Marketing Advice for a niche service

[Lee Pedley]

Hi,

We are new here and have joined to help us grow our business.

We have just released a new service which will totally transform Small to medium sized businesses. We have worked with many businesses in the past who struggle through business without the right Software. Obviously, the current economic climate is hard out there so it has forced many businesses to use standard off the shelf products to run their business through.

We are the worlds first Subscription based Bespoke Software Developers, which was borne out of this dilemma as through our solution we can not only provide the right software developed for the business but also provide the valuable support.

Now, this may have seemed like a promotional post and it certainly is not meant to be, but I felt like I would need to explain the product so that you can understand our dilemma.

We have created the product, got the website going, even got a few clients but now we don't know how to proceed to gain further interest or market exposure.

I was hoping that someone could point us in the right direction.

I don't feel that Facebook or other social media sites would be a viable place to put adverts as its not really the platform(tell me if I am wrong). We have tried putting a few adverts on but never got any sales from the site and only ended up with a few likes. Again, I may have been targeting wrong but if anyone can point me in the right direction.

We have tried Google Adwords & Bing Ads, again lots of clicks, people spend time on the site but no conversions. So it tells me somethings wrong.

Can anyone please give me guidance on this, maybe we think the product is too good an idea, but as we don't have a second opinion we are looking it with biased eyes. Maybe its our marketing strategy, or maybe with this type of product we need to cold call. I am a bit of a loss.

So first could anyone tell me if this is a worthy idea

If it is, then which way would you advise us to go.

Again, If someone wants to join us as part of the business we are quite happy to share equity in it. We do see its worth while. We have one client who is currently paying us £54k pa for the service and another 2 who we are just negotiating an ongoing price with.

So just to break down our idea again, and any feedback would be welcome;

Stage 1

A client can sign up via our website for a 90 day Free Trial. During the first 60 days we spec and develop the software exactly to their businesses needs. In the last 30 days the client gets to use the software and advise us of any changes etc. During this period there is no contract and no payment details taken.

Stage 2

If a client wishes to carry on with the service after 90 days the price would be based on the average number of paying customers they get per month. Not duplicate orders, single order per customer.
The pricing starts at £100pm which gives them 100 paying customers per month.

When the client grows, and requires over 100 paying customers per month they can increase their subscription level. Again, if a business starts to struggle they can decrease the subscription level.

The idea of the subscription is that its always affordable to the business.

Also included in this, is that the client gets ongoing development, Web Development if required and SEO (again if required).

If anyone can take a look, offer advice, tell us if this is a bad product or not. Just give us some hard truth so that we know, if we are on the right track, or maybe just barking up a tree.

Thanks

Lee

 

[elad]

Sounds good. Send me a PM with a link to your website, I'm interested to learn more about what you're offering.

A product/service like this really needs good marketing to succeed, but it can certainly be done. I work in digital marketing.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi, I have tried to private message you but it appears I cannot do this until I have posted 30 messages.

Anyway, our website is gobespoke.software

We have the new .software domain name

If you want to message me direct my email is lee at integratedbusinessapplications.co.uk

Lee

 

[Graham Tyers]

I'm not sure that I'd have a clue what "Subscription Based Custom Software" is.

I'd start off by saying what the product is, and what it does. Maybe I missed that bit.

 

[Lee Pedley]

That's great feedback and is what I am looking for. How would you say is the best way to describe this;

Software that normally is developed and built to the clients requirements but usually costs thousand if not millions of pounds to purchase. Normally being played part up front. But instead we put it on a subscriptions basis so there is no upfront cost or large outlay. The customer pays say £100pm and gets access to all of this.

 

[Graham Tyers]

Custom software is needed to overcome a very unique problem. A simple "pay for it by monthly subscription" doesn't provide me a clue that you have a solution to my unique problem.

I'd be spelling out what problem exists that the software fixes.

Does your website simply email you enquiries? These enquiries may end up in spam, can be intercepted en-route and read by competitors, they need re-keying into a different system and that causes mistakes ... etc.

Customers have a problem, and you need to explain that you know what that problem is, understand how to fix it, and offer them a solution. How I'll pay for it is sort of irrelevant at the beginning of the conversation.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Ok So something like;

Are you looking for custom software but find the cost or procuring to expensive? or Maybe you have software in place but finding the restrictions with the software to restrictive and does not work for your business?

