Every time I start to market a product in a different industry it always seems really clear where the users are and how to reach them.
And every time I realize just how wrong I am.
When I started selling western good in Hong Kong, I thought it was obvious you just sell to foreigners. Put expat as a group in say facebook ads and call it day while the money rolls in.
And then you see how ineffective that is and start to talk to real expats and where they hang out online. They don’t look at ads, they trust friends and other expats.
It took a few months for us to realize the key to cracking the market at the time was a 60,000 person facebook group called Hong Kong Mom’s.
After that there were a few fragmented foreigner groups on a variety of different apps. French, British, etc expat groups on Wechat or Telegram.
Like a cue ball, I figured it was super clear and smooth. Even if it really was, it’s not like you can grab onto something that smooth.
If you zoom in enough though, you can see hundred of tiny edges. The various expat groups, the nanny communities, the shopping moms.
Even though I thought hong kong expats was a small enough community it wasn’t the reality of how people communicated and learned about new products.