Good morning and welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. I'm Esther.
And I'm Melanie. Didn't she sound excited?
It's a new year. It's a new day. It's a new dawn. No, I'm not going to sing. Okay. So today we're joined by Owen Peckroll, sales manager at Disciple Media. Welcome, Owen.
Hello. Thank you very much for holding.
So first question, I get this one Melanie. I got the first question of the year. What is Disciple Media.
So Disciple is basically a home for independent communities. I'll give you a bit of a backstory. So back in 2015, our founder, a guy called Benji Vaughan. He was a trance DJ, and he was pretty big in the world of trance. He had a pretty sizable social following, and he wanted a platform to engage with his following. So he created an app, and then other musicians saw what he was doing and they thought, that's a brilliant idea. We'd like something similar. And we launched with people like Troye Sivan McBride in the States, even the Rolling Stones. And at that point, things kind of exploded for us as a business, and we started creating an off the shelf platform. So we opened up different verticals. So we kind of moved away from music, and we've got different sectors from yoga instructors, fitness instructors, meditation instructors, charities, think tanks. A huge variety of clients now, but basically we create iOS, Android and web apps, people with an audience, so they can engage with their audience or customers or social following.
Okay, so what kind of business would come to you? Do you just cater to service or would it be products as well?
There's a real mixture, actually. I was just reading a book yesterday, and I thought it's called Get Together. It's by Bailey Richardson, and it was very community focused. And in the book there was a case study about instant pot, which is essentially a kind of slow cooker, let's say. And they created a community around this product, which is a slow cooker. And I thought, that's such a brilliant idea. We've worked with a variety of clients who have done something similar. So one of our really popular apps is called CBG Nation, and that's constantly varied gear, and they basically create leggings and workout outfits. And I think they've got upwards of 30,000 people on the platform sharing workout videos and engaging with each other and sharing selfies from their workouts.
So is this sort of like an alternative to Facebook groups, or is it more niche down into your own sort of app for your business that you can then use to sell your products and share your stuff? Is it a two-way street? Is it people commenting, like on forums and stuff as well? Or is it just purely shoving out information and giving courses to your audience?
So Facebook comes up a lot in my conversations. So first and foremost, we've kind of taken an old school forum and we've taken a steer from social media, the traditional social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and we've taken the best bits, and we've put them into an app. So you would have complete control of your app. It would have your branding, your logo, your color scheme. You would have ownership of all of the data. If you compare that to people like Facebook and the other Silicon Valley Giants that kind of take that data and essentially sell it on to the highest bidder, we can never do that because it's your platform of your data. And I think Facebook is so interesting because it's not going anywhere overnight. Let's be honest. It's here to stay for awhile. But there are definitely disadvantages that people are kind of waking up to. So last year, when Facebook tweaked the algorithm, you can see your engagement plummet one day from the next. So I think on average, you get 2% engagement on a Facebook post from your audience on a good day. Yeah. At that point, you start asking yourself, is it even worthwhile? Whereas if you've got your own platform, you're not competing against algorithms, you don't have your competitors there. Because I see all your competitors on Facebook, too. Your customers aren't being bombarded with relevant adverts, and you have things like push notifications to engage your audience. I think on average, 79% of people leave push notifications switched on on the platform that pops up on your phone screen. Then you click on the notification, you get stuck straight back into the platform, and before you know it, you're engaging again.
So I've got to ask, we've explained what Disciple Media is called and what it does, but when somebody wants to look up your type of product online, what kind of search terms would people use to find it? Because it's not always what we expect, is it?
So typically people would be searching community platform, community software, community forum, and the software comparison websites out there like Captera that are pretty good for looking at the different options. And I think we get five star reviews across the board on Captera.
And is it a case where users would have to download a different app for each service that they're following, or would it be like an all in one?
Yeah. So each app that we create is independent. So if there's a specific let's say it's a meditation instructor that you follow on Instagram. That meditation instructor could create their own app, and it would have their logo that you go to the app store. Another example is Rod Striker. He's a meditation instructor in California. So we created an app for him, and I think he actually has a subscription service. So he charges people for access because you can monetize the platform, too.
That's an important thing to mention. You can actually monetize this exactly.
Another kind of differentiator from Facebook, really, because Facebook doesn't make it easy to monetize a community or charge a subscription for access to content.
