Launching a new online service
The challenges of launching a new online service are examined by Alison Roberts, director of marketing at feelfit.com….
Getting the marketing mix right is always a tricky business, even more so with a totally new and exclusively online service. Forget the well trodden path; in such circumstances a marketer has to find their own way.
feelfit.com, which we soft launched at the start of the year, is an online fitness service aimed at making getting active easier for everyone. The nature of the service gives us the opportunity to market to a wide variety of consumers, which in itself can have its marketing challenges! We identified the traditional points counting fitness-shy female as our first key audience. This group is not properly catered for by traditional or online fitness services so our main focus has been to promote feelfit as a service that does cater for this demographic.
As well as looking at the best ways to reach our audiences we had to take into account the seasonal peaks that occur in the fitness industry. My experience of promoting diet services demonstrated that marketing spend must be timed accordingly, and the fitness industry follows the same scenario.
When it comes to deciding where to place your money it is essential to start with the channels that naturally fit your business. Google offers an extensive and highly targeted variety of marketing tools that work particularly well for online offerings such as ours. On pack promotions are another element that can produce great ROI figures, particularly in relation to fitness products and services. PR also has a role to play, with carefully placed editorial able to drive traffic to the site and create that all important “buzz” about the product or service.
Such steps are of course merely the beginning; the days of focusing on your core product or service alone are gone. B2B revenue opportunities, when properly exploited, can be an essential part of an online service’s business proposition. Partnerships with affiliate based operations should be explored from the earliest stages, to ensure the business develops in line with the needs of all its stakeholders. As long as your brand guidelines are adhered to, license deals and white label offerings can also be important growth areas.
Implementing Multivariate Split Testing (MSP) into content management systems across your site can have a massive impact on the user experience. Consumers will be automatically directed to the relevant landing pages, accurately reflecting their search criteria. This is a great example of how cost effective solutions can have a significant impact, MSP will provide a more sophisticated user experience, thus helping to set you apart from the competition and leading to higher conversion rates.
If marketing spend is to be used to maximum effect you must always take into account the priorities of your sales team and these will of course vary over time. In the current economic climate a “test-and-learn” approach is the best way to identify the most cost effective marketing channels for your particular product or service. Once you’ve got your marketing mix right everything else will follow.
However, just as important as getting consumers to initially join the site is the need to retain them, and this is the crux of making a subscription business work. And that’s a whole different ball game!