We provide a custom software package developed and tailored to your business for just £100pm. With no set up costs or upfront cost. Just one low affordable price with no contract.

Would that be the way you would go about it?

 

[Graham Tyers]

I think that's tons better. You're identifying people who have already discovered that they have a problem and that problem is "I need some software writing, but I can't afford what I've been quoted."

Like that, it's more obvious that you have a fix for their problem.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Thanks for your help on this, the thing is trying to do this type of thing without marketing expert is hard. Do you have your own business? if so what would the cost be to come in and redo our content?

If not, would you like to come on board for equity in the business? at the moment we have a few clients and turnover £54k pa.

Lee

 

[Graham Tyers]

You could spell out the options that people have:

Employ a web developer: £25-35k per year
Engage software developers on a project basis: Projects are expensive, overrun, and leave you with code that goes out of date, can't be updated and becomes vulnerable.

or ... subscribe to our service, pay a very affordable monthly subscription, and get the systems you need without any worries.

Sort of thing.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Thank you ever so much for this, brilliant ideas.

 

[Graham Tyers]

Thanks for your help on this, the thing is trying to do this type of thing without marketing expert is hard. Do you have your own business? if so what would the cost be to come in and redo our content?
Lee

It's not my sort of thing unfortunately, but I can point you at a most excellent web copy writer who would probably do the job in a day for about £200 or thereabouts if you're interested.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi,

That would be great, thanks for that.

 

[telemax]

Hello Lee,

It's software, you are one of millions of companies around the world with a software product. If you cold call 1000 people, saying 'we sell software' you will be blocked at reception 1000 times. Right now people have absolutely zero interest in what you do.

However there is a massive market out there who would benefit from your product. How many companies are out there with patched up legacy systems? How many companies have thrown thousands at products that don't work together? how many companies want to get ahead of the competition but need better software to do it?

What I've always done is take a vertical, lets say online wine retailers. There might be 200 in the UK. Take away your top 20 Percent, such as Majestic etc, and you are left with about 150 companies all trying to do better than the others.

In my experience, once you get someone talking about how they want to beat the competition and bring on more sales,they will not stop talking about what they would like from software and where their current set up is lacking. You can then build up a check list of how your product can offer all of this without a huge upfront cost.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Yes I agree there is a massive market of developers but not one of them offer what we do. The ting is we need to have the right way of marketing it before someone else does.

 

[Balanced HQ]

Hi Lee

You definitely need someone with experience of marketing this type of service. They will help you formulate a clear plan to effectively reach your target market.

Let me know if I can help

 

[ethical PR]

Lee if you don't know how to market your product or even if there is a market for your product, then your starting point should be market research and a marketing strategy not reviewing content on your website.

This will help you establish if there is a market for your product, who your customers are and the best ways to reach and build relationships with your potential customers and their influencers.

You need a marketing agency or freelance with experience in the tech sector and a track record of successfully reaching the audiences you want to target. Always take up references with current clients and develop a brief with measurable objectives so that you can measure proposals you receive against this.

Unfortunately the nature of a forum like this, is that you will always have people recommending services because that is what they do, rather than because this is right for your business.

You don't need a content writer (yet), you don't need a sales person, or a web developer you need to understand how to market your product and standout from your competitors.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi,

I know there is a massive market for this as I have worked in this sector for over 25 years. At the moment, bespoke software has a massive market share in the UK and across the UK. On forums there are many people asking about the advantages of Bespoke Software and Off-The-Shelf software for their business but the biggest thing that puts a company off is the cost.

Also at the moment there is a big push of Subscription Based services, Microsoft, Adobe and many other large companies are taking to online Subscription software but these are prewritten software packages.

To a company, Subscription based software is a massive plus as in The Financial world this would come under a Operating Expenditure which they can claim 100% tax relief from at the end of the year. Whereas, software that is bought is under a Capital Expenditure and would be depreciated over 5 years, therefore they cannot claim 100% back in year 1.

So we know there is a massive market, it is completely new to the scene, but the issue that we have is that nobody understands what a Subscription Based Custom Software company can do for them. They do not understand the benefits etc as its new so nobody can grasp what it is.

What we need is a way of getting it out and a clear way of doing this.

As I said we know the service will be in massive demand once the Business Understands the true benefits.

So in short Benefits include

1. Unlike typical Bespoke Software where you pay for the software and own it you are in effect renting the software and therefore it comes under OPEX rather then traditional bespoke software comes under a CAPEX expenditure.

