How Hookit Built A Community Of 500,000+ Athletes And Enthusiasts – with Scott Tilton
Scott Tilton and his co-founder didn’t have much money to advertise their new site, so they got in a motor home and traveled the country to evangelize their business and get to know their target market of athletes. To maximize the time they spent meeting athletes at events, they made deals with publications that reached their audience. The two founders would distribute magazines and stickers at events and the publications would give their fledgling site free marketing.
It was tough work, but it got them their first 10,000 members. And it gave them credibility with the athletes they courted.
You’ll hear a lot of creative partnering in this program, like how they got brands to help them get hundreds of thousands of members. Those partnerships help Hookit bring in both members and revenue, but I’ll let Scott explain in the in the interview.
Scott Tilton is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hookit.com, the largest and most active social network for lifestyle sports with features and services created for athletes and brands. He co-founded the business with RJ Kraus.
This interview is sponsored by Grasshopper, the virtual phone system that entrepreneurs love, because you can use your own phones and manage it on the web. Check out grasshopper.com. It’s also sponsored by Wufoo, where you can go right now to get embeddable forms and surveys that you can add to your website for free. Go to wufoo.com. And it’s sponsored by Shopify. When you go to shopify.com, you can create a store within minutes and have all the support and features that you need to make that store grow. Check out shopify.com. Here’s the program.
Andrew: Hey everyone, it’s Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. This is take #2. Take #1 I was going too much on a rant about how the technology here isn’t always cooperating, but it doesn’t really apply today. Today you and I’ve got a clear connection, Scott, and I think that we’re going to be able to stay connected for the full interview. I’m...
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