5 Game-Changing Growth Strategies for Invest Bamboo

How Bamboo can approach marketing models for exponential growth in 2023.

One of my resolutions for 2023 is to write about growth models and specific startups that can practically build growth marketing loops or engines that’ll provide an exponential effect in acquiring more customers while lowering customer acquisition costs. After all, the goal of any team is to acquire with highest quality customers with the smallest possible cost.

This month’s edition will be on Invest Bamboo - An investment startup whose aim is to help Africans build wealth through US Stocks & ETFs.

NOTE

• I’ve been an investbamboo customer since 2020, and I made my first thousand $ deposit in 2020. So, I have a fair knowledge of how the platform works, and have some perception about them from a customer standpoint.

  

  
  
  How Bamboo is Doing Great with Marketing

• Investbamboo has done incredibly well in implementing marketing strategies like its referral campaigns, where existing users can earn a 2.5% commission on the first trade someone they referred makes.
  

• Bamboo has built trust with consistent communication, especially when they had licensing issues with SEC and other regulatory authorities. Especially when the court froze their accounts.

  

• Bamboo recently launched their API to expand growth through other fintech platforms. At least, I have seen it work with Kuda Bank App.
   

  

  Stock trading powered by Bamboo on Kuda Bank App
  

• Using a familiar face for influencing and performance marketing

  

  Falz the bad guy being used on Bamboo’s marketing creative

OVERVIEW

Invest Bamboo is an investment startup whose aim is to help Africans build wealth through US Stocks & ETFs. They started in Nigeria, and have recently launched in Ghana. They plan to expand into other African countries.

Bamboo is listed as one of Nigeria’s top startups in 2022. Their website says they have over 500,000 users. Their targeted audience are the skilled, upper-middle class, and upper-class households.

Business Summary

• Estimated No of Customers: 500,000 Users

• Funds Raised: $34.8 Million 

($.2.4Million Pre-seed, $15Million in Series A, and another $17.4Million)

• Annual Revenue: $7.4 million 

• ARPU: $15

Website Summary
- App Downloads: 1 Million+
- Monthly Traffic: About 50k

How Bamboo can Build a Sustainable Growth Model

1. SEO Growth Model with Templated Stock Pages on The Web

I’m a huge advocate of breaking down product and marketing use cases as individual entities. I explained in my Growth Marketing Handbook - TIP 2, the importance of product positioning, and making potential customers derive value as soon as they visit your website, and NOT when they signup. 

Bamboo has over 3,500 stocks listed on its app. Bamboo can convert these stocks in a templated landing page on the web to help people discover the startup 3,500+ more ways than before. 

Bamboo can acquire organic customers from the web who are searching for stock information, prices, and invesment opportunities about a specific company. 

EXAMPLES

Canva has used this marketing use case and templated strategy to create thousands of website pages, which is used as part of their SEO strategy to get Millions of organic traffic and thousand of users on monthly basis.

Cowrywise is using the same strategy for all the Nigerian mutual funds. Guess what? All of their Nigerian mutual fund’s landing page ranks in position  1-3 on the search engine result page. 

Groww - The Indian-based investment startup, similar to Bamboo basically won the whole of India and became a unicorn because of this same strategy. 

According to Ubersuggest, Groww over 92 million SEO traffic per month. With the large bulk of it coming from their templated stock pages.

SEO Profile of Indian Based Investment Startup - Groww.in

Source: Ubersuggest

The five best-performing pages are the templated stock pages.

https://groww.in/stocks/tata-motors-ltd 

https://groww.in/stocks/reliance-industries-ltd

https://groww.in/stocks/yes-bank-ltd

https://groww.in/stocks/tata-power-company-ltd

https://groww.in/stocks/tata-consultancy-services-ltd

They rank for the most important queries like “tata motor share price, share prices of tata motors, share tata motors, tata motors, etc” Traffic coming to these pages is high quality, and has a higher chance to convert than others.

Groww used the templated SEO format to create thousands of stock landing pages, that are discoverable on search engines. And the best thing is, visitors can signup to buy the specific stock they are searching for!

Bamboo can also be the same for 3,500+ US stocks and ETFs. And whenever they start listing local African stocks - which is going to have lesser SERP competition than the US stocks. 

