How I'd grow Hokali

Hokali is a website that helps people find, book, and manage sports lessons.

Or at least it was - until not long ago.

Apparently, they’re now shifting their positioning.

Their new positioning is as a platform designed for schools to organize extracurricular activities for kids.

Essentially, they’re pivoting from B2C to B2B.

This makes a lot of sense because just by signing one school, they can increase their lesson volume

Some sections on the website are confusing because they retained aspects of their old positioning that no longer make sense.

Why can I still book lessons as an individual? Why are there deals?

The B2B buying process requires significantly more trust than B2C.

Imagine planning the whole after-school tennis season vs. buying a single tennis lesson.

The Hokali website feels too light and needs to be more detailed.

A few things I’d consider adding:

- Case studies with videos of successful after-school programs
- A demo video showing how the platform works
- Social proof and testimonials from school principals
- An About page with the founder's story and credentials

And so on.

A great way for Hokali to improve its landing page would be to conduct customer interviews with its new target audience.

The goal is to discover their inner “yes but,” i.e., the hidden obstacles that get in the way of their decision to buy.

Once they understand the objections, they can strategically create detailed sections on the landing page to address the objection and decrease friction.

I find it a bit strange that the website is completely dedicated to the demand side (schools), but there’s nothing for supply (coaches).

They need a dedicated page for coaches.

If a coach discovers Hokali, they don’t have any information to help them evaluate the platform.

Hokali needs to consider that in every specific sports niche, most coaches know and speak with each other.

It could be a good idea to leverage a referral program and improve word of mouth.

A coach who successfully finds clients with Hokali will happily onboard a peer, given an incentive to do so.

When it comes to growing demand, the first step is to identify what the school decision-makers search for online. Then, create a content strategy around the search terms.

Hokali already has a blog but, since their target audience changed, it’s useless. School principals don’t go on Google to look for the best places to surf.

Pro tip: Google Autocomplete can be a great starting point when you don’t know much about your target audience’s searches.

Just use your imagination and type a few words.

Then plug the keyword ideas into a keyword planner to check their search volume, discover related keyword ideas, and build a strategy from there.

When creating a content strategy, it’s easier to find ideas once you establish a few core pillars. In Hokali’s case, the content pillars could be:

- School
- Sports
- Kids

For example, the articles could be: “The Benefits of Sports on Children’s Cognitive Performance,” “How to Create After-School Sports Programs for Disabled Kids,” etc.

Search as a channel has a few limitations in this case. Not only it will take time to start getting traffic, but the search volume is also low.

Hokali needs to go all in on social media. However, their strategy needs to change because of the pivot.

Considering Hokali’s new target audience, channels like Instagram and TikTok probably won’t be relevant anymore.

Where do school executives and decision-makers spend their time online?

My guess would be LinkedIn (and maybe Twitter). Once they verify the channel’s viability, they should create a strategy to build a solid presence and get on decision-makers’ radars.

Another benefit of LinkedIn for Hokali is its advertising platform, which allows them to target decision-makers by industry, job title, etc.

(It’d be hard to reach an ideal customer profile as niche as school principals on other platforms.)

LinkedIn ads are usually pretty expensive, but signing an entire school for a year would make up for it.

To run ads profitably, Hokali needs a robust retargeting strategy.

In fact, when you target a small audience, the algorithm will exhaust it quickly. Then, it’ll keep showing the same ad, people will ignore it, and the costs will rise.

On the other hand, retargeting them with multiple creatives that hit different angles is the key to preventing ad fatigue.

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