4 Interesting Notes Regarding Determining Strategies for Market Penetration

There are many innovations that can be developed to digitize MSMEs or small business owners in Indonesia. With this innovation, they have the opportunity to develop their business. The entry way can be through financial services to bookkeeping.

It is also like doing BookStore through innovation of SaaS bookkeeping services for MSMEs. What is BukuWarung's experience in penetrating the market to determining the right strategy?

Check out the interesting explanation shared by the Head of Growth/Funding Team of BukuWarung Mario Nicolas in full in the #TuesdayStartup session.

Troubleshoot and validate in the field

Reflecting on his experience at BukuWarung, Mario emphasized the importance of find the problem and validate it in the field. In this context, he assesses that food stalls in Indonesia are accustomed to using conventional methods in recording their business books, such as books and paper.

What's more, there are still many shop owners who are not fully able to distinguish the concepts of personal finance, family in managing a business. According to him, most of them are still mixing these finances into one.

"When we started BukuWarung in mid-2019, at that time not many focused on the warung segment. Even if there were, most of them [targeted the segment] in cities. Well, we validated it in Java and found that many still use paper and books," he said. Mario.

In fact, he continued, many shop owners keep books only to record debts, and even then only nominally. In fact, 90% of those surveyed by BukuWarung did not record debtor data, such as names and telephone numbers.

"From here, we got some problem, then we made an app and asked the same people we surveyed to try it out. We also get a lot of feedback. So, always come with a problem and field validation. These business actors have an outlet for the problems they face," he said.

Get to know user to determine strategy

When talking about the initial phase of a startup, all kinds of strategies must be tried to achieve business targets. Some succeeded and some failed. However, he underlined that all successful strategies do not necessarily apply to all business categories.

Take for example, many startups use an influencer to introduce a product or service, but that does not mean this strategy is suitable for other business verticals. Startups can experiment to find out growth channels right.

"Then, know who first user us and try to understand up to core level. Usually, any kind of technology, that [strategy] that sells best word of mouth. So, just try the one-on-one strategy, see result-his, then move on," he added.

Taking lessons from customer acquisition efforts

Once again, Mario emphasized the importance of validating the theory that was built and trying to experiment to find out. This was one of the important lessons Mario experienced in determining a customer acquisition strategy.

"Everything we've learned is wrong. We once assumed that our [target user] didn't understand the app, but we were wrong. That's why we always validate and look for small ways to prove it, such as surveys that can generate valuable data," said Mario.

Equally important is building a connection with the user to understand what they really want. From feedback received, startups can develop user experience best for users. According to him, this is much more important than building a user base by providing continuous promotions.

Competition drives education faster

Strategy is needed to build a user base, increase business, and maintain its position in the market competition. For Mario, competition is a good aspect to help market education faster. The more players, the better for driving product or service penetration.

"If there is only one player, it may take years to educate our services. After all, more players will encourage more innovation. For example, we present digital payment innovation. If it's just a bookkeeping application, impact-its less. With this innovation, we can give impact big," he said.

BukuWarung has been presenting digital payments since late last year and claims to have controlled 95% of the digital payment market share in bookkeeping applications in Indonesia.