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Case study - Consumer goods
How a two-person startup grew from 9,000 to 40,000 customers with ambassadors
GoBe Kids is a husband-and-wife company with a mission to get kids excited about healthy food. Their ambassador program grew 5,400% in twelve months, on two to five hours a week.
Results within 12 months
Background
A great product, and a growth curve that would not bend
Started by a husband and wife team, GoBe Kids makes a spill-proof container with five separate compartments. The design gives kids the freedom to make their own choices while cutting down on spills and messes, and children and parents liked it equally.
Like most entrepreneurial ventures, sales were building but not at the pace the founders anticipated. They needed a marketing channel that could change the sales trajectory quickly, without a budget or a team to run it.
The solution
Grassroots marketing, because there was no other option
With limited resources, the founders concluded that the best route was grassroots marketing built on peer-to-peer connections. Together with Roster, GoBe Kids formed an advocacy program strategy that covered both influencers with significant social followings and ambassadors who were simply enthusiastic users of the product.
For a two-person company, the deciding factor was that the program had to run itself. Recruitment, communication, links, codes, and reporting all had to be automated, or there would be no one left to actually run the business.
The results
1,000+ applications and 5,400% program growth
Within 12 months of starting, more than 1,000 people applied to become GoBe ambassadors or influencers, and the startup grew its advocacy program by 5,400%. Hundreds of enthusiastic users of the snack containers were now incentivized to tell their friends, families, and followers about the product.
Ambassadors and influencers created and shared 6 times more user-generated content, and social following grew 3x. With that crew of marketers behind it, the customer base went from 9,000 to nearly 40,000.
Figures as reported by GoBe Kids for the first 12 months of the program.
Our ambassador program was non-existent. And we wanted to do something different, not just another drip campaign. We went from 10 people mentioning us to over 550 brand ambassadors! GoBe Kids Founders
The economics
Two to five hours a week, total
The time investment was minimal. The team collectively spent between two and five hours a week running their advocacy programs, which for a two-person company is the difference between a channel that exists and one that does not.
That ratio is the real story here. A 5,400% increase in program size did not come with a proportional increase in work, because recruitment, communication, and attribution were automated from the start.
Key takeaways
What made the difference
- Small teams can run large programs. Two people managed 550+ ambassadors in two to five hours a week because the operational work was automated.
- Enthusiasm beat follower count. The program deliberately included ordinary users of the product alongside influencers with significant reach.
- Content compounds alongside revenue. 6x more user-generated content and 3x social growth came with the customer increase, not instead of it.
- A startup does not need a budget to start. GoBe Kids had limited resources and used peer-to-peer connections as the channel rather than paid media.
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