Wow, so we just saved 50 Thousand people in Bahrain money on thousands of different of deals and offers since January this year with over 100K app downloads.

For all of you who don’t know, Flashh Deals is a limited time deals and offers app, which we kinda own .. If you haven’t checked it out yet, download it now, but we would love to share some of our experiences launching a new app into a small market place like Bahrain, our ups and downs, and how you may be able to improve and benefit from it.

The App Challenge

So being a limited time deals and offers app, one of our main challenges was and still is, to consistently provide new deals on a daily basis.  Finding monthly or yearly deals is definitely a much easier feat, however this would go against our original concept and reason behind the app, described below.

Flashh was born out of a need from a retail business owners perspective, the problem with yearly or monthly deals, is that customers can use them at their own discretion when they like.  Having worked with hundreds of restaurants and retail businesses, we realised that deals would be a lot more effective to a business, if they could be provided during quiet times, in order to boost their dead traffic, hence leading to contribution pricing for the business, and a greater discount to the ultimate end user.

As a marketeer and business owner, you realise there is no point giving away discounts during busy times in your business.  For example, if you were to provide a deal during a busy weekend night, no matter what the percentage is, that is basically giving away profits at the wrong time.  We believe we needed to come up with a Win Win Win model, where the business wins, the consumer wins and we win at the same time.

So what were the channels used to get traction?
Sometimes you can spend a lot of money on marketing to pay your way through the app store charts, other times you need to be creative to get traction on your app.

When we approached the market we realised that Bahrain is a small market place, which you can perceive as negative, but at the same has its positive attribute that word can spread very fast.

So we used the following channels to market our app:

Social Media Sponsored ads on facebook and instagram.
A little bit of Email Marketing.
Collaboration with others, this is important, as they can link back to you as much as you link to them.
Collaboration with social media influencers.
Our own social media strategies.
The important part that I would like to highlight is the social media strategies
Social Media is obviously not a post and forget channel, it’s a 2 way communication channel, and being in a small country we had decided from the offset to break the Branding Rules and Chains by adapting a free personality, which can speak in a very local language to our local following.

The great thing is when you are marketing for your own account, and are not restricted to brand tones, colors and looks, you can actually be a lot more free, to be creative and really connect with your audience.

We decided to go Bahraini first, and even the arabic we used was a local dialect of Bahraini arabic.

Family always comes first
The most critical factor for us was customer service.  We took it upon ourselves to respond to queries as fast as possible, to really build a connection with our audience, and to treat our followers as friends and family.  This goes a very long way in your social media, as your followers will start to become your brand ambassadors naturally, will spread the word for you, and will even defend you if anyone speaks negatively of you.

Since our followers were our family members, we could feel their needs, their locations, and went out of our way to provide them the deals they were looking for, in the geographical areas they were located.

We went out of our way to negotiate as hard as we could, to provide the best possible deals, so they could save the most amount of money.  It’s a tough economy out there, and we felt like we were helping our family save so they could spend more on their other personal expenses.  The bottom line is, we cared, and we still care.  Your customers are your family, and you should treat them as such, look after them so they look after you.

So where should you go from here

Too many brands are either simply posting adverts online, and not engaging their audience, and hoping this will somehow make a difference to their bottom line.  It’s the traditional Billboard mindset transformed to social and digital media.

Do you want to take your marketing for your traditional business or your online business to the next level?

You can download the app by clicking here

Or visit the website: https://bh.getflashh.com