The benefit of templated stock pages isn’t limited to creating an SEO growth engine alone. It can also be used to;

1b. Nail Ads Targeting & Performance Marketing

Since you now have landing pages for all your stocks, one can run ads to promote specific stocks with those landing pages. 

Your creative can move from “ Buy 3,500+ US stocks” to “Buy Apple Stock”, “Buy Microsoft Stock”, etc. with resulting traffic directed to specific pages.

This will make marketing efforts more granular, easier for consumers to understand, and achieve a wider reach than marketing your product as one piece.

Customer Retargeting

These templated pages will give you enough retargeting data to run better converting social ads by targeting only people who have visited those stock pages.

In summary, creating these templated pages will help Bamboo

• Help Bamboo get  x50 of their current leads gen strategies from organic marketing

• Market each stock like an individual product.

• Broaden the acquisition scope for digital advertising.

• Make it easier to expand to a new market (outside Nigeria)

2. Better UX and Comms with Geolocation Pages

The Bamboo website just works. Some might see it as not delightful. This is understandable because the major user actions happen on the mobile app, and not the web. But there are more opportunities with the country pages.

At present, it’s safe to say Bamboo does not have country pages. The homepage double as the conversion point for Nigerians and Ghanaians. There’s however a need to communicate better with different country pages.

There are some attempts to create location pages, but it was wrongly executed. When the location section toggle at the footer is changed to Ghana, nothing changes except the “contact us email & disclosures”. Every other thing is the same, including pages on the website where Nigeria is referenced as shown in the highlighted section above.

Botched Ghana localised section with Nigeria comms. 

Bamboo can create individual locational pages with distinct values and content for each country as they expand. And implement Hreflang for web internationalization. I.e.;
- Investbamboo.com - Nigeria
- Investbamboo.com/ghana/ - Ghana
- Investbamboo.com/kenya/ - Kenya
- And for every country, they launch in.

These distinct landing pages will encourage trust and better communication than the present situation. 

Hreflang implementation for country pages will look like;

<head>

<link rel="alternate" href="https://investbamboo.com/" hreflang="x-default" />

<link rel="alternate" href="https://investbamboo.com/" hreflang="en-ng" />

<link rel="alternate" href="https://investbamboo.com/ghana/" hreflang="en-gh" />

<link rel="alternate" href="https://investbamboo.com/kenya/" hreflang="en-ke" />

</head>


3. API Expansion

Partnering with other Fintechs and investment outfits whose customer base is likely to resonate well with US stock investments is perhaps the biggest chance for rapid expansion in Nigeria and other African countries, especially when licensing proves hard. 

For a product like Bamboo, not every Fintech is suitable for partnership. Bamboo already has 500k users, and 50k+ as active investors. What they need now is quality, regardless of exposure numbers.

The API partnership should be prioritised to only platforms whose users can afford to invest in dollar-based US stocks. I.e. Nigerians earning in $, Africans in the diaspora, and high net-worth people in the country.

4. Library of Stock, Investment & Banking Guides Content

The Investbamboo stock market course on Youtube and investment guide ebooks are incredible examples of content that bangs.  These are the kind of content that needs to be doubled down on. Every company needs to invest heavily in content, platform architecture, and media distribution.

Groww has a huge content library for almost every finance, investment and banking guide. This is an incredible brand investment. People accessing this content might not take immediate action to signup or invest in Bamboo, but Bamboo will be top-of-mind when they need any investing services.

Bamboo can be the go-to place for resources on stock and investment in Africa, and the world.

In summary; 

• Invest in more video content for Youtube & Socials just like the Bambook stock market course

• Create a content e-books library for finance, investment and banking guides. 

• Have a section on magazines, blogs, and any prints read by Bamboo’s targeted customers. 

Conclusion 

In a country where less than 1% of its population earns $10,000 and above as annual household income. And with the dwindling middle class and rising inflation, Bamboo has achieved a tremendous feat with its numbers. 

The best way for Bamboo to increase its revenue in the medium and short term will be by targeting high net-worth individuals, Africans in the diaspora, and countries with better household income than Nigeria. I’m sure the team at Bamboo knows this.