Econus, a Case Study
Creating a 400+ download social impact app
How does an individual consumer play a role in the issues they care about most? That question birthed the idea that became Econus.
Here’s how we turned an idea into a mobile app with 400+ downloads, along with a website complete with its own theory on how to make a difference.
Problem / solution
It was all a dream. I used to read economics magazines.
After leaving my 9-5 back in 2019, I spent 3 months studying the latest economic literature attempting to understand the why things never seem to change in our economic system. That’s when I stumbled upon the Theory of Externalities.
This is a case study highlighting how I turned the Theory of Externalities into a 400+ download app that empowers users to live more sustainably.
The solution ↓
Creating a social impact platform
- Air pollution from a tank of gas
- Rising healthcare costs from fast food
These are externalities that result from an economic system where all costs of production aren’t factored in.
Our first task was creating a space where this theory was explained in layman’s terms. That space was EconusApp.com.
Project management
We aren’t software developers, but we did find some incredible development partners that turned our idea into reality.
As the project manager for the Econus mobile app, Fletch Marketing handled funding, design, testing, and strategy.
Marketing
People have short attention spans. It’s something we all know, but it’s not something we all truly understand until we try competing for people’s attention with others.
Our initial marketing strategy was a bust. It relied far too much on users doing all the research on the Econus website to understand how they’d be making a difference. No one has time for that. We had to find a way to immediately deliver our Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
So we pivoted. Read all about the pivot in the Marketing section below.
Our approach ↓
Month 1 - 6
What if an individual could bypass governmental bureaucracy and pay for their personal impact on the world?
That was the idea, the image above shows the first graphical representation of that idea.
The first 6 months were ideation, designing of the app, and the hunt for funding.
Month 6 - 15
Funding & development, what a journey. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
We were fortunate enough to acquire funding during Covid-19, along with an incredible software development partner, Many Hats.
From month 6 – 15 we were managing the Econus app project and creating our Social Impact platform, EconusApp.com.
Month 16+
Econus was launched!
Time to revel in the glory, right!…wrong….ish.
We quickly recognized that Econus was too complex for many users. We were only finding success when could explain the theory/mobile app functionality face-to-face with users, but that approach simply wasn’t sustainable.
For information on the specifics, reach out!
Creating a platform
Creating Econus, a platform that gives power to the people
- Conscious Consumer: someone who makes informed purchasing decisions that have a positive social impact
- Active Consumer: someone who actively participates in shaping economic policy in addition to making informed purchasing decisions
That was our initial approach to the project we called The Active Consumer. But we quickly realized that explaining what an Active Consumer was, plus how consumers could actively participate in policy with our app was far too difficult given our societies fading attention spans.
So we rebranded to Econus and spoke to putting the ONUS of ECOlogical ECOnomic policy on ourselves.
But that was still too much. See the below section, Marketing, for how we pivoted to address these issues.
Project management
Turning an idea into reality
Here’s an hypothetical example of the Theory of Externalities in practice
- Cost of gallon of gas which accounts for air quality regulations = $3.00
- Cost of gas which bypassed environmental regulations = $2.69
That $0.31 is the external cost that would have mitigated the externality of air pollution. Instead, the externality is passed onto a third party (in this case, the public).
We just had to turn that theory into an app for individual consumers, no problem….
Once funding was secured, we worked with the Many Hats software development team to create an app that recognizes which purchases you have made, and automatically donates the “Spare Change” to a non-profit offsetting that exact issue.
Here’s how it turned out
- In the case above, if you bought gallon of gas for $2.69, you could automatically Round Up to $3.00 and send the $0.31 *spare change to a non-profit like the Clean Air Fund to tackle air pollution.
*If you’re feeling extra giving, put a 2, 3, or 10X multiplier on your spare change for a solid $0.62, $0.93, or $3.31 donation.
Marketing
Getting Econus to 400+ users
A few months after the Econus app was launched and EconusApp.com complete, we were generating far less traffic to our website and AppStore page than expected.
Our solution was simply too complex to understand at a glance. We were also getting dominated by impact platforms that offered obvious and simple solutions to making a difference These platforms claimed an individual could offset their impact by simply buying a new shirt made from organic cotton (one of a myriad of claims)…so a user got a new shirt and got to feel good about themselves.
But how is buying something new offsetting one’s impact?And how could we compete without fully captivating one’s attention to explain our functional solution?
Capturing their attention: Downloads took off once we started doing events. When we could explain how Econus worked face-to-face, people were sold! At each event we were getting 50+ downloads and 100+ newsletter signups.
A solution to scaling: Events simply weren’t sustainable due to booth costs, resources demanded, and the inherently unscalability of explaining the app to every potential user.
So we built out EconusApp.com to help eco-influencers market their eco-startups. If they needed help with a certain aspect of marketing, like building a website, we would hop on a call and walk them through it. In exchange, we would teach them how Econus worked and how they could use it alongside their followers to create real change. All the influencer would have to do is create a “Persona” (a persona says when I buy gas, I donate to Clean Air Fund, or however they want it set up). All their followers have to do is link their card to the persona, and everyone following that persona is donating to the same non-profits based upon the selected persona settings.
There was a lot of hype around this approach, but unfortunately, running a self-funded app is incredibly expensive. We had to focus our attentions on servicing paying clients at Fletch Marketing over our ideal eco-entrepreneurs.
It’s turned into a rat race ever since. Working with paying clients in hopes we have enough cash stored up in our coffers to service potential eco-entrepreneurs for Econus, but then needing money to continue to support them and reverting to paying Fletch Marketing customers.
Lessons learned
You never fail until you quit
You learn a lot after 4 years of grinding together a self-funded mobile app. Here are a few of our main takeaways:
- You never fail until you quit. Until we find a way to sustainable fund Econus, it’ll be our passion project hanging out in the background. But we don’t give up on our passions.
- Be Incredibly Helpful. Early Econus assumed people would want our product because it was revolutionary. Nope, people want something that helps them while giving them a quick hit of dopamine. This is now our motto at Fletch Marketing, BIH.
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