really important for us to craft a content strategy that created some value and made people want more of it and they end up following us.
Once we had the content figured out we also had to figure out how to get in front of the eyes of people passionate for these value bombs that we were creating.
#3. Lead Generation
Our client is specifically looking for people who ONLY need interior design services and can get their development from elsewhere, this is to first promote app and make use of their technology and help people design their own homes by themselves using the EmtpyCup app.
As a result, leads of people who want to get their entire home redone were useless.
Think about this, The general notion when you get interior done for your home would be to go to a designer and have them do the entire thing right from the mockups to the execution, right? But we needed people who were willing to work with 2 designer, My client for the design and others for execution.
This really became a tough challenge for us to generate qualified leads and we sweated this a lot.
This wasn’t your ordinary digital marketing campaign.
EmptyCup is the one of the most interesting clients we’re working with, they are not your average interior designers they are the ones who are really working on revolutionising their industry with proprietary technology that they are building and it has been really fun yet challenging to work with them.
General Approach 🐢
An average agency would quickly resort to the following,
- Post design inspiration and images from around the internet using sources like Pinterest, Shutterstock etc with a blend of testimonials and mockups
- Run Ads on Facebook and Instagram to grow the channels.
- Get data and cold call leads, run lead ads on Google and Facebook but it still wouldn’t solve the design specific lead problem.
But we took a slightly different approach while sticking to the basics, I guess we’re just good at doing what we do, let’s explore our exact strategy.
How We Did It. 🚀
#1. Follower Growth – 9000+ Followers in 40 Days.
We started slow and small when at the beginning with small targets of 500 followers per month, then 1000, 2000 and so on but in the last two months, June and July 2021 we had cracked the code and went on with bigger targets.
What factors influence follower growth?
- High Quality & Value Adding Content
- Distribution – Being in front of the right eyes.
People overlook the importance of content creation entirely in the hunger for followers and likes forgetting the premise that people will only follow you or stick around if you create high quality content that adds value to their life. The good old phrase is true to this date, “Content is King.” and now it is more powerful than ever as Instagram and it’s algorithms only reward the people who post amazing content that everybody loves. This is the ‘Creator Economy’, Create.
Once you’re making great content it is very important that people who can benefit out of your content or enjoy it, MUST see it.
To achieve this we used two methods.
- Instagram Ads
- Instagram Guest Posts (Shoutouts)
Instagram Ads
We used highly targeted instagram ads that drove people to our profile. It took us a while to crack the exact audience we need to go after but now for EmptyCup we have built a system that allows us to reach close to any number followers we want within a given time frame.
The best part is, people love our ads. Look at like to save ratio on this post.
Having so many people save our post signals Instagram that people are loving this post and we get featured on the explore page and get few more organic followers out of our paid campaign
The secret sauce is targeting, which I will speak to you about over a call when we are discussing how to grow your brand. Get In Touch.
Shoutouts
Shoutouts help us collaborate directly with the Interior Design community around the world.
This works as a mini PR. Shoutouts can help you get featured on pages with over millions of followers from your industry overnight and if you have good content, you’re going to be celebrated and rewarded.
We have done a number of shoutouts campaigns for EmptyCup that helps us boost our follower and engagement rate along with bringing more valuable and relevant eyeballs on our page from around the world.
#2. Content Creation – Crafting Research Backed Content to Perfection
Content creation is the most crucial part of the entire campaign and if this fails, everything fails.
People may use your product but that doesn’t mean they will follow you if you don’t make some great, valuable content whenever you do. It can be educational, funny, inspirational, memes or anything but we try to give it our best and make sure it’s unique and so should you.
“Escape Competition with Authenticity”
– Naval
Here are 4 Tips You Can Use To Create Better Content
- Create Value. Always.
- Be Original.
- Leave A Brand Recall Value.
- Lead Them Somewhere – End on a CTA, ask for something from your readers, don’t just provide information.
Research Process
We’re fortunate to have really strong design and content team here at Baclinc as it lead by my co-founder Shalmali, our content team really knocks it out of the park when it comes to content.
We go to the depths of the internet while coming up with ideas and collecting information before making any piece of content.
As we explained in our problem statement, to educate about interior design, you need to know Interior Designing because that’s the only way you’ll create right content or even remotely valuable content.
To tackle this, Shalmali went all in like we do for any of our client.
Our content creation process for EmptyCup looks like this,
- Plan the calendar
- Pick the post style, for example: Theme breakdown.
- Find a unique mockup from our client’s previous work.
- Dissect it and identify the fundamentals of each and every home design, research and learn that yourself and then turn it into content for our readers.
- Further research through blogs and websites, Interior design magazines to give out some additional value in the caption talking about the style or the theme of the home like, Contemporary, Rustic etc.
- Send to the design team.
- Get it designed, Proofread, Posted.
“Working on EmptyCup requires me to do such extensive research that now I actually understand interior design and have gained some real knowledge about it!”
– Shalmali Parkar (Co-founder, Creative Director – Baclinc)
While creating educational content you must remember that people come on Instagram and social media channels to chill, you get 3 seconds of watch time to make an impression before they send you upwards scrolling down their feed working out their thumb.
Your content should not be overpowering or difficult to grasp or boring, remember they came to chill on Instagram? So make sure that your content isn’t too overpowering.
We also created content for their blog section helping them with their SEO, but that’s a case study for another day!
#3. Engagement Growth – 25K+ Content Interactions in 30 Days.
These strategies positively impact not just the number of followers every month we see our dashboards in green going up and to the right.
- 1.7M+ Impressions in 30 days
- 16,000+ Profile Visits in 30 days
- 24.9K+ Content Interactions (Engagement 65% up from previous month)
- 5000+ Post Likes in 30 days
- 4500+ Individual story views
- 2500+ Instagram Saves in 30 days
- 500+ Instagram Shares in 30 days
#4. Lead Generation
We had a unique problem, We wanted interior design leads but the leads had to be from people who only wanted design and could get further development from eslewhere.
This was a really tough challenge and we didn’t perform the best delivering in the initial month.
With some of our budget burned, we gained the data and then started to study and analyze it to further narrow our targeting.
This worked and we gradually started to decrease our cost per lead from INR 250/lead and we were able to reduce it 10 times bringing it to mere INR 25.
But, optimising the budget didn’t solve our problem, instead we had to now focus on increasing the now quality of qualified leads who were only looking for design.
Here comes the trick,
- We started to say it upfront on our lead form, “We only provide design services, You will have to get development separately” and made them chose if they were okay with it or wanted end to end service.
- We made a custom audience of the people who responded to our form to further increase the qulaity of the leads.
- The final weapon we pulled out was Lookalike audiences. We made a lookalike audience of the custom audience we previously made and this worked wonders. We have now increased our quality of leads to 60% qualified.