podcast, events
Audio: Conor O’Neill, Loudervoice, at “8 More Ways to Sell Even More Stuff”
This is the sec
ond of the presentations from “8 More Ways to Sell Even More Stuff”, the IIA Conference for Online Retailers that took place in the Burlington at the beginning of the month. Please excuse the slow pace of releasing them – we’ll get there!
[podcast]http://blog.iia.ie/wp-content/uploads/coneillLoudervoice.mp3[/podcast]
In this audio you will hear Conor O’Neill, CEO of Loudervoice, talking about how customer reviews can add credibility to your business and ultimately boost your sales.
(You can also listen to Darren Grant’s case study in a previous post or get the lot via iTunes.)
C’mon he looks like James Bond: how could you not want to listen to a man as dapper as that!
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podcast, events, online retail
Audio: Darren Grant, OrganicSupermarket.ie at “8 More Ways to Sell Even More Stuff”
Last week the IIA organised the second in a series of events for online retailers “8 More Ways to Sell Even More Stuff“. I plonked my digital audio recorder on the podium to capture the presentations to share them with you. You can also download the presentations from the Resources section of the IIA website (membership required).
[podcast]http://blog.iia.ie/wp-content/uploads/dgrantorganicsupermarket.mp3[/podcast]
This case study is presented by Darren Grant of OrganicSupermarket.ie who kicks off telling us that he opened The Organic Supermarket in Blackrock the day that the recession officially started. Their business plan was as he says, “A Celtic Tiger business plan” and so he had to think of another way to grow his company that didn’t require credit from the bank that wasn’t forthcoming. He looked to the internet to grow his catchment from 4.5k in the South Dublin area to potentially 4.5m across Ireland.
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International Strategy Working Group
International Strategy Working Group Case Study: Pigsback.com
The IIA International Strategy Working Group have created another case study. This time IIA Member Company Pigsback.com is featured. Jonathan Kyle of IIA Member Company Greenjobs.ie interviewed Michael Dwyer, CEO of Pigsback last December.
Dwyer shares some interesting insights about how having founded Pigsback in 2000 it turned out that the Dot Com Crash was not all bad for their company
as it allowed us to bring the Irish business to profitability and it also let us ensure that our product offering and business structure were strong enough for overseas expansion.
A salutary tale for the times we’re living in!
He also talks about what the company learned from their expansion into the very different markets of the UK and Canada.
Access the Internation Strategy Working Group’s resources to download the PDF and other case studies from the group.
International Strategy Working Group
International Strategy Working Group Case Study: MUZU.TV
The IIA International Strategy Working Group have released another great case study. This one focuses on MUZU.TV which frequent readers of this blog and our site will know were chosen as the 2009 Overall Net Visionaries. You can download a PDF of this case study from the Resources section of IIA.ie. One of my favourite parts of this case study was the response to the question:
What is the advice you would give companies starting out on Internationalization?Buy a suitcase, register for air-miles.
There is plenty of other insights into the strategy of this fascinating company who were “born global” as Caelen King from our previous ISWG Case Study on RevaHealth.com described his company.
This case study was compiled by Jonathan Kyle of IIA Member Company Greenjobs.ie. (who incidentally also won a Net Visionary award for 2009 Internet Entrepreneur!)
Maeve Kneafsey, IIA Chair & Frank Ryan, Enterprise Ireland, present the 2009 Net Visionary Award to Ciaran Bollard & Mark French of MUZU.TV
International Strategy Working Group
International Strategy Working Group Case Study: RevaHealth
Case study compiled by the IIA International Strategy Working Group reviewing the success and experience of Irish based entrepreneurs internationalizing their Businesses.
This case study is also available to download as a a PDF from the Resources Section of IIA.ie
Caelen King, interviewed below, is confirmed as a speaker in the IIA International Strategy Working Group’s upcoming event. Information about this event will be made available as the details are confirmed. Please see our events page or sign up for our Monthly Digital Digest and regular Events Alerts.
Company: www.RevaHealth.com
Interviewee: Caelen King, CEO
Date: September 27, 2009
Written by: Una Coleman www.codegaconsulting.comSynopsis of company
RevaHealth.com is a healthcare search engine – a web portal gathering and providing information about health clinics around the world, displayed comparably. In e-business terms, it is a pure play business – a company that originated and does business purely through the internet. There are lower barriers to entry but the internet affords smaller companies the ability to compete with much larger brands due to typically lower overhead and marketing costs.