You're managing the platform. I suppose that means that you're there to correct any issues or make any updates or if there's any connectivity problems. You're basically the landlord.
Yes and no. So we do have a service, actually, that we've just released for kind of end user support. So we can take that away from if you like. But across the board, people do find it's a really easy platform to manage and moderate. We've got various different features in place for things like moderation, so you can screen posts before they are posted. Using our API, you can use a trusted reporter feature with any community, whether you're a brand or if you're just kind of a community of runners in the local area, you'll have those kind of key members. We kind of describe community building, almost like building a fire where you get your Kindling in first, and then it kind of grows out. And it's the same with the community. You get your key founding members, and those people can be your trusted reporters, moderators, your content collaborators. But having those people on board early on, those founding members can really help things.
Okay, so you mentioned that there's the option for it to be monetized, but could that be some sort of thinking, like maybe you have a free section on it and then a monetized section and using that as your sales funnel, where people come in
like a lead magnet? Maybe?
Yeah.
Yes, absolutely. And that's kind of one of the joys of being in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. It opens up the market to millions of potential customers. And you've got things like app store optimization, which is very similar to search engine optimization. So people can, let's say, someone searching for fitness, they might see your app in the App Store. They've never interacted with your marketing material before, but before you know it, you've got a new customer. And what you've described is the kind of freemium model so people can sign up free of charge and you can give them limited access, but you can lock away exclusive premium content for your premium subscribers.
Now, you did mention something about APIs, and obviously people like myself and Esther, we work with scheduling tools and strategy tools like Asana and Trello and stuff like that. Can we communicate through the apps using any of these other apps, or is it just all very much and of itself?
So the API does open up lots of different options. Typically, it's used for people automating specific commands in kind of the back end console where you manage and moderate everything. And that can be something basic, like add a user to a group, remove a user from a group, delete a user, send a push notification. But we also have some out of the box integrations with platforms like MailChimp. Thinkific, of course, options. And then depending on what you're looking to achieve with the API, we could potentially open up different endpoints with other external apps, like Casana, for example.
And one more question, because I know she always has a go at me for asking all these questions. But when it comes down to the analytics that are available through the platform, do you have to be a science officer to understand it, or is it something that General Schmo could get the hang of?
You don't need any technical background whatsoever, but we have a really powerful analytics dashboard so you can get a quick snapshot of the health of your customer base or your community. And you can see a whole range of different data points from how often people logging in, how often people are posting, liking, commenting the content that's getting the most engagement. If you're interested in courses on the platform, you can see how many people are watching the videos. We've also got an awesome live streaming feature so people can broadcast out in real time and you can see how many livestream viewers you're getting, for example.
Yeah, this will be Esther all over, wouldn't it?
What live streaming?
Yeah. She doesn't live stream.
No. Okay, moving on. What's it for the user? Why should the user have like 20 different apps on their phone rather than just going into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all the other ones? What's in it for them?
Yeah, I think for the end user that it's unlikely for them to have 20 of our apps on their phone. But there tends to be probably three or four key communities that people are part of. That might be a local community, just people in the local area. It might be a cooking community. We've done an app for Harry Gotcha, who's like a celebrity chef. She's got a really popular cooking app.
Great name drop.
The end of user. You do tend to have a deeper connection with members on the platform. These are kind of VIP members. So whereas on Facebook you might have 50,000 followers on a Facebook group that have really low engagement with an independent platform, you might not have 50,000 people, you might have 10% of that, two, three, 5000 people. But you tend to have a richer connection with people. So there's a slightly different type of engagement.
Can you do like, groups on it on the app as well? Can you create groups? And it doesn't have to be just like large source of pages? I suppose you can, because there's a payment portal, isn't there?
Yes, you can absolutely do groups. You can have public, private or secret discussion groups.
So public again, okay.
They can be one click access, or they can be free, or they can be premium. It's pretty flexible.
So how about the affordability of these? Is this something that people have to pay upfront or is this a monthly payment? Or can you get a discount for buying annually? Or as you add on other apps? Is it cheaper? What about team members? Can you add team members as well?
