Clubhouse - Initial Marketing Impressions
Clubhouse is opening up and I wanted to go into opportunities I see associated with marketing. This post is going to be broadly two sections: 1) A primer on the app for non-users 2) early marketing opportunities.
App primer
Clubhouse is a voice only app featuring a hallway and rooms. The rooms appear algorithmically based on who you follow. The app features a speaking area and an audience area. Moderation happens through the creator of the room and who they grant moderation privileges to.
What’s the vibe? I would say there are two concurrent vibes. One features smaller groups where almost everyone has speaking rights. The other has between 10 to 20 speakers and audience sizes between 50 to 200. In the larger groups, moderators exhibit behaviors similar to third world dictators. They invite people up and boot them if they say things that they don’t agree with.
Other observations - There’s also a group of people aspiring to be moderators of groups with large listening audiences. Some people are strategizing about creating controversial room names to draw people’s attention. You can consider this a twitter mentality of generating strong emotions to generate audience interest. It’s a popular strategy among journalists and hate groups alike on twitter. I expect it to be the same on a more mature Clubhouse platform as the user base grows.
There are different ways people are describing Clubhouse but the one that resonates that most to me is interactive podcast. An original description from my mind is contemporary radio show. These descriptions are framing devices. I think it is lazy to compare it to social media sites. Clubhouse is going to compete with Twitter which is working on cloning Clubhouse. If it survives long enough - it’s going to compete with Spotify and other podcast focused companies.
Marketing Opportunities on Clubhouse
Clubhouse is good for business that have a few expert partners or consultants. A noncomprehensive list of these types: lawyers, meditation instructors, deep breathing instructors, therapists, early stage VCs, etc. Tactic - Create a room around your topic of expertise or alternatively - act as a guest speaker on your topic of expertise consistently. Put a calendly link on your clubhouse profile and a cash app link or a venmo username. See what happens.
What about brands? This is an opportunity to take over niche spaces. Anyone who is getting a check from your brand should be a speaker for your clubhouse club. The advantage of the brand is getting guests that other people want to hear from.
My other thought on this is make sure the host(s) of any company clubhouse programming have a long term vested interest in your company. Otherwise, you face a situation where you are building an audience for a host that then leaves with your audience to a competitor.
There is large opportunity for misalignment between leadership and a clubhouse host representing the brand. A lot of brands have a tendency to dump new social channels onto interns. Please don’t do this with Clubhouse. Do it at a senior level or don’t bother at all. Otherwise your brand and company will encounter a situation where there are divergent messages from different channels.
I have seeds of ideas but they haven’t really germinated yet. Have any thoughts or tactics for clubhouse? Let me know. I have a few invites that I’ll hand out to any subscribers that are interested on a first come, first serve basis. Clubhouse handle: @kennethto