Its revenue generating customers are health clinics, such as dentists, cosmetic surgery, medical tourism, laser eye care, chiropractors, fertility treatment to mention a few. Through the RevaHealth portal, clinics all over the world can have their services listed. The benefits to the customer are:
- Lead generation
- Building their brands online
- Savings in time and money
RevaHealth also takes care of the ultimate customer. The patient search is made easy. In the offline world, customers approach to information gathering is interruption based and time restricted. The prospective client rings the clinic, is often put on hold, asked to ring back later, or given information based on the time the clinician has between patients. And, it all happens during clinic hours as opposed to at the customer’s convenience. RevaHealth’s domain rich portal provides the customer with all the information he/she needs right there and then. It is a 21st century proposition responding to the demands of today’s customers.
RevaHealth has already aggregated all the relevant information for the patient by checking the clinics’ own websites: for instance to determine if they advertise their prices – they even phoned some clinics to see if they have parking, and they let patients share their experiences of the clinic. RevaHealth are experts in SEO and SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing).
RevaHealth is the technical online marketing partner of health clinics globally. It was set up in 2007 and now has over 110,000 clinics in 99 countries listed.
- Why internationalize – what were the drivers?
- the productization of healthcare,
- a growth in medical tourism,
- a socialized healthcare environment,
- demands by the consumer for greater choice and information,
- a fragmented market place.
- What markets did you focus on?
UK & Ireland- USA
- Central Europe
- Mexico
- Thailand
- Singapore
- Costa Rico
- Medical tourism (which it defines as a geography)
- What needed to be in place?
- A good enough back-end system.
- “A sound Business Plan that we returned to and iterated as our market knowledge grew”.
- No sacred cows: the business model evolved and significantly changed in the first trading year.
- What were the main challenges / obstacles? How did you overcome them?
- What activities were most successful in achieving success?
- Measuring everything.
- Following up on leads.
- Assessing the leads as prospects or not.
- Learning how to identify a “hot” clinic.
- What are your most effective routes to market and why?
- How did you win your first client?
- How influential was winning your first client in developing the market?
- What marketing initiatives have you used to support your internationalization?
- What were the key learnings? (legal, tax, language, culture)
- If you were doing it again, what would you do differently?
- What is the one piece of advice you would give companies starting out on internationalization?
RevaHealth was “Born Global” a term used to describe small technology oriented firms, targeting niche global markets as opposed to wide international markets and many industries, with little or no domestic market. The international experience of the founders weights heavily on the success of such companies.
RevaHealth’s proposition from the start was to become a global player. Its market opportunity in Ireland was always going to be small. It has operated in the international space from the start.
Caelen King also fits the profile to lead a “Born Global” company. He has previously worked with Baltimore Technologies, one of Ireland’s internationally successful indigenous technology companies.
A number of key market factors and drivers combined to create the opportunity for a new business offering to healthcare clinician providers:
The global healthcare market size is greater than €6 trillion.
RevaHealth selects territories based on market research and assessment. This is primarily desk research that it completes inhouse. It has broken down its markets as follows:
It also looks at markets where it can add value. Based on the outcome of its market research, it scrapes[1] data from the web on local clinics to post on its site. For example, take a look at their list of plastic surgery clinics in the UK or dentists in the UK. “Traffic comes to our site in unpredictable ways” according to Caelen King. Understanding the value in a territory is a discovery process. “Hot spots” emerge. A market is formed when consumer traffic reaches a critical level.
Human Resources: recruiting and attracting staff. It was not about the money. It was a challenge to attract seasoned and experienced staff on both the sales and technical side: to bring that mature level of expertise to jump-start the business. Seasoned and experienced people were not interested in giving up job security and stability to join a start-up. The entrepreneurial drive exhibited by early stage applicants was low.
Revahealth went to the universities and sought graduates hungry to learn in a short period of time, in an entrepreneurial environment. Now, its growing public profile in the Irish market place, particularly in the technology community and the positioning of its founder, Caelen King, as an online technology guru, guarantees interest from prospective employees for the future.
