Pivot and other ish…

So, Nigeria are out of the World Cup. The Super Eagles tried valiantly to soar, but Les Bleus were just a bridge too far…

Ok, as a Nigerian and a football fan, this is sad news indeed. But when you’re running a 2nd Screen Social Platform for football fans who are doing our initial promo in Nigeria (well, in Lagos to be specific) around the 2014 World Cup, it could be more than just sad. It could be disastrous. So, enter plan b….

In fact, in most aspects of life, it’s sensible to have a plan b. Unromantic, perhaps; but certainly sensible… And in business having contingencies – a plan b (and c, d, e, f and so on) is essential. Business and entrepreneurship seems flashy in the observance, but it is unromantic in the breach. At least most of the time…

As a platform focused on the English Premier League specifically, the World Cup was always only a means to an end – an ideal opportunity to kick off our marketing and promotions drive to acquire users – and establish Gbamm! as a brand. It also provides a unique opportunity to test and tweak certain aspects/functionality of Gbamm! – and improve/amend as necessary. Focusing on the Nigerian Super Eagles always made sense – considering how football mad Nigerians are. But we also had to be aware that we had to have a contingency plan, if the Eagles got knocked out…

So we planned a pivot – a strategic change of focus. We are still focused on the World Cup and using it to drive awareness, sign up, and engagement; but the emphasis is on football, as opposed to the Super Eagles. And the key focus in on the interactive & engagement aspects of the platform. We have brought onstream instant messaging – with a whole array of content from football specific emoticons to Digital Playing Cards; and will also be adding a meme generator over the next couple of days. So interesting times, as we see how our growing number of users react to these features…

Of course, we will be making another pivot to the EPL when the World Cup ends on 13th July…

Gbamm! Content & other pieces on the chess board….

We also added our 1st pieces of content that’ll be a key part of the Gbamm! Experience…

As part of our Facebook acquisitions campaign, we have showcased some of the content that Gbamm! users will have access to as part of the Gbamm! Experience…

We were very pleased with the interaction our caricature digital ‘playing cards’ elicited on facebook. Over the next couple of weeks, these digital playing card will form a core part of the ‘live match chat’ feature on the portal.

We will use such content – and specialised emoticons, as well as user generated content – to drive interaction within gbamm!, particularly in our ‘Groups’ features…

These ‘digital plating cards’ are also interactive – and encourage engagement with our users – allowing users to name players & managers & other football related characters. Like all playing cards, the idea is to encourage collectability…

We’ll update you about uptake & other content types as we move ahead with its deployment

Speaking about chess, me I like rooks & knights….

Gbamm! Lessons about marketing & promotions

OK, I have to confess that everything we do I kinda see as a test – a means to learn lessons & gain some insights to build a humming & sticky platform. Something that really enhances the user experience of watching football on TV…

So I thought I’d give some initial thoughts about the marketing & promotion strategy we’re deploying. Of course, I’ll keep budgets & stuff confidential; but I’ll outline the strategy & some of its impact & effect. Let me say that these are preliminary thoughts – as we are actually in the middle of the promotion cycle, so cannot fully evaluate the marketing mix as yet…

We used a mix of radio – through a strategic partnership with specialist sports show on Beat 99.9 FM Lagos. We chose this for 2 reasons – we have a partnership with Complete Sports Nigeria who produced a World Cup Special for the station, & Beat 99.9 is a hip Lagos station aimed at an aspirational crowd… We also did a social media campaign – focusing on Facebook and Twitter. We are driving traffic & engagement with competitions & giveaways for signed-up users.

The radio worked effectively to create awareness & promote the existence of Gbamm! to our core football audience. We saw a good upturn of traffic to the site, with a low bounce rate (under 35%). Once we kicked in with a competition, traffic & sign-up’s increased dramatically – doubling in 3 days.

We added a Facebook campaign to the above in Week 2. This saw the rate of engagement & acquisitions double & then double again in the 2nd week. It has also taken a life of its own outside of Gbamm!, with an ever increasing number of ‘likes’ on our Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/gbammfootball

Plus robust interaction with our followers on Facebook.

It’ll be very interesting to see what happens when we tweak this & concentrate resources over the coming 2 weeks…

Also, look out for a pivot….

Gbamm! World Cup – It begins…

It’s been an interesting World Cup & couple of weeks here at Gbamm!

Lagos has been hot & humid – typical rainy season, really…

We’ve been running out 1st promotions to acquire users on http://www.gbamm.com & to test the functionality of the portal

The Facebook stuff we have done has been particularly successful with acquiring user sign up’s

The radio ads have driven awareness for some of the competitions we ran – and did kick off the promo

Plus we’ve made some considerable changes to the back-end hosting -and have been improving & updating the functionality of the site

For all you tech peeps out there – the specifics are that we have moved to a managed server, with a more robust & flexible hosting & server solution; which has a dedicated team managing the server which we hire from the hosting provider. So more cost, but more flexibility…

We have our fingers crossed that all the tests this weekend have run smoothly….

Which is needed considering the number of plug-ins & apps we have running on the server – and more will be loaded in future, no doubt…

It’s all exciting stuff, however. We’ll be adding chat, meme generators, emoticons and other visual content. As well as adding other functionality in due course…

 

 

1 day to go till Brazil 2014 kicks off

OK. I’m both excited & kinda stressed/tense…

It’s 1 day till the World Cup in Brazil kicks off. I should be (and i am really  looking forward to the football fiesta that Brazil promises to be). And we have a World Cup promo launching of Gbamm!. Yes, it’s Lagos focused (this was always part of the strategy); and content driven (and you can never be sure the content you produce will work until you put it out there, but hey, you gotta push on). 

I must admit I’m a little conflicted. I should be more excited, but all I can think of are all the things we have yet to finish…..

Our small team here at Gbamm! have all been working really hard over the last couple of weeks to get to where we are now…

So lets go! We will deal with the workload, I guess…

I’m gonna stick to my crazy prediction: Nigeria vs Brazil in the Final. Nigeria to win 3-2 in Extra Time (Crystal Ball Time)….

 

Ayo Alli

Founder & CEO of Gbamm!

Twitter:

@score4africa

@2gbamm

email:

info@gbamm.com

Gameweek 34….

This is the make or break weekend in the Premier League title race. Liverpool will be hosting Man City at Anfield on Sunday in the match that will likely decide who will win the leauge this season.

 

Whatever the outcome, expect fireworks on the pitch….