Launching Jekaeat
How we launched a food delivery app for students in Minna, then kept it in front of them with two waves of reinforcement: creators and events. From a WhatsApp broadcast to 3,000+ orders.
A new app, a campus that wanted it
Jekaeat had been delivering food in Minna for a while, off-app. In 2023 it was about to become a real app: open it, order from a restaurant, and a rider brings it to wherever you are. I came in before launch as the first marketing hire, to work out how it would reach people.
Minna is a civil-service town and the wider city did use the app, but students were clearly the biggest market. So we positioned it for them first: the best restaurants in Minna, at your door, at regular prices. I'd already been building a student audience through 10.8.8, so I knew how they talked and where to find them.
Never a silent launch
Students already wanted this, so we built the buzz before the app was out: teasers online, flyers across campus, and a WhatsApp broadcast that went out through every group we could reach.
We launched with Food Republic, one of the best-known spots around the Gidan Kwano campus, and made the first day worth showing up for:
About 90 people registered on day one. By the end of the first week we were close to 200.
Creators kept it in the feed
A launch gets people to sign up. The risk is that the buzz dies a week later. So after launch, we kept Jekaeat in front of students on the platforms they actually used, through the people they already watched, and kept giving them reasons to order between the big moments.
Show, don't tell
The Food Tour was an idea I led: a student creator picked people from his comments, took them to restaurants on the app, and showed how to order with Jekaeat along the way. Creator videos like these did more than any flyer to show the app in real life.
Watch The Food Tour, episode 1 ↗Between the big moments
Free-delivery weekends, discount codes, new restaurants, in-app notifications and posts that showed the app instead of describing it.
Events put it on stage
The second wave took Jekaeat off the screen and into rooms full of the right people: the Minna tech community, the radio, and the city's biggest food event. On campus, we also leaned on the 10.8.8 network, the Students' Union and student bodies, and ran ads in the 10.8.8 Magazine.
I secured our space at GDG DevFest Minna, which Jekaeat later called one of its biggest visibility moments. It's also where we met Niger State's Commissioner for Communication Technology and Digital Economy, the keynote speaker. That opened talks with the state government about sponsorship and working together, which mattered: traffic officials had been stopping our riders.
Minna Food Festival 2024
Jekaeat was the official sponsor of the Minna Food Festival. Festival-goers could order from the vendors at the venue on the app, or order foodstuffs with Ready To Cook and have them delivered anywhere in Minna. We also sponsored the festival's cooking competition, "Who Sabi Cook?": soup paired with rice and other foodstuffs, with Jekaeat outfits and mugs for the winners.
From sign-ups to orders
“From WhatsApp broadcasts, group sharing, and influencer marketing led by our former Product Marketing Manager, @theignited_one…”Jekaeat on Instagram, looking back on how it grew to 3,000+ orders across more than 10 traction channelsSee Jekaeat's page ↗
“Bala joined JekaEat before our app launched and became our marketing maestro. He positioned us for students, led our WhatsApp broadcasts, group sharing and creator campaigns, and got us onto stages like GDG DevFest Minna. What set him apart was that he never stopped at marketing. He was in customer support and operations with us, because he knew a happy customer is what makes the next campaign work. A big part of how JekaEat grew to 3,000+ orders comes down to the work he put in.”
Being first in a market means you're also the one teaching it. Students wanted food delivery but didn't have much to spend, restaurants didn't trust a new app, and Minna isn't an easy place to do business. It taught me how to position a product, get people to download it, and get a whole campus talking about it.
And that a launch isn't one day. The launch got people in; the creators and the events are what kept them hearing about us.