2. With a traditional provider of bespoke software, you would end up with the client having to pay ongoing costs for maintenance, updates, upgrades etc. This can be in the region of £30k - £50k plus. With us there is no extra charge as its part of the subscription.

3. Free web Development included as part of the subscription so no need to hire a separate company to develop the website

4. Business manager assigned to the client to help them grow their business and increase sales

 

[NickGrogan]

Lee

Several issues with this. Firstly this isn't a new model, I was selling this back in the late 90's and it wasn't new then.

Secondly, looking at the website, you're not offering bespoke software development, you have a CRM system and your offering bespoke setup of the system and a few other addons. This is fine, but is the same as offered by the likes of Salesforce, etc.

Finally, on the tax issue

Look up R & D tax credits.

"For expenditure incurred on or after 1 August 2008 SMEs can deduct 175% in respect of their qualifying R&D expenditure and the payable tax credit can amount to £24.50 for every £100 of actual R&D expenditure. "

Bespoke software development can qualify for this.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi Nick,

Firstly we do offer a complete bespoke software that has been written for them and not just the prewritten CRM. We have a client just coming on board which deals with event management and we are buklding up an event management system for them. If someone is interested in the prewritten crm then of course they can have that customised to their needs but 9-10 clients want something more specific then something already prewritten.

Can you point me in the direction for sites selling Completely Bespoke Software on a subscription basis, as we have done a lot of market research but didn't find one.

Thanks for pointing out the CRM, as if you feel that is what the customer is getting then that is the wrong message so we need to change that accordingly.

Finally, with R & D tax credits I have taken a look and it appears to be very complicated. On this scheme, if I was to spend 50,000 could I claim 100% back?

Lee

 

[Lee Pedley]

Just looked at the R&D and still compared to an OPEX its not a better deal for £100,000 worth of development you would only claim 26% back. Where as a OPEX you can claim 100% back.

 

[NickGrogan]

Look up Dedicated Developers for lots of examples.

these guys have been doing it for about 15 years.

http://n-ix.com/dedicated-development-team/

Not an expert on the R & D Tax, others can add more later.

Depending on size and company spending £100k would allow you to claim up to £175k - ie more than you spent and more than as an OPEX.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Hi lee. As ethical and others have suggested, in marketing terms you are getting this the wrong way round

Firstly, by not defining a clear target customer, you are effectively mud- flinging, throwing out lists of features, slightly dressed up as benefits and hoping some will stick. If you define your customer, you can focus on those things which are of specific relevance to them and create interesting, compelling benefits.

Second, you are looking out from your product rather than seeing it from the customers view. Of all products, it is most true that nobody wants to buy software, they want to buy an outcome

Speaking as someone who has offered software leasing for more than 15 years, I would say that few small businesses are interested in opex /capex. They want to know what it costs each month - you are on very thin ice suggesting that one is more tax efficient - that can only be ascertained by a qualified professional with details of the customers circumstances.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Our Target market is quite clear for us. We are targetting Small to Medium based companies who in the past could not afford Custom Software.

Our service is unique to this market as it is built on the platform of affordability.

Our service is unique in two ways;

1. Any SME can come to us and have there software developed. We offer a 90 day free trial to get them onboard and going. During this time we show them areas that we can save them money and areas that we can streamline.

2. Our subscriptions are based on affordability and is something that no company is offering. We work our pricing based on number of paying customers. So for example to hit the really small businesses we offer the client a complete bespoke system and ongoing development for £50pm. This hits the small businesses with 40 payments per month. This works out at £1.25 charge per customer.

As the company grows, they move up a level of subscription to the next platform which is £100 per month for 100 customers. This works out at £1 per customer and so on.

If the client hits financial difficulties as they get a drop in sales, then the system automatically moves their subscription down to the relevant level. This makes the software always affordable to the client.

I would like to thank everyone for their input on this as its really good to have a sounding board, and get real feedback. So once again thanks for all the feedback I have received, it is very much welcomed and hope to get more grouling feedback as it helps us to define the product more effectively.

