Clubhouse Marketing: a Business Guide to the Social Media's Hottest Platform

The hottest place to be right now is Clubhouse, and leveraging this platform for marketing your small business is a smart move. On this exclusive social media app for audio, you can discuss  in real-time, share stories, collaborate, and build real connections. 

As a business owner, it is crucial to understand Clubhouse marketing and leverage this new social media platform that is rapidly growing in popularity. 

“It works so well, and my business has grown so much.” Dennis Yu said during a #BizHackLive webinar.

So, how do you make the most of this opportunity to tell your business’ story? Keep reading to learn how Clubhouse works, how to use it for strategic marketing, and more.

TL;DR: 3 Ways to Use Clubhouse for Marketing Your Business

• Approach Clubhouse with a philosophy of abundance. Don’t go there to get. Go there to give.
• Pick your lane and host rooms in Clubhouse with experts in that lane.
• Join rooms where you can confidently ask powerful, thoughtful questions that get others curious about who you are.

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Here’s the first thing to know about Clubhouse—it’s exclusive but also growing its reach. The platform is currently by invitation only, but CEO Paul Davison says the app will ultimately be open to anyone who wants to join.

 So, how do you get an invite? While there is a black market where people are paying for invitations, the simpler approach is finding someone who is currently a user and asking for an invitation or sign up for the waitlist.

The app is also only available on Apple mobile devices, such as iPhones or iPads. An android app could be available in late spring or summer of 2021.

How Does Clubhouse Work?

There are two kinds of units within Clubhouse: the rooms themselves and the clubs that can host rooms. To host a club, you need to have a certain level of activity on Clubhouse, but you can start a room OR join other people’s rooms that you follow immediately after joining. 

The only people who can speak in a room are the moderators at the top of the room participants’ list. This is called “being on stage.” When in a room, if you are not a moderator, there is no way for you to unmute yourself. You can only raise your hand to request to be unmuted, invite a Clubhouse friend to the room, or leave the room quietly.

You can immediately start a room or schedule a room by clicking on the calendar at the top of your home screen or “hallway,” as many call it. 

Clubhouse marketing is not your typical type of digital marketing. You don’t schedule rooms like you would schedule a webinar and then promote it until the day of the event. Your scheduled rooms will just have people showing up.

Tip: To quickly catch viewers’ attention, use emojis when writing the topics of your rooms.

“If you want to grow your audience, you need to put your room under a big club,” Dennis said. 

A “big club” is considered by the number of followers it has. You can start a locked room inside a club you are a member of, just for members of that club. Club members are notified in their hallway and can choose to join you.

When you swipe left on your hallway, you can see all the active clubs and who else is online. This is a feature that many people seem to be unaware of. Here you can see how many people are active in each club in real-time to give you an idea of how many people would join your room if you were to launch a room in real-time. 

Strategic Clubhouse Marketing

When marketing your business on Clubhouse, you need to be strategic and authentic. You need to think about two ideas:

• Your Strategic Give: How you provide value, which is essential for optimal Clubhouse use.
• Your Strategic Ask: What you want, such as business leads, job candidates, marketing collaborations, etc.

For example, Dennis Yu is currently looking to hire account managers, so he’s creating rooms to interview potential candidates. 

Here’s one of the most important things to know: don’t try to promote your business or what you do on Clubhouse primarily. You are there to provide connections and answers to very specific questions and pain points. Always think about the balance on the give and the ask. As a rule, you should be giving 80% to 90% of the time and asking for the other part. 

Ultimately your goal is not to only get people into a room. Instead, you want to create value so that you can build a relationship that goes beyond the platform. If you do that, you will be ahead of 99% of the people currently in Clubhouse. 

“You really want to think strategically before you get into Clubhouse,” Yu said. “Otherwise, you’ll end up wandering around, which is what most people do.”

When New to Clubhouse Marketing You Must:

• Know your audience 
• Know what value you are providing to your audience 
• Use that as a filter for what conversations you want to have on Clubhouse

Your Profile Matters!

Often, people will get to know you through Clubhouse through your profile. So, use this tool to explain exactly who you are, what kind of rooms you want to be in, the clubs you want to be a part of, and the people you want to connect with.

The first three lines of your profile  are called your “short profile.” These three lines are important because they are what people see when you are speaking inside a room. You need to show why you are interesting in these first three lines.

Tip: For SEO purposes, it is also important to be strategic about the username you choose on Clubhouse, as you would be for Instagram or Twitter.

Conversations you will have with connections outside of Clubhouse will likely happen through your Instagram account. Make sure you have your Instagram set up properly so that people can easily find you.

Followers and Following

Clubhouse listens to who is following who and who is speaking together in different rooms to help users find valuable content and connections. With that information, Clubhouse creates suggestions and filters similar to what you see on Amazon, e.g., “If you bought item A, you might like item B!” or Netflix, e.g., “Since you watched show A, you might like show B!” That is why you need to be strategic about the rooms you join and who you engage with because that will drive the recommended user list your potential followers will receive.

“It doesn’t really matter how many followers you have,” Yu said. “What matters is the quality of the followers.”

The people you choose to follow on Clubhouse are also significant because you will only be able to join rooms of those you are following. A key strategy is to follow the right people. Otherwise, you cannot see their rooms, and they will not show up in your hallway. It works similarly to Facebook, in that you will only see updates from your friends on your Newsfeed.

Moderating a Room on Clubhouse

Clubhouse marketing begins with understanding how to moderate a room effectively. Suppose you want to create a high-quality content room. In that case, you need the most knowledgeable, powerful moderators to speak on a particular topic, even if this means you will sit on the sidelines and just moderate their conversation.  Because having people join a room is easy, keeping them there is the tricky part. 

“Often, I’ll set up a room on topics I know nothing about just so that I can ask these other people questions for the benefit of our audience and largely for myself,” Yu said.

Yu shared his experience of being in a room he started in Clubhouse where Tai Lopez and Grant Cardone joined, and suddenly thousands of people joined the room. With this large number of people, you need to know how to moderate the room and keep it on topic. 

“The average stay on Clubhouse is 12 minutes, but when we have great rooms we have people that stay for over an hour,” Yu said.

When Moderating a Room on Clubhouse Remember To:

• Make the purpose of the room very clear
• Add further insight into a listener’s tip / suggestion / comment
• Restate the purpose of the room and why the listeners are there every 10-15 minutes
• Welcome someone to speak by bringing up a piece of their experience that is relevant to the topic
• Keep it moving
• Get creative when it comes to ending a room
• Have a host and a few moderators as helpers for larger rooms

Clubhouse is a great interview format platform. You can think of a topic, think of the most knowledgeable people in that topic that you would like to interview, invite them into a room, and schedule it. All the people who follow them will be notified they are in a room when they join. Now your audience knows who they are, and their audience knows who you are. The hallmark of a great room is that the conversation stays on topic, shares insights, and is guided by experts. 

Next steps to start Clubhouse marketing

Whether you are waiting for your invite to Clubhouse or just getting started, now is the time to consider how to integrate Clubhouse marketing into your digital strategy. As you can see, this platform is innovative, and business owners are seeing the results of their efforts to engage there. Be on topic, make sure you’re a pro, and your business will thrive. 

Want to learn more about our next digital marketing certification cohort? On Wednesdays, join BizHack Academy for our FREE #BizHackLive Webinars and hear experts discuss the latest and best small business marketing strategies. For a list of upcoming events, click here.