Here's how we strategized the “Sidewalk AF” community to operate at an initial loss, using giveaways to push competitors out of the market.

We skyrocketed Sidewalk AF's growth by offering free value from the beginning.

This allowed us to build a targeted following from day one. We gained 1000+ high-intent followers in the first twelve months, with WhatsApp channels growing to over 150+ members primed to buy any new products we announced.

Our community grew by offering irresistible value: giveaways, free skateboard rentals, and basic beginner lessons. It can seem counter-intuitive, but our objective was to offer a better service than anyone else, for free. By budgeting for a temporary loss, we burned our competitors out of the scene, allowing us to dominate the market and introduce paid services later.

A professional image was key. We took inspiration from the hype-building tactics of events like Fyre Festival and brainstormed ways to make Sidewalk AF events to capitalize on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Our research showed a lack of real connection in the digital age. We designed a community that our target demographic would want to join, and even pay for.

By building it for free first, we gained the trust needed to introduce paid services later, which would sell out quickly.

Our research showed there’s no lack of skate shops or communities, but a lack of real connection in today’s digital age. Services like RentAFriend.com — where you can literally rent a friend for a price, are a proof of this.

We set up a community that looked like what people from our target demographic would want to join, even pay for.

By setting up a free community, we established trust for low-friction sales when we wanted to partner with surf or skate shops and sell their services for a commission.

We planned each event in three phases to increase chances of connection and community building.

The Opening Circle: We partnered with local coffee shops for a pre-skate meetup. This created a calm, low-pressure environment to ease social anxiety for newcomers and foster connections from the start.

The Main Event: Psychology studies show we grow closer to those that go through the same challenges we do. The skate session itself was where relationships were built through a shared activity.

The Closing Circle: We partnered with local bars to end the day on a high note, celebrating the event and cementing the new friendships with pizza and drinks.

First, you should plan, research who your customers are, and then design the ads.

For example, we used Kodak and Polaroid effects, newspaper textures, and other symbols of an offline lifestyle. Our research showed that’s what our customers wanted, so those are the kinds of graphics they react to while scrolling through social media.

We strategized our events into three steps.

An Opening Circle, where we would invite new and old members to meet for coffee and catch up before skating. We called this the “Opening Circle”.

We carefully curated and hosted these in a calm environment to set the right tone and ease any social anxiety for introverts or newcomers.

After the Opening Circle set the stage for introductions and the skate session set the stage for relationship building, the closing circle celebrated the event. We partnered with local bars, pizza restaurants, or arts and culture shops with food and drink to end the event on a high note.

We selected a few symbols to reuse, making new content fast, consistent, and recognizable by our followers. They’d recognize our content before they even see who posted it, helping to make our brand memorable.

It’s true that if you try to please everyone, you please no one. We intentionally focused our design language; using Kodak effects, newspaper textures, and symbols of an offline world, on our target market exclusively. This focus also allowed us to closely study our few direct competitors and strategically outperform them.

We created a library of reusable design assets. This made new content creation fast, consistent, and instantly recognizable to our followers, building a memorable brand.

It’s true that if you try to please everyone, you please no one. We intentionally focused our design language; using Kodak effects, newspaper textures, and symbols of an offline world; on our target market exclusively. This focus also allowed us to closely study our few direct competitors and strategically outperform them.

We created a library of reusable design assets. This made new content creation fast, consistent, and instantly recognizable to our followers, building a memorable brand.

This is how we planned the timing of our posts on social media to get the most out of our campaigns. We designed them to generate hype, inform, raise engagement, and create urgency about the community.

Even with a minimal budget of 20$/week, every time we ran paid ads, we noticed a traffic spike from high-quality users eager to enroll in the community, with no friction or objections about the service.

A community that follows, worships, and promotes your brand for you?

If you need us to build this for you; along with event management, content planning, and landing pages…

Let us know below.