Lee

 

[stoo]

This is actually something many businesses need in my opinion, and something that I have been on the look out for. I agree this is not easy to market and I can't really offer any advise. I have forwarded your details onto a local estate agents due to my wife managing the online sales department. She was looking to integrate an online backend crm for clients to be able to log in and keep track of how their house sale is going. Quite simple I guess.. but i was struggling to find a solution to this myself. With the many, many new online estate agents, I would advise to look into targeting these.. the largest online estate agent use a crm . good luck

 

[Lee Pedley]

Many thanks for this Stoo, I agree and we have had a lot of interest. Didn't think of the online estate agents but is a good target market for this type of product. Again, it goes with our current marketing strategy, SME's needing a stronger platform to getting their business off the ground.

What you have mentioned, is very straight forward but we can develop it to the same standards if not greater then the largest estate agents.

We have built mobile apps, so could have an option to integrate it to the mobile side to make it easy to upload your own photos via mobile.

Every client that we take on get a 90 day free trial, to not just develop the product but to also test it.

Our service, includes all development, whether its mobile, system based, or web based so no matter what it is we can develop it.

Our subscription starts from just £50pm after the initial 90 day free trial but is totally based on the number of paying clients per month. So for instance is she has 40 clients paying (as in paying the agents costs) per month she would only pay £50 for the service.

We don't charge any set up costs, we don't charge any initial lump sum. Just one low monthly costs giving you ongoing development and support. Also included in this is SEO so we get your website positioned better in Google as well as other Search engines.

To top it off, there is no contract, quit at any time and lots of savings to be made.

 

[NickGrogan]

Who owns the software?
What happens if/when the subscription is cancelled?
how many man-hours do I get for £50 per month?
What languages/databases are you experienced with?

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi,

During the 90 day free trial, we sit down with you and draft a complete system proposal. This will be agreed and signed off by yourselves. Once it has been drafted this then goes to our development team who will then price the work up so we know the cost of the development.

The cost of the development and proposal are sent to yourself to confirm before proceeding.

At this point the client can decide whether to rent the product or to rent to buy. Both have their pro's and con's however we have found most people prefer to go on a rental basis as they get ongoing development for the lifetime of the subscription.

So during the 90 day free trial we work full time on the development and have a team of 5-10 developers working on the project. After the initial development has been done and working as you would expect it to you then get ongoing development, for any additional changes, addons etc. This will depend on the price you are paying. Don't forget all the hard work has already been done (60 days full time development), so we tend to get little changes, or addons during this time.

The rent to buy scheme, isn't like the traditional scheme where you are committed to buy and again, you can quit at anytime therefore it is not a credit agreement and we are not loaning any money.

If you choose the rent to buy scheme, then yes you will own the software but if you only rent the software then you will benefit from ongoing lifetime development but won't own the software (but always have the latest software at all times).

We use cloud based technologies for our developments, therefore making it always accessible anywhere and also works with systems such as mobile devices etc. We develop in various languages dependent on what the client needs such as ASP.net, Perl, PHP and tend to primarily use Microsoft SQL Server/Azure for the Database end due to the flexibility and scale that we can get out of the database.

We can develop with any language/database required by the client but price will be dependant on licensing costs.

Hope this answers your questions.

Lee

 

[NickGrogan]

Ok, so if I'm looking for two websites, one b2b and one b2c each costing £20,000 to develop what would the monthly costs be?

Assuming the b2b has 10 customers per month and the b2c has 1,000.

 

[Lee Pedley]

How many out of the total of 1,100 customers would make a payment each month. If they don't always make a payment then I need to know the average number of payments per month that you would receive in.

 

[NickGrogan]

None of the customers visiting the B2C website would make a payment, so 0 out of 1,000

For the b2c, again no-one visiting the website would be paying.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Our normal pricing works off the number of customers paying customers, however as you site doesn't require this we would set the price of £250 per site, so £476.19pm ongoing. Depending on the actual cost of the development then after a set period of time you would own your version of the software. This would be reviewed with yourself when we draft documentation up during the 90 day trial.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Forgot to mention, this would be unlimited customers for both sites. Again, this price may vary as it will depend on the total cost of the site to be developed.

This quote is based on a £40,000 development spread over 7 years.

If you wanted it spread over 10 years then the cost would be £333.33 per month.

 

[billmccallum1957]

Lee

I would like a web site that can undertake video editing online and publish direct to my own site and to youtube.

Rough idea of monthly cost?

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi, How many videos would you expect to run through this? if its around 0-30 a month then we could do this for £150pm but would depend on what type of functionality that you required. Are you looking to cut and splice video? or do you want something more advanced such as enhancements etc?