Competition (lack thereof): “We didn’t have any real competitors in our space. In fact we would have almost paid for serious competition.” Competitors not only validate a business proposition and market – they also help build it. “We were bringing something new to our niche. Our clients and prospects were unfamiliar and wary of the model. We didn’t have the actual business case to substantiate our proposition. It was theoretical”.
“We gave away stuff for free. We clearly articulated this was another route to market for our clients – we would not be cannibalizing their existing business. We provided compelling feedback and demonstrated measurable ROI (return on investment)”.
Building domain knowledge: RevaHealth differentiate itself from other information portals through focusing on a niche and really understanding that niche. Its travel budget is spent almost entirely on building domain expertise about the territories in which it operates.
Initially, it had to pay for traffic to the site through google ads. SEO initiatives can take up to 18 months to build decent google ranking. Now, it has almost no google ad campaigns.
The sales process is roughly 2 months with 4 – 6 phone calls and 4 – 6 emails. Its sales staff are 3rd level graduates, young, smart and tech savvy. They are Dublin based and they speak at least two languages.
All sales activities are measured and visible. Peer performance is a good motivator. The key driver in the sales process is early completion.
RevaHealth is now looking at identifying Channel Partners as a route to market to support its sales and market growth objectives.
RevaHealth’s first client came about from a Belgian customer query about weight loss. The €500 spent on champagne celebrating that first and early win (after the site was up for just 3 months) far outweighed the €10 subscription fee. The client is still with them, now on an annual subscription of €1,500.
More than anything else, it gave the team a great confidence boost at that early stage. It also validated the business model, provided the business case and reference site to attract new customers. Winning early was enormously influential.
In the tradition of a pure internet play business, most of RevaHealth’s marketing is online: SEO and SEM with metrics underpinning all activities. Google is the 2nd most trusted form of information for consumers. Link building is also a key marketing task.
It is now looking at Channel Partners as a route to market and is starting to create marketing material to support its positioning as online technology experts delivering niche business processes to business driven healthcare providers. This will be a mix of offline and online marketing.
RevaHealth uses social networking platforms. Follow @revahealth & @phil_revahealth on twitter: it uses its blog, http://blog.revahealth.com/ to comment on technical issues and build its profile as online business process experts.
It has not localized either its website or marketing materials. However, all its sales staff speak at least two languages.
Concentrate on what you need today rather than focus on building for tomorrow.
The earlier and more frequent you make those sales calls the earlier revenue flows: the earlier you have reference sites to leverage and the sooner you learn and adapt the business model to client and market needs the more successful you will be.
As an international online business relationships are different. However, a lot can be done over the phone. While a script can be an aid to the sales staff, calls are almost never the same. Hire smart people, provide them with support and an environment to learn and be successful.
Stop worrying about the long-term and focus on what’s needed now.
Pick up the phone and make the sales calls – in volume and frequently. Close the deal in the shortest time.
[1] Web scraping transforms unstructured web content, (in HTML format for instance), into structured data that can be stored and analyzed in a central database. Web scraping is also related to web automation, which simulates human web browsing using computer software.
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Social Media Working Group
Social Media Case Study – PaddypowerTrader.com Blogs
Continuing the Social Media Working Group’s series of case studies is Michelle Daly from Paddypower was the second of our two case studies at the launch of “Join the Conversation: A Guide to Blogging for Business” Please find her presentation below. Thanks to Brendan Hughes, FBD.ie and chair of the IIA Social Media Working Group for recording and preparing the slide show below.
Social Media Working Group
Social Media Case Study – Puddleducks on blogging
This week’s case study is the slideshow presented by Aedan Ryan at the launch of “Join the Conversation: The Guide to Blogging for Business” in April.
Thanks to Brendan Hughes, Chair of IIA Social Media Working Group and Technology Manager with FBD.ie for preparing the slideshow.
A short aside – Making an audio recording is a handy tactic if you would like to reuse your presentations on your company blog. You can easily attach a good quality digital voice recorder to a sound desk to record your voice. (I have an Olympus DS 30 with a Sony ECM-MS907 Mic) You can go even simpler and just record straight to your recorder. I noticed Alan O’Rourke of Spoiltchild using iTalk on his iPhone at an event recently – this app is free. If you are doing the presentation at an external event make sure you have the permission of the organisation for whom you are presenting before posting the presentation on your blog.
