4 weeks ago, at the beginning of August, Withfriends decided to begin exploring Google Ads for the first time. We’ve used Facebook Ads in the past; with a budget of $11k spread over almost 6 months - to limited success. In hindsight, it’s too difficult to target small business owners directly via the perpetual time-wasting machine, so we had few qualified signups to show for the effort. The theory for Google was, instead, find the business owners at the moment they’re searching for a solution - and spend almost a year’s budget in a month, to know by mid-September once and for all if the channel was worth it.

It took two weeks to set up, and presented a limitation. We couldn’t as easily target for specific platforms like we did with our Shopify integrations; instead we would be getting signups using a whole spectrum of potential point-of-sale integrations - so Kunal had to rise to the challenge and innovate a series of strategies for rolling out online and in-person integrations for Square, Squarespace, Toast, Teespring, Venmo, CashApp, and more. You can read about them in our weekly product updates. Kunal rebuilt the entire onboarding signup experience and we began running ads two weeks ago. We’re learning, and there’s lots of room for improvement, but the signals are positive so far. 

Meanwhile, the solution to this targeting problem created an opportunity I’ve been waiting for almost since we started this company. Finally, we’re in a position where we can go down a block and pitch almost every business; my skills coordinating distribution for Showpaper, the job I had when I first starting collaborating with Kunal back when we ran an gallery/arcade/performance space on 42nd street are at hand.
Last week I tested distributing the first 100 postcards. I built an app for taking business records while on the go, noting the point-of-sale, who I spoke with, customer feedback. Clocked an average of 3 minutes/business. Did 6 hrs in Greenpoint and Bushwick. If I could, I would do it forever. Instead, I designed a street team strategy for how to hit 1000 businesses in the next two weeks. Applications to join the Withfriends Walkabout went up earlier tonight (bit.ly/withfriendsnyc). 

The goal is to match any success we find with the Google Ads campaign with hustle over the next two weeks. Once the street team idea is in place, the next thing is to begin exploring any possible partnerships with Business Improvement Districts, Chamber of Commerce, or any other associations focused on supporting the landscape of small businesses. And lastly, prepare for a launch on Product Hunt week after next, to round out our roll out strategy.

There are still a lot of improvements that Kunal needs to make to the experience after businesses sign up - but the hope is that we can get a real solid handle on the small business appetite for a membership solution like Withfriends through these efforts by mid-September.