Yes, it is a subscription service and the price of the platform is somewhat dependent on how many people join. And there's two main offerings that we have. So you've got web apps. A PWA is a progressive web app, which essentially is like having I mean, if we compare it to having Facebook on a computer, type in Facebook.com, it's that interactive web experience. That's a really cost effective option if you're just kind of starting out and testing out a new idea that starts from £45 a month. If you're looking for the kind of all singing, all dancing, feature rich version with your own app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, that starts from £399 a month, do you get some extra features and functionality?
Okay, so I suppose it's the same as on most other platforms, but this is a question that we ask most of our guests. How often should you say, I have an app with yourselves to add my content for a course that I'm doing? How often should I be adding content to the app? And it's a two parter. Is there a drip feed option? If people come into the course later than so say it has a start date, but people come in a week later. Can they still take it at the same pace that it's supposed to go at, or do they then get everything that has already gone up and have to continue from where they join?
Good question. So we do have a fair amount of flexibility. When you're uploading courses, you want to upload content fairly frequently, you want to keep people engaged and give them a reason to come back. In terms of kind of dripping content to people. That's something that we're looking into at the moment. The subscription. You can have a monthly subscription, so you could charge someone £10 a month for access, or you could let them pay upfront for the year. They might get a discount. Twelve months for the price of ten user pays up front for the year. By mid January, we'll have multiple tiers of subscriptions, which is going to offer a little bit of extra flexibility. You can currently accept payment through Apple Pay, Google Pay or Stripe on the web version.
That's pretty thorough. Got to say one other thing, our podcast has quite a wide reach. We're very lucky that we have quite large audiences, not just in the UK, but in the Republic of Ireland, in Northern Ireland and in the US. Could your app be suitable for everybody or is it more sort of a European app
so you can publish the apps globally in any region. In fact, I think about 60% of our customers are in the US as well.
Really?
Yes. Headquarters in London, but huge customer base in the US. We also have customers in New Zealand Australia, but you'll probably spot that they're all in English speaking countries, typically because we haven't quite nailed the translation functionality on the platform yet. It is on the To-do list, but at the moment, anyone can post in any left to right language. It's just the kind of the right to left ones that cause some issues. But there's a couple of areas which are hard coded in English
And your business started in 2015.
Yes.
Wow. So you've really kicked it out there very quickly.
Yes, we kind of pivoted. So we were working on a really bespoke platforms, building everything from scratch, and it took a long, long time. It was very expensive. And of course, you had a few bugs and headaches along the way when you're building from scratch, but when it's off the shelf, it's much, much quicker. All the features are tried and tested, but you can still give it your branding and your logo and your own look and feel.
So with a Sole Trader like myself, would I be suitable for this, or is it more larger companies, bigger brands, corporate, that sort of stuff?
You would absolutely be suitable. I'll be tapping you up straight after this.
Project for this year.
But we've also worked with some really big brands across Bluetooth companies, too.
Okay, brilliant. So where can people find you, Owen? Where can they go to learn more about Disciple?
The best place to go is probably our website, which is Disciplemedia.com. There you can find some really useful articles about kind of community building, community engagement, community migration. We've also got a platform called The Collective, which you can download free of charge from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. And it's really useful if you're looking for kind of tips and tricks on how to engage or how to build a community or an audience. And that's headed up by Nicolette, who is our head of community. She's fantastic. She's got awesome experience in community building, and she's got loads of free resources in there, too.
Brilliant, because we all know the importance of community, especially over the last couple of years. Just one last question. What if people already have a platform or an app that they're using on a different system? Say they're using one of your competitors. Let's use that name. Is it easy to transfer over to be more niche, or would they have to start from scratch?
We can absolutely help with migration. It depends which competitor they're using. If someone's migrating from Facebook, we've helped hundreds of communities migrate from Facebook. They don't make it easy. As you can imagine, Facebook want to keep people on there. And so it's a little bit tricky. But with some of the other options out there, if someone already has their own app and they want something more cost effective or off the shelf, like the social media offers, they should be able to download that data or host it on an external database and maybe use single sign on. We do have a single sign on functionality so people could log straight in.
Brilliant. That was a great question. I wonder who thought that one up Esther.
It wasn't me. I can take no credit for that one but thank you so much for joining us today and I really do hope that people go and check out your app and your software because the year is young and we've only got communities to build.
Thanks for hosting me.
No problem.
Absolute delight.
Yeah, we'll be back next week with more Monday morning marketing. Until then. Bye.
Bye