Social Media Working Group
Case Study: 121 Marketing Network
This week’s case study has been written by Joy Redmond, CEO of Flexitimers.
Background
Karina Heavey is no ordinary marketer but a marketer who has recently harnessed social media to affect change and create a community of pro-active people not content to sit back and wait for the recession to go away.
In August 2008, Karina formed the 121 Business Network Ireland group on LinkedIn in response to her dissatisfaction with the business networks available at the time, having identified that there wasn’t an appropriate group focussing exclusively for members based in Ireland.
Context
She didn’t actively promote or push the group until a turning point came in January 2009 when she was made redundant from a senior marketing position in SPSS. Although a highly competent and experienced marketing professional with a Masters from UCD, Karina prior to this had no online social media expertise or experience.
She felt there was both an opportunity to learn while giving something back and believed that if she brought people together, opportunities would arise for all. Soon she extended the brand to marketing with the intention of creating a community of people with an interest in marketing. Believing that the marketing associations valued the speakers at their events more than their individual members, Karina wanted her network to value and reward its members.
Tactics
First on her to-do list was to proactively build the group membership on LinkedIn. To achieve this, she joined 50 marketing groups on LinkedIn, filtered the members by region (Ireland) and keyword (marketing) and arrived at a list of 600 prospects. Again her marketing know-how allowed her to write a compelling personal invitation that resulted in 350 registrations within one week. Karina personally approves every request for membership to ensure the group ethos is not diluted.
Knowing the difficulty in engaging discussion and networking online and the importance and power of personal relationships; the next task was to organise monthly face-to-face meet-ups where members could informally build relationships (not pitch), have fun and feel valued.
Her experience of event management came into play and after researching several city centre hotels, the Mint Bar in the Weston Hotel was chosen as the preferred venue for two reasons -its central location and their promise to provide a space free of charge every first Wednesday of the month. Again her marketing training taught her that consistency was key and so the “First Wednesday” club began. There were 25 attendees the first night in February and numbers have doubled month on month since with the same people returning and bringing more people and spreading the word.
The First Wednesday club is also marketed via her website/blog which provides interviews with marketers, round-ups of the First Wednesday club and competitions to encourage more interaction both online and offline. One interesting application merging both online and offline activity is the video reel of corporate logos representing the attendees of the First Wednesday Club.
The blog also hosts links to her twitter account (@121business) and her YouTube Channel
Karina then created a Facebook page to extend the group’s reach where visitors are met with a Welcome video and members receive a welcome email that sets the rules, expectations and protocol for the group. There is a space entitled ‘Opportunities Exchange’ where members can promote/trade opportunities, jobs and business deals with the effect of minimising spam on the discussion board.
Regional Appeal
Karina is not content to limit the network to Dublin and has set up regional managers in Cork and in Limerick. The 121 Cork Network is going to launch that regions ‘First Wednesday Club’ next month and she’s seeing her memberships growing in Sligo, Kildare and Mayo.
Benefits
A sense of fun and achievement, continuously improving and progressing an idea through its ongoing successful destinations while facilitating important social and business communications is what Karina perceives to be the key benefit of all this social media activity.
Karina herself has been rewarded for her efforts and has proactively raised her profile with an RTE interview live from bizcamp, a podcast interview on The Persuaders and a feature in The Sunday Tribune. What’s more, she has created her own opportunity by being recently hired as Digital Campaign Manager with IIA Member Company TradeDoubler, no easy feat for a marketer with little or no digital expertise less than six months ago and in an extremely difficult economy.
Karina has become a role model and inspiration to many and like her 121Marketing Network, proves that there are still opportunities out there and with positive drive and enthusiasm success still awaits those who create their own luck.
Uncategorized
Guide to Business Blogging: we need you on the case
The IIA Social Media Working Group are reworking the draft of their recently shared Guide to Business Blogging after the recent workshop (3 part podcast now available and well worth a listen). One area that we felt needed some attention was the case studies and we this in mind we are inviting all to participate by completing the following questionnaire with a view to be included as a case study. This survey takes about ten minutes to complete and the working group would really appreciate your input.