Our standard offering on this would be;

• Fast (instant) cutting video into pieces without transcode.
• Ability to combine pieces of video.
• For video are used server applications: FFmpeg, Mencoder (optional), MP4Box / gpac (optional),MKVMerge (optional).
• Convert video formats: FLV, MP4, WEBM, OGV.
• Showing the progress of conversion percentage.
• Three HTML5 player to choose from.
• Upload video 3 ways: file, link, from YouTube.

The price quoted is due to size of video, and would require extra capacity within the server as well as more power to convert the video.

 

[NickGrogan]

Forgot to mention, this would be unlimited customers for both sites. Again, this price may vary as it will depend on the total cost of the site to be developed.

This quote is based on a £40,000 development spread over 7 years.

If you wanted it spread over 10 years then the cost would be £333.33 per month.

So you're offering 10 years interest free credit?

Do you have a CCL licence?

 

[Lee Pedley]

We are not offer credit in any form. We are offering a rental scheme and at the end of it you can choose to buy the product you can. There is no contract, and if you decide to pull out at any time you will not be chased for any cost as you don't own the software unless you decide to buy at the end.

We do not bill you for the product, we show you the cost of the development but you are not bound to any contract. You are not getting any credit with us or any third party.

 

[Lee Pedley]

Because of the above, there is no interest as its not a credit product. If it was then yes we would go down the legalities but we are providing any form of credit, we don't do any credit checks and we are not bound to the FCA regulations.

If you decide to pull out at any time, then you owe nothing and never have done as you are licensing the product. The only difference is if you want to own it then we give you the option to buy it. This can be bought at any time. So no credit, just a simple licensing product that enables you to buy it after a set number of years.

 

[TLMartin]

Hi

The only thing that comes to my mind is that you say 100 Paying Customers Per Month for one level, and so on... How will you know how many paying customers I have? if you were to make me a custom piece of software that is for internal use, or even CRM it may be separate to payment systems

So what info do you need from my company or to tie into my company?
How would you avoid people saying they only have 100 customers a month that pay? when they have more?

That is what I don't fully understand on your site.

I do think its a lovely concept though

I think with what other people are saying about it being clearer.... comes to my mind about limit of tweaks? whats to stop a small business wanting a mammoth system built for them with continual tweaks and tweaks and tweaks but only pay £100 a month?

 

[Lee Pedley]

Hi TLMartin,

Thank you for your message.

The way we base payments can be in three ways;

1. The system is hooked directly into the CRM therefore all payments are sent/received and monitored directly from the payment gateway.

2. Action on the CRM, so for instance Customer A goes to your website, buys some goods - Either the system marks that goods are requested or the end user marks it. They process the order through the system and then take payment from another method. We can set the system up so that a certain part of the process triggers a cost. This is something that we assess when we visit a business.

3. If there is no way to track a payment, or there is no requirement for a payment to be taken from the system then we will base the cost on the development divided by number of years.

Obviously, there is no contract and the risk is on our side but saying that if a client decides to pull out we can reuse coding to produce products for other clients so it is not wasted code.

Like I mentioned earlier, we have a complete blitz of your company, its current processes and how you do things. From there we can spec out the relevant system. This is why we offer a 90 day trial as 60 days of this is used to spec, price and develop.

The beauty of systems, is that people need information out of it. If they don't put it in they don't get any benefit from it so we have not had issues with this in the past year that we have been trading. Infact, its been a really easy task due to the assessment stage.

If a company wants to have tweaks all along, then we have the resources to do these tweaks and again is a risk we take but thanks to the assessment period we get quite a good understanding of the business.

We also visit our clients once a month, to ensure everything is running smoothly and also to assess if any more work needs doing. The thing is for us, we have been in business for over 25 years we know the processes that businesses need to grow and with our free SEO and business consultants we do successfully grow companies.

For instance, our first client that we took on May 2015, we are still doing tweaks and changes. When they came to us, they were about to go under if they did not change there processes. Their last system provider had a major fault and through it many customers who had received goods had never been charged for them. We have since then worked closely with the client as well as its investors and have turned then around. Now growing at a steady rate and are predicted to make just over £800k.

We love working with our clients, we like to ensure they have value for money but most of all we like to help businesses move in the right direction. If we have achieved that then we have hit our target. Now we know they are going to be a long term client as business is growing. So yes a lot of work at the beginning but now as they are on the right track, they are growing which then int urn helps us to grow.