Finding a great marketeer

antoinolachtnai

Hi there,

I have developed a pretty decent, fairly unique product, and we have it up on the Internet and we are making daily sales at a small profit. Now I want to push it to the next level. I need to really get it 'out there', and I feel I need some marketing savvy to help do this.

The site is aspoke.com, have a look.

I would be interested to get comments and ideas on how I can really get this moving.

blue4ever

Nice idea –I was only looking at my laptop last night (from afar) and thinking that its particularly boring. I would be better, even with the Dublin GAA logo on it – at least it’s a conversation starter.

As a point – I would see if you have an image of a more corporate ‘face’ (ye might touch Guinness for that – they have a load of people on the road and are very proud of their logo – want to sell 'guinnes' at every hands turn.

This would get other companies with lots of personnel thinking the same thing. The corporate market could be lucrative.

drdre

Thats an excellent idea, But i donot know who can help you to market it,Sorry

dumbyearbook

Hi brilliant idea, everything personalised is good right now, you need to get this on to that rte show for teens in the evening SMS? or something afternoon show?!, you could run a competition contact by (viral email id say)..... where best submitted picture gets a free one and then host them on the site after? and as was said above if you can do Man utd (copyright?) ones or whatever Xbox, or colleges logos would be cool

Id agree with the post above teh corporate thing would work well

Id even chance UCD Quinn School/Smurfit the graduate school - Quinn has a hefty marketing budget from what I can see and they want to push their brand the whole laptop thing is one of their usps for the ucd schools, they do a dell deal every year and its worth about 500 laptops and they could decide to have the logos on each one you could have a nice regular stream there?

the boys racers would like their car logos on their laptops? and have predone ones them up there it would entice ppl more they cant be bothered thinking of good images of their own to get done. You need a cool factor so give it to a few ppl free - ppl and i know this sounds cheesy but who are trendsetters! hope some of this helps a bit !

fintan

To echo everyone else its a great idea and I will be buying a custom one, just sorting out the logo.

Couple of ideas for designs - team & county colours is an obvious one as are sporting moments (rugby try etc), movie scenes and band logos and pictures.

Coporate logos as others have said, but also offer the option of having "asset tag" numbers included in the corner.

Personally I would say try and go viral with this maybe some sort of game or a competiton (people who vote for the winner are practically a guaranteed customer).

anyway best of luck with the buisness!

leftofcentre

Have you an affiliate scheme? Try doing that.

okellyc

I'm as impressed as all the others so far. I like the "everything in the shops is the same" philosophy too: Christmas shopping gets more boring every year. I've sent a link to your site to someone who may be interested in an affiliate scheme, I'm sure plenty of others will want to link with you too. As for how to sell more: don't bring a packed lunch to work anyway, spend lots of time in Starbucks and other trendy wi-fi spots with an advert for your skins on your own laptop. You need to get the cool set to adopt your product first, the rest will copy them! Best of luck.

Do i get a cut if come with an idea that reels in the dollars?!!

tickledpinkfair

great idea site looks great I agree with the others about your company logo. something simple and sassy like the site.

There are a few things you could do but in order to get the coverage you need to be willing to spend the money on the advertising.

Have you considered teaming up with some of the large computer suppliers like dell, hp etc i think that this would be of real interest to them and would really help you with awareness and sales!

another idea is college magazines. most students have laptops the same dreary old black/silver target this audience even try get into the colleges on their business week and give a presentation and talk about your company I know from attending these that its a great help.

Exhibitions would be a great place to show off your product , toys for big boys, and exhibition/fair that has to do with technology get a stand bring som products along etc, its not to costly.

If you want anymore pm me

jancav

you might also look at RTE news: they have stuck some crap stickers over the brand logo on their laptops: could definitely do better, and they are watched by huge numbers of people....

some of the big corporations might be put off using this for their employees because of security issues: if I am using my laptop on the train, and someone knows I'm working for Bloggs Corp. they might be more inclined to nick my laptop?

however, someone like Ferrari or Harley Davidson or another premium brand could make a killing selling these to brand slaves.....

only problem you have is that you are in dangerous territory - barriers to entry are low, and your product is easily copied...good luck with it!

RedCardinal

I think jancav makes a good point about barriers to entry.

But the first mover who can generate a decent awareness would probably be in a very strong position.

I think this could also be a nice product for some viral marketing. I reckon it could pretty easily get into Digg and some of the other social networks. (but maybe that's been done before?)

I think banner advertising might not be a bad idea also - product is very visual and your target market are on-line.

Nice site - you need to seriously push out the boat if you are going for the b2c market. Some great points made above about affiliates (nice product but can you afford to payout to affiliates?) and tying up with large manufactureres (this latter point needs to be thought out - nothing to stop Dell or whoever copying your product and selling themselves).

BTW I would get rid of the spammy text in the footer - not doing you any favours IMO.

beglobal

I know that everyone else has told you the same thing, but Ill do it anyway what a great idea!!!!! I wonder how did you came up with it!!!!:rolleyes: I wish I could help you!!!! good luck!!!!

antoinolachtnai

There are some great ideas there, thanks! But really what I'm looking for is a marketing specialist to pick a few ideas and run with them. The marketing person would then take a pretty substantial cut of the gross profit.

Any ideas?!

stepbar

I have to compliment you on the idea, well done. My question to you is how much of your time and money are you prepared to back this company / idea with? Because you might be better off getting a small business startup loan from the bank and just employing a sales & marketing person with experience in legals to start knocking on doors and doing licencing deals with the companies that other posters have mentioned. You could draw it down in stages so as to keep interest down. Maybe you could concentrating on getting the traffic through the website. For example you could approach the Sunday Business Post about maybe doing a small write up? They usually profile a few small companies in the "People in Business" section every Sunday. However I would hold off on this until you have a few licencing deals in place. Then you can play ball and really push the sales online and offline. One thing I noticed was that the skins you use are mostly made from plastic (am I right?). Imagine if you could source suitable materials like fur or wool and be able to stick them on a laptop. You would be in business if you could pull off something like that.

If you want more info re: getting a small business startup loan give me a PM, I would be able to put you in the right direction. Also there are a number of colleges that offer incubator units for startups e.g DIT and NCI. Might be worth approaching because they have the people you need onsite - from marketing professionals to careers people. I maybe able to put you in touch with people in both colleges (Former grad from both). The dublin enterprise board would also be another port of call. As ive said I think you have a very good idea but its vitally important that you highten the barriers to entry at a very early stage. Getting those licencing deals would be a great start. Start small i.e with the Galway Utd's of the world (Galway Utd is used as an example doesnt mean i'm suggesting that you concentrate on sporting deals). If I was you I would start with the music industry.

antoinolachtnai

Where would I find such a sales and marketing person? That's my problem.

stepbar

antoinolachtnai wrote:

Where would I find such a sales and marketing person? That's my problem.

Have you tried putting a small advert in the sunday business post? Or sending in a job spec to the colleges, usually most of them have a career office and a jobs board that is made available to all types of student (part time full time mature etc). Have you tried getting in touch with the Irish Marketing Institute (IMI)? they might be able to help. Nixers.ie? dont know if they do single adverts? . I dont mean to be smart but you need to be proactive about it. Somethings after coming to me head there - Dragon's den?