By A Correspondent
SmartShift, a mobile app for cargo owners and transporters, enabling users to find cargo transporters based on the shipment size, weight, and other requirements, has released its innovative marketing campaign. Customer acquisition is always a pain point for a start-up. Keeping cost of customer acquisition low is a challenge that start-ups generally struggle with. Cost effective innovative marketing campaigns are one option that start-ups implement.
The team at SmartShift realised that their key target audience are high tea consumers. Accordingly, they came up with the SmartShift Kulhar campaign.
SmartShift functions in the B2B space; the TG is mainly the owners of SMEs. These customers are not affected by billboards, hoardings, newspaper ads, etc. or any of the other traditional forms of advertisement. SmartShift wanted to reach out to their current and potential customer base in a more personalized manner. That was when the marketing and sales team noticed that the one person who their customer interacts with multiple times in a day is his local chaiwallah. Also, being a start-up operated by a young & highly socially-conscious team, SmartShift wanted a marketing activity that would be effective as well as eco-friendly. The SmartShift Kulhars were created & distributed to all the local tea shops in key clusters.
The team personally reached out to all the tea vendors in target areas of Mumbai and distributed amongst them clay kulhars with the SmartShift brand colours. The tea vendors were then requested to sell their tea to the nearby shops in these SmartShift branded kulhars. In addition to this, they asked them to collect visiting cards from each of the shop owners that they sold the tea to.
Speaking about the marketing initiative, Kausalya Nandkumar, CEO – SmartShift, said, “Our target market is very relationship-based and customers are habituated to book through nakas (stands for small trucks). We realized that breaking into this market will require a daily reminder strategy, to become a part of a daily activity that reinforces our brand in their minds. The daily cup of tea was a unanimous choice. The orange & blue kulhads (our brand colours) were designed to emphasise Smartshift’s brand sublimely, during their valuable captive tea-time. And kulhads were an instant hit. Within two weeks, our enquiries nearly doubled from the Kulhad-marketed area and we were able to unlock more than 100 new customers present in nook-and-crannies that we had previously missed!â€