Because Neighbourhood is centered around what you can do in the physical world around you – our launch strategy is to begin with one locality, Southampton, and expand to others as our user and client base takes off.
Launch partnerships
In advance of our launch in Southampton (and in future Neighbourhoods in the UK and beyond) we will negotiate partnerships with local leisure and hospitality businesses.
To get over the hurdle of closing commercial deals as a new and unknown startup, we will offer a special client deal to our new partners:
- For the first 3 months, Neighbourhood will fund discounts that you offer to Neighbourhood members
- For the first 3 months, Neighbourhood will not claim any affiliate fees for reffering new customers to your business
- After 3 months, you may or may not decide to offer ‘Neighbourhood discounts’ to customers, but if you do, you will fund it yourself as a business in the usual way
- After 3 months, the usual affiliate fees will become due to Neighbourhood, per customer that we refer / uses the app to claim discounts etc
- The business is free to cancel their contract with Neighbourhood at any time (even as soon as the 3 months is up)
Having all of these partners signed up, will encourage individual users to join, and help positive word of mouth to spread through the Neighbourhood!
User marketing tactics
Other user marketing tactics will be:
- Targeted digital social media advertising – aimed at people in Southampton who are a member of sports groups or have shown an interest in sports and other social activities
- Search advertising aimed at people in Southampton searching for sports and other social activities
- Distributing flyers at local universities, and shopping precincts
- Reaching students via university leisure societies that offer classes and events to people inside and outside universities
- Friend get friend marketing: we will heavily emphasize to new users that Neighbourhood will get better for everyone if they invite their friends. The mechanisms to invite friends will be built throughout our application and part of every communication.