Another Success
As you know, I am always interested to hear from all those who entered the Den, especially if it is a success story. One such company is Runawaybrideandgroom.com.
Here is a very exciting update from Zara & Rosemarie who featured on Series II Dragons’ Den recently. Fantastic!
….In response to your last blog commenting on the cost of marketing I agree but I also feel that entrepreneurs who do not have the privilege of a dragon should not give up, as marketing can be about spending cash or otherwise you need to get creative….which is what we have had to do.
As you know we left the Den with no investment after filming in January. Our business of Weddings and Honeymoon services had been planned, but not yet launched and in hindsight we made the fatal mistake of over valuing the company.
Since January however we managed to launch the business, generate sales and establish our brand Runawaybrideandgroom.com internationally on a limited budget. The Den was like a brilliant free consultancy service we could never afford and after we fluffed it we went home and re-adjusted our business plan. We knocked on doors of every business person we knew and did a road show of presentations. Two weeks later we secured Euros40K for 20% of the business after some negotiation from Ciaran Rooney, Director of 1st Ireland Insurance.
We were Euros60K short of what we wanted but lucky to get anything in the climate. Our marketing plan to launch Runawaybrideandgroom.com was based around the PR of the offer of “The Ultimate Job In Ireland”. Six months travel around the world for 2 people plus 20K in their pocket! By our own admission a pure copycat of the Queensland Tourist Board’s Best Job campaign. However, our budget was limited and the travel bill alone would be around Euros100K so we had to get creative! We decided we needed credibility and proper advertising otherwise people would think the campaign was a scam. So we approached The Irish Times and agreed a media deal with them. They would associate themselves with the competition and we would get Euros250,000 worth of free advertising. We also agreed 6 months worth of editorial in their GO Magazine to report on trips – this was the critical link to enticing other travel sponsors (we could guarantee logos, branding and photos in what is widely regarded as the best Irish Travel Supplement).
That done we contacted 100s of airlines, hotels, ground operators and eventually selected and secured sponsorship for the entire 6 month trip to luxury destinations around the world. The finale trip is sponsored by Queensland Tourism which we think is very apt given we stole their idea in the first place! In return the selected sponsors will get editorial coverage in the Irish Times, on Ireland.com and many eyeballs on our own site and through blogs.
The first ad went out in the Irish times end of Feb and the response to the competition was very poor in the beginning. We had no budget for online advertising although in desperation we paid Euros320 for facebook ads. We sent out press releases to everyone around the world we could think of and to all our friends. We’ve all travelled a lot and I am involved in travel so that was a lot of people. After week three the viral marketing effect started to happen. In the end we received over 30,000 applications for our Ultimate Job in Ireland from over 98 different countries.
The Job was the lead story on CNN Travel, Fox News, Yahoo, The China Daily News to mention just a couple. My colleague Rosemarie spoke on 123 radio stations in 9 different countries. We tracked the job being talked about on over 40 TV stations around the world…all this generated over 500,000 links to our new site and 8.5 million visits in less than 3 months as well as lots of enquiries for weddings and honeymoons along the way of course. We were inundated by producers wanting to either follow the couple or make reality TV about the concept…in the end we signed a deal with the Wolper Organization in LA who have in turn signed Warner Bro’s. Oprah Winfrey’s producer also contacted us! Phenomenal and nope we did not plan that bit or the extent of global exposure.
Our winning couple will be chosen on the 9th May and with finalists from all around the world we knew that tea and scones at the local church hall would not be an appropriate venue. We were able to enlist the support and generous sponsorship for a full weekend of activity and games thanks to several top hotels and restaurants in Kinsale culminating at the fabulous Ballincurra house for a gala dinner with champagne sponsored by Bollinger. We have organised press and some international TV crews will be over thanks to Tourism Ireland so Kinsale will benefit enormously with the exposure of being marketed as a fantastic wedding destination.
From here the business has two challenges. The first is we need to see returns on our campaign and our service of weddings and honeymoons is simply not global enough…its too Irish consumer focussed. So we have brought a new partner and investor on board to further commercialise our site and create a portal with expanded services that are suitable for a global market. The other challenge is we need to continue the momentum of driving traffic to the site so we have launched the search for the successive Ultimate Couple and given our experience to date now have several ideas to commercialise this campaign and generate some cash from it next time round.
Meanwhile I have personally realised that I cannot focus on two businesses well so I’ve decided to retain my shareholding in Runawaybrideandgroom.com and return all my efforts to Zara’s Planet and my horse riding holidays which are my personal passion. Overall it’s been a brilliant experience and Dragons’ Den was the best thing we ever did, as had we not, we would still be three girls talking about an idea but not actually getting it off the ground with a proper marketing plan which is all about execution!
Keep blogging…I pick one or two of your ideas every month and implement them! As soon as I make my first million I will be sure to let you know!