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The #AskMeAnything Newsletter

Holly's #AskMeAnything

Q: During your journey starting and developing Pixc, what was the single most effective marketing strategy that contributed to building a healthy audience base and customer base: e.g. channel partners, content marketing, social media content, social media outreach.

I guess there's multiple answers.

I would say we do three things quite well. That would be:

content marketing,

channel partners,

and also outreach - not necessarily social media outreach but sales outreach, which helped us build an audience and customer base.

In terms of building channel partners, we started with outreach. We did outreach directly to customers who we thought they may need their photos edited, and we thought about when they might need that service.

So for example, we looked at brands who were going to trade fairs where they would need to focus on getting their product catalogue fixed and ready for the trade fair. i.e. thinking about when they will use our product was really important.

Content Marketing

Blogs served two purposes: if we got questions about us or about what to do, we can redirect people who ask us the questions to the blogs; and in turn over time it helped with SEO and traffic.

Channel Partners

Third thing was channel partners; this one has been really big for us. By building integrations directly in platforms; e.g. ecommerce platforms like Shopify, and Magento, it allowed us not only to make it a better experience on-boarding a customer. Customers wouldn't need to perform multiple steps when installing our product, they could use our product directly in the Shopify dashboard or the e commerce platform dashboard. It also helped us build those channel partners up and leverage their traffic from their app store, directing that traffic to Pixc.


Q: Do you think you could delegate audience building to a third party service provider?

So I would say yes and no, I think you can delegate anything to anyone. I do think though that ideally, you bring those people you delegate to onto your team and you're delegating to a team member, even if they're a freelancer and are working with you part time.

But what you want to do is do it yourself first. Find out what works and what doesn't, and come up with a process . It's good to care and build an audience and community, but at the same time, it is really a process, just like creating content: writing in forums (or Facebook groups) is important. Being where your audience is, is important.

At the same time, all of these activities are quite, I would say, repetitive and you do need to be able to scale it.

So I do think that you can delegate it to someone. The only thing is, if you delegate it to a third party, they may not necessarily fully understand your business. You can also I think, as a founder or founding team, learn a lot from engaging with your au

For example by doing audience building yourself, you get to learn first hand what features and products are missing in your offering, where you get to create more value. So whilst I think you don't want to delegate stuff too early; for things like: generating new content or repurposing content you can delegate to a third party, such as on Speedlancer.

Q: You have technology built on TikTok. Is there anything unique about TikTok that makes it great (or at least interesting) for audience building?

So I'm relatively new to Tik Tok like everyone else.

I think what's really interesting at the moment about Tik Tok is that they have quite an accurate algorithm to match your content to other people. And it's not about your content just going to your followers. Some people are saying that the algorithm will show your content to a group of a thousand people or so, and depending on how they react, they can then distribute your content to a wider group of people.

At the moment, because it's so early on, there aren't many content creators. There are a lot more people who are consumers of the platform and are engaging in the content. So I think what's interesting is if you can build an audience in a niche, right now you do have the ability to go viral.

You do have the ability to grow a community and audience quite quickly. Tik Tok is not just about dancing and singing or mining, which people think it is. There are a lot of educational videos out there.

There are obviously tips and tricks, you can get your videos to go viral by using sounds and tricks. Fore example you can basically take something that's trending and create it and make it your own and; the Tik Tok audience is very supportive of that. So I think it's a very interesting platform.

It is also vertical short form video, which hasn't really been a thing before. So I think it's interesting to see how the younger generation is evolving and what sort of content they want to consume. But I wouldn't say it's just for the younger generation. There are obviously a lot of other age groups on there, it's just a new way of people consuming content.

I think there's an opportunity to grow lot on Tik Tok at the moment, something we should all be doing.

SUBJECT MATTER LEADER

Holly Cardew

Holly Cardew - Founder Pixc, Co-Founder of Vop, Forbes 30 Under 30

Holly has a background in building eCommerce stores, marketplaces, online marketing, outsourcing and graphics. She has worked with companies internationally to build their online audience and presence.

In 2016, Holly was listed as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia emerging entrepreneur to watch in the eCommerce and retail space.

Since starting Pixc, Holly has hired over 400 freelancers, built a distributed team and is excited about the evolution of HR with the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

We are incredibly excited to have Holly share her knowledge and answering many of your pressing marketing questions.