As part of the marketing plan, we created (plans for) a marketing campaign. The imagery that is used for the marketing campaign is placed here, however the campaign itself is explained in detail under the section Action.
Kitley is a new and small startup, yet to launch, located in Stockholm, Sweden. We provide a connection service that mainly works from customer to customer. The service allows users to lend out and borrow tools in a convenient way. We will charge customers for returning items late, imitating the business model of companies like Blockbuster and Filmtown.
We are targeting the market of shared economies which is a vast and quickly growing market with many new opportunities. We start with targeting students and young adults. These people often find themselves short on essential tools in the home due to tight budgets and the fact that people’s inventories of tools tend to grow with age.
Our pricing strategy is a version of freemium, which means that the service is free, but to get some extra functionality within the service you have to pay. This strategy works well for marketplaces, because it lowers the bar of entry, being free, but we can still scale up and receive more profit from customers seeking more and better features. For the moment our company only has one extra feature complementing the freemium strategy, the pining system. The pinging system gives users the ability to do improved searches, but it will cost them depending on how many users they want to reach. Finding a pricing strategy, it is important to consider one that will give the most value in the long term, for this, freemium works very well considering it also works well in the short term with the low entry bar.
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Since our company is a startup that is not yet launched and has no existing marketing strategy, we have planned our objectives in different phases of the establishment of the company. The short term objectives concern launching the service, the mid term concerns establishing ourselves and long term is where we want to see the company in a few years.
In launching the service, we need to keep two things in mind: budget and measurements of our objectives. Since we do not have a budget yet, it is important to set realistic goals that can be fulfilled and measurements of them that will help us achieve them and thus giving the company more credibility possibly making us more attractive to investors in the future.
Creating a brand identity: At launch, we need to be very clear on how we want our users and stakeholders to perceive our company. We have already established our logo, look and slogan through various stages of user testing and surveys. The values we want to convey are convenience, reassurance, and environmental friendliness.
Establish online presence: For our service to work, we need a consistent user base, a community. At the very start it can even be very small, as long as the people using the service feel it is consistent and gives them the convenience they seek. To gather users we need to establish a virtual presence through social media.
Establish physical presence: Just like the online presence, we need physical presence as the company also deals with physical actions, such as borrowing and lending physical items. This presence can be acquired through a marketing campaign involving posters reminding people that the company is also present in their area physically.
When our brand is established on the market it is very important that we continue to deliver the values we have promised and that we continue growing, even if it is just a small community at a time.
Strengthen brand identity: It is thus important for us to develop a good customer service and stay active on our social media channels. It is very likely that problems will arise sometimes with the user lendings, thus it is important that we can provide them with answers and guidance. On the social media part it is important that we stay active and respond to both positive and negative inquiries giving users the feeling of being heard and reassurance that we care about them.
Get past catch 22: Catch 22 means we need to get enough users in order for the service to be usable, however we also need the service to be usable to get enough users.To get past catch 22, strong word of mouth marketing is necessary. Our users need to want to spread the word of our service. Thus enough incentives need to be provided for them to do so. This will be crucial for the survival of the service after gaining a few communities.
Become a necessity: In the long term, this service aims to be the number 1 place where users come to lend and borrow tools and turn when they need some neighbourly help, the Airbnb of tools. It is important to set goals and objectives even after the launch and the establishment on the market. What new features do we want to include, where do we want to improve ourselves, etc. At this point it is difficult to say, and it is not a good idea to create a concrete plan to follow religiously, instead have a clear view and vision of the company to reach,then see what direction the launch takes us in, and how the establishment unfolds. This way we can quickly react to new situations and do the planning in more iterative sessions. It might even be worth looking into outsourcing the marketing to be able to focus on developing the service more, in case we want to involve investors in the company.
In the industry of borrowing and lending, two types of customers exist for each transaction, people borrowing things and people lending things. Keeping this in mind, it is important to highlight the benefits of both borrowing and lending within the app.
Since we are early in the market, competitors like Facebook and WhatsApp are not marketed towards lending and borrowing stuff, this gives us some opportunities. The resulting strategy will be to establish ourselves as the first,most trustworthy, and cheapest company that you can use to lend and borrow stuff. Since it is a marketplace for borrowing pretty much anything, our position within the industry cannot be more specifically defined.
