Helena Hambrecht: Building a Brand Through Organic Growth

August 19 & 20: Built to Last Audio Conference from Buffer and Wistia

Speaker: Helena Hambrecht, co-founder and co-CEO of Haus

Links:

• Haus website
• Haus on Instagram
• Helena Hambrecht on Twitter

Episode notes and action points

Uncover your growth flywheels

Hubspot describes a flywheel as: momentum you gain when you align your entire organization around delivering a remarkable customer experience.

For Haus, its flywheel is the concept of sharing its product with friends. Here’s how it works:

• Someone orders a bottle of Haus
• They invite a group of friends over, share the bottle, and all have a great time
• Those friends order a bottle of Haus and invite their friends over
• And so on…

By creating a great product experience, and focusing its marketing efforts on showing customers how to enjoy Haus, the brand was able to create a flywheel that generates organic growth.

Use content to educate customers

As aperitif culture is growing in the U.S., not every potential consumer is familiar with the concept or exactly how an aperitif like Haus should be consumed and shared. So a key part of its growth flywheel is customer education.

When people think about customer education, many think about FAQs, on-boarding guides or instruction manuals. But it doesn't have to be that way. Education doesn't only have to come in the form of copywriting or instructions.

For Haus, imagery plays a really key role in encouraging sharing behaviors amongst its customers. If you look at photos on the Haus website, you're not going to see its product against a seamless backdrop in a studio with no context. You're going to see it in somebody's house. You're going to see it sitting on a dinner table with a group eating together. You're going to see it by the couch with a couple of people sitting together.

(Note: Haus has changed its image style slightly because of COVID-19 and not wanting to encourage large gatherings of people.)

Haus uses imagery to show customers how its product is designed to be consumed. It aims to make people think — “Oh, okay. I'm supposed to bring this bottle to the table. I am supposed to share it with the people I care about.” Helena believes that visual cues can do the work of hundreds and hundreds of words of copy.

Action point: In your marketing, think about how you can use visuals to show how your product can be used and benefit customers rather than simply telling them.

Your product is everything

Having a great product is the key to organic growth, but you may need to adjust your idea of what product means… You could say that what Haus sells is liquid in a bottle. And by just making its drink the best on the market it would be a success. But Helena believes that product is much more than simply what you sell.

You have to think of everything as your product. Your product is the overall experience someone has with your brand. From the buying experience on your website, to the welcome messages, unboxing, support.

If there's one component of your customer experience that is subpar, your product is subpar. You really do have to think of the entire flow as the product.

Action point: Put yourself in your customers shoes. Try visiting your website and running through the signup/purchase process… What doesn’t feel great? Which experiences are subpar? Make a list of ways you can make improvements and deliver a delightful customer experience form start to finish.