In just a few months, Big Fish, a fish joint located at Roasters on Thika Road, moved from zero online following to over 13,000 organic Twitter followers. They are now at almost 80,000 followers.
So, how do you market your startup online? Simply create a great customer experience that makes your product so desirable that there is fear of missing out (FOMO) by customers. Then, use influencer-driven content to gain an organic following that generates loyal customers consistently.
Key Takeaways
- Make people get an ‘experience’ from your brand
- Offer your customers a great irresistible product
- Get influencers to experience the same product and build FOMO
- Stay consistent with quality to remain relevant even after the hype fades
- Focus more on FOMO to gain an organic audience
All it took was a ‘good word’ from a social media influencer and just like fire, the name Big Fish spread throughout the internet drawing hundreds of customers for the brand.
Big Fish went on to open another branch in Westlands and remains a favourite spot for many of its customers.
FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out) had a big role to play in this case.
FOMO is what made Big Fish the hottest fish joint in Nairobi.
A good thing going
In an interview with a local daily, Osumo, the owner, had not anticipated the success when he started the ‘Kibanda’ back in 2018. He was trying to stay afloat having completed his university education and found no lack in the job market.
The thing that got him on the map is that he made good fish from the start. The kind of fish that people around wanted to eat and that made his business one of those regular Joints folks pass by when they need a specific meal – in his case that meal was fish and ugali.
Most people wonder why Big Fish grew so large and so fast when it is not the only fish joint around Garden Estate. Well, in business terms, they mastered the art of a niche product that is edgy.
The moment you stepped into their first location you would get the whole vibe of a Kibanda.
At the time, eating at a Kibanda had started being glorified on Twitter and was seen as an edgy thing to do when everyone else was posting pictures of their lunches at fancy restaurants. Then the fish of course; it still remains one of the greatest-tasting meals you will have in this town.
Getting the attention
So, one person told the next person and just like a good rumour, the word spread.
It spread so far that one particular clique of social media influencers picked up on it and wanted to try out the place. Which they did all to the benefit of the Osumo, the owner.
Now, it is one thing to pay for influencer marketing and a completely different thing to gain an organic following from random influencer-driven content. When you pay an influencer, people know that you are marketing but when the influencer simply uses your product/service and brags about it, then people genuinely get interested.
Pesa Skills
In the case of Big Fish, the entire clique of influencers from Twitter, in a random way, visited the joint and in the usual Kenyan influencer fashion, posted content online about their visits. Each picture of fish and ugali at Big Fish gained more likes than the previous one.
It then became a trending habit and now everyone trying to make a name for themselves on #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) made their way to Big Fish.
It is at this point that Osumo mentioned in an interview that he noticed a lot of his customers were coming from Twitter.
FOMO – Getting the customers
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) just as the name suggests occurs when people do not want to miss out on an experience.
Eating at Big Fish became an experience.
Everyone who saw the tweets wanted to try out the fish for themselves. It was unbelievable even to the owner how much attention he had gotten and how many people travelled from all parts of Nairobi just for a taste of his fish delicacy.
The good thing with FOMO is that it demands a kind of evidence of the experience. Each new customer at Big Fish would sort of end up posting pictures or tagging the brand or just mentioning them online and most of this portraying the brand in a positive light.
The word spread even further and faster and in a typical FOMO manner, it led to a whole new level of demand at Big Fish.
People even started sending each other fish packages from Osumo as gifts and the brand would graciously tag the person being sent the gift on Twitter just to pump up the hype.
In 2019, Big Fish had to relocate to a new establishment and a bigger space for its newfound customers. Interestingly, the influx of customers had drawn a considerable number of upper-middle-class consumers who previously may not have been the target market for the brand.
You should know that FOMO is not a reserve of any brand and can randomly happen to any company willing to put in the effort.
Remember the Coca-Cola campaign where they personalized bottles for customers by printing the names on them? Everyone wanted their name printed on a bottle and it ended up in a sales influx for the company.
Also, remember the Popeyes viral chicken sandwich?
It drove the U.S. into a chicken sandwich frenzy with everyone trying to get a bit of the same. Popeyes even ran out of chicken entirely and had to stop selling the sandwich for a while as they regrouped and found a way to support the new demand.
Even the KDF craze in Kenya was a form of FOMO because every kid from Nairobi to Namanga wanted to take a bite of the ‘ngumu’ and business skyrocketed for the bakers of the infamous snack.
Remaining at the top
The trick with using FOMO for marketing is to remain relevant after the hype dies down. A business needs to sustain the orders even after everyone has seemingly had a taste of the product or service.
Big Fish has done this well by going full-on with influencer-based marketing albeit most of it being free.
You still see some big names such as Sauti Sol, Fena Gitu, and Juliani talking about the brand on their Twitter handles simply out of their own experiences.
Recently Safaricom did a feature on Big Fish and the list keeps growing.
Conclusion
If there is one lesson that small business owners can therefore learn on growing their business in a digital age is mastering the art of trending and capturing the attention of the market.
FOMO just happens to be the currently inevitable part of this strategy.