There are a few important characteristics we want our customers to think about when they hear or see Kitley. We want them to think of Kitley as trustworthy and professional, but also as casual and friendly, the next door neighbour who you can rely on when you are in need of help or assistance. We also want our users to see Kitley as an environmentally friendly option that they can use which will benefit them while helping the climate effortlessly.
The convenience and reassurance is also something that needs to be displayed more clearly to our users. This will be shown off in our digital and physical marketing. Several use cases of the application will show how effortlessly you can borrow and loan, and hence improve the life of the users. In our marketing, environmental friendliness will be mentioned. This aspect will not be the focus of the marketing campaign, however it will hint the users into seeing the impact of shared economies and the benefits of using our application.
It is important to quickly establish an online presence for Kitley, letting users and potential users know about the release. For the marketing, a platform is needed that allows us to reach the maximum number of visitors or viewers for an affordable price. There are many such options on social media. Micro influencers can also be used, which can then promote the app in their posts and profiles. Most importantly, we will need our own pages where users can find us and where we can post tailored content to gather more attention for the app. The platforms we have considered are Facebook and Instagram, there, our content can also be measured for improvements.
As mentioned before, our users are both borrowers and lenders. In general, the older you become the more time you have to acquire tools meaning that older people will have more tools. This is why it is very important to focus on physical marketing as well, because many older people do not use Instagram, they might use Facebook, but often it is to stay in touch with their friends and not to follow businesses. Establishing a physical presence is important to reach those who cannot be easily reached with online marketing. It is also important to establish a physical presence letting the users know we are a real company that can be reached, giving them trust.
To establish a physical presence, a marketing campaign using posters positioned at different locations will be launched. We might join in events like Slush to promote our service, but seeing as larger events are now cancelled, this at the moment is impossible.
Considering an initial supply for the application to work is required, we will need to have a pre-release, where we send out mass invitations by email, that can be forwarded, creating an initial supply for the actual release of the application.
After launching the service and completing the short term objectives, there is still much to be done to stay afloat and continue growing. It is thus important to improve upon the features that are already present , to implement new techniques and features that will increase our visibility and improve the brand. An omnichannel approach in developing the marketing mix will be utilised, meaning all of the channels will be connected in some way optimizing the effects of the marketing itself.
One of the objectives is to get past the catch 22 problem. One of the strengths to our business idea, as mentioned in the SWOT analysis, is that we only need local communities to get past this problem. This means that, in order to be successful, only one area needs to use the app. The app will immediately be useful to the people living in and nearby that area. As a result, our focus only needs to be on one place in the market at a time. That area will then become self-sustainable and can grow without too much advertising investments. This is similar to services such as Karma, but on a smaller scale. Karma needed an entire city to use the app in order for it to be useful. Kitley only needs one neighbourhood.
Another way to get past this problem is to send out mass invitations to the target audience. The timing of these invitations are key, because sending it at the wrong time will just result in people ignoring the invite. A good candidate for this would be just before university starts, as a lot of new students are moving in and are in need of tools.
After we have gotten past the catch 22 problem, Kitley needs to become a necessity. This can be done in several ways. One way is to ensure that Kitley remains the most convenient way to borrow an item. Another option is to expand the number of use cases within Kitley. One such use case could be that the user has the option to directly buy an item (s)he is borrowing a lot directly from within the app. Another use case could be the inclusion of services from people in the neighbourhood.
However, as mentioned earlier, all of these suggestions are still hypothetical. The best course of action would be to readjust the vision of the company as Kitley becomes more and more widespread. At that point, more is known about the user base and finer adjustments can be made at that time.
The logo of Kitley is created to represent the values of the company. The color orange is used to represent the socialization and assurance, which the color orange is said to increase. Furthermore, orange is also associated with construction sites, representing the tools in the actual app. The logo and font has soft corners representing friendliness, which is part of the user feedback we received when comparing logos, “It looks more like your friendly neighbourhood app” when we showed different logos on the home screen of an apple phone. This is exactly what we wanted to achieve. Our company slogans also play an important role in our marketing strategy. Our main slogan is “Get your tools quickly, with the help of Kitley!”, but we also have others we will use in certain campaigns, because they will help us achieve the friendly brand image we are going for.
