Firm co-founder sheds light on startup marketing

Garrett lazyan

Writer: Zhang Xiaoyi

417880236@qq.com

Garrett lazyan came to Shenzhen from the United States after graduating from Northeastern University in 2009, and started working as a corporate trainer and marketing associate at New Oriental. About 2 years ago, he co-founded a business language training company, Lingoist. He is now in charge of marketing, sales and customer services.

"If I had to sum up marketing into one brief sentence, it would be: 'Find out what your customer wants and where they are, and then find out the best way to deliver this to them,'" said Lazyan, who added that he has been doing marketing in the city's education industry for about six years.

During that time, he consistently performed research and surveys in the industry, a vital aspect of marketing. The founding principles of Lingoist were based on such research, and also contributed to its model for the future, which it is now ready to implement. For startups like Lingoist, Lazyan recommended first making full use of economic yet effective marketing methods, such as WeChat.

"One of the first steps for any startup in China should be making an official WeChat account, organizing community groups, and generally expanding your followers so that your moments can become an effective attention grabber," he said, adding that social media platforms in China get saturated fast and it is necessary to keep up with new platforms.

Lazyan believes the most effective marketing is attention to quality. "If the product is good and you have enough followers on free social media platforms, there should be good free word-of-mouth marketing."

He elaborated that offering a consistently high quality service will ensure that customers re-sign contracts to continue the service, which increases the profit margin of each single customer, since marketing expenses occur when a company targets new clients.

The education industry still uses many other basic forms of promotion that have been around for a long time, such as pay-per-click ad campaigns, promotional events, community building, content marketing and pamphleteering, but for startups, according to Lazyan, "the emphasis is on getting the right customers and keeping them happy. Generally, the bigger your company gets, the less you focus on personal relationships and the more you focus on process optimization."

Even with all these available marketing methods, Lazyan understands it is still not easy for a foreigner to launch a successful business when they first come to the city. "They have to build a network of partners and pay attention to legal issues," he said.

"We have spent years here focusing on building our connections, so this is paying off for us. Be reliable, be consistent, be conscious, and be hard working, and you should be able to leverage yourself into a good position in any market."