Over time the website for Kitley will display news, use cases, and serve as a good option for connecting users with the platform. Our social media and physical marketing will be linked to the website, users scan the QR code on our posters to redirect them to the website, and social media posts will allow users to find the website as well.
We also want to include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to gain better visibility and increase the traffic on our website. To do this, the website will be updated regularly, contain good quality links and we will not compete for keywords, instead create unique content and try to find words that are less common but still as relevant or synonyms. As Google uses time on site as a ranking signal and not stuffing of keywords, this will benefit our cause, creating an enjoyable website that users will stay on, which will help our SEO in the end.
Lastly, we need strong customer service. Considering the business we are in, it is bound to arise problems considering the borrowing and lending, thus it is crucial that Kitley is able to answer and guide our users in time of need. Otherwise, we might not only risk losing customers, but also suffer the effects of reverse word of mouth marketing. Not only do we need customer service, both negative and positive social media posts need to be answered. Answering positive posts will make our users feel heard and might increase their liking to us even further, with negative posts it is important that we can quickly try to turn them into a positive feed or take responsibility for our mistake. This will give the users the notion that they can reach us and that we hear what they have to say.
The service is now in the starting phase, so actions to get past catch 22 and to become a necessity cannot be taken yet. All actions taken so far already contribute indirectly to these goals. The other objectives need to be cleared first in order for the company to take action that specifically addresses these objectives.
For the online part of our omni-channel marketing strategy, we will create official Instagram and Facebook pages. This is a very important part of our marketing strategy as this will allow us to reach the initial target audience with our limited budget. This is one of the tools that will help us overcome the aforementioned “catch 22” problem, thus a crucial part of the early days of the company.
On the social media pages, content will be posted about the inner workings of the company as well as content about the app itself. Several marketing campaigns will be launched on these platforms. The engagement on these sites will also provide us with invaluable data on our customers, which will be used to further optimise our marketing strategy and will help us make company decisions.
The other online outlet for our marketing strategy will be our website, where we will provide all the necessary information about our app, services, and the company. Initially, it will function more as a general landing page, rather than an important marketing asset.
The most important part of our early offline marketing campaign will be the launch event of our service. This will happen on multiple university campuses in the home countries of the team members. We will be present with a stand at each location at the beginning of the semester, when a lot of new students arrive, as that will provide us with a great number of users potentially in need of borrowing tools and other items. We will also give a certain amount of free “pings” for each user who registers at our stands.
For a later stage of the company’s development, we created a marketing campaign, “The infinite toolshed” to better illustrate our marketing vision. It will be implemented both online, in the form of promoted Facebook and Instagram posts and offline as posters on the street or at the metro station.
The campaign consists of multiple photos that do not completely reveal what our service does and one master picture that clarifies and explains the rest. This way we can effectively raise people’s curiosity, and by the time they see the explaining poster they will be familiar with the company name and logo. The imagery created for this campaign can be found at the top of this page.
The idea is not anything new, we are all familiar with this kind of marketing, but there are several upsides to this: people already know what is going on so it is easier to digest and effectively advertise, because companies keep using it. As Steve Jobs said: “Good artists copy; great artists steal”.
As our budget will be very limited at the beginning, we will mostly use free means of marketing, for example on our website and on social media. The latter has the advantage of being very scalable - as our marketing budget grows, we can easily increase the volume of the advertisements. Ideally, in the long term, hiring a social media marketing expert would be ideal.
To achieve our goals and establish omni-channel marketing, we will need serious investments, as even a small poster campaign can cost more than 20000 euro.
To make sure that the branding of the app was successful, or if it truly identifies itself with the purpose of the app, we can send surveys to users and stakeholders with key questions such as “Define Kitley with 3 words”, or “How would you describe the usage of Kitley”, or “Why do you use kitley”. As the core of the app are the values that we are offering, we should be seeing in the answers ideas and words that are revolving around those. If the users see the app the same way we are seeing it, then it means that the branding was successful and should be developed in the same way, as the app will be upgraded in the future.
Even if the actual purpose of Kitley is to share physical tools, in order to help people who need them, everything starts online. As people are going to dive in the Kitley universe firstly by using the app, and only after that will be able to share actual tools, we have to make sure that the online presence is going to be strong enough so people will download the app. For this, the first and most straightforward way of measuring this is checking the number of downloads. The statistics on the App Store are going to tell us directly how much impact our campaigns have. Also, as social media is concerned, apps such as Instagram and Facebook have built-in, easy-to-use business analytics that track posts and make the reach easy to measure. We can tell how many people see our posts and updates by constantly following the numbers.
Moving on to the physical presence, we need to make sure that this one is going in parallel with the online presence. The first big indicator will be the number of users and the user activity in the weeks following the launch campaign of our app. This will tell us not only how many people chose to engage after our campaign, but also how well the word of mouth marketing works - giving us information on how likely it is for users to talk to other people about our app.
Kitley has a dual way of usage, both on the phone and in real life. As the mentioned strategy and actions that we are going to take mention, tracking this aspect will be harder. A possible solution is to ask in surveys how many people actually saw any poster. Adding small QR codes to the pictures and seeing how the website views change after the starting of this campaign will also lead to a good approximation of our physical reach.
Furthermore, different types of adverts can have different QR codes, which can be used to track the different ways of reaching the site. This way, it is easy to evaluate which medium is most effective and should be used to target potential customers.
As time will pass and possible updates and upgrades are going to be added to the product, periodic re-evaluations of the brand are essential in order to be kept up to date. Therefore, for this objective, we can use a similar approach to the one used for the creation of the brand. Periodic surveys help to evaluate whether our view and values are still present from the user's perspectives.
Regarding the customer service, a very simple way of seeing if this is effective is counting the number of people that contact this service. We can also ask them to mark their interaction with our members in order to know how satisfied the users were by the interaction. This also is direct user feedback, which can make it easy to develop these aspects by following the user's needs and opinions.
Furthermore, after introducing the SEO, we can estimate the result by inspecting the website views number. Nonetheless, everything related to the brand identity strengthening is leading us to the final control method for the development of the app, which is going to be the actual app downloads and the number of active users of it. The goal is to keep this number going up, and this will be the final indicator that we are doing it right.
Getting past this problem is a big milestone in the development of the app, so after this issue is solved, we are going to have a healthy and synergetic community. As Kitley is about sharing, and this sharing is usually happening in a rather small radius around the place of residence, we can split different neighbourhoods in smaller areas and check how many people are using the app there. For example, first in a dorm, then in the whole campus. For the app to be successful, the number of users should be enough for somebody in need to find something as close as possible. Setting a threshold for this number and counting the number of people that satisfy the condition will give a general idea about the service coverage.
For example, if we take a county and see how many people are using the app and where they are located, we will see that some areas are doing better than others, and we have to push with the physical presence in the less usage density areas. Another tracking solution is to see how aware people are of Kitley. We can have random points on the street, or in tool shops, etc., where people can answer with yes or know if they use / heard of Kitley. In order to get past the catch 22 problem the Kitley name needs to become known, first in small areas, and then to expand.
As we know the average time of people using the app and borrowing things, we can evaluate whether or not Kitley can be considered a necessity. Also we can use the feedback from the surveys mentioned before and know directly what should be improved, and what is good or bad from their point of view.
All in all, to measure the results and outcomes of our business, we are going to use tools that already exist. For example, Google Analytics is a good solution for different statistical information that we are going to need. Moreover, for different platforms there are specific tracking methods. Also, we are going to look at people’s reactions and ratings, which are going to reflect our progress. Those control methods, even if some of them will represent a possible cost for the company, are a key aspect of a healthy development. If we want to keep growing as a company, we need to make sure the values we provide through the service align with those expected by the customer. The methods above are nothing more than guidelines, which we should always follow.
Thank you for your attention. Do not forget to start using Kitley now!
