Case study
The entrepreneurial flair of Contrast Web’s co-founder Michal Birecki has The entrepreneurial flair of Contrast Web’s co-founder Michal Birecki has allowed him to work on a variety of web businesses throughout his career. In 2010 he acquired a company named Custom CMS after seeing success with his first online venture – PS3 Center. After purchasing the development & distribution rights of the software & its customers, he set himself on a path to develop a new breed of niche content management systems. After several years of part-time development, the product approached a stage where beta testing input was needed from potential customers. We were hired to develop a microsite which would serve as the lead generation tool for the upcoming product.
Digital Strategy
The one of a kind product stood out as an all-in-one gaming industry content management system, which served useful for a variety of gaming fanatics, whether it was bloggers, ecommerce shop owners or casual gamers looking to submerge themselves into the esports scene.
In cases where a new product enters an existing market & tries to resegment that market as a niche entrant, the entrepreneurs in charge of the company usually have no clue where their customers are. The company’s ability to predict target audience, customer acceptance and widespread usage are not based on any facts, just untested business plan hypotheses. With those details ironed out, we were able to make some new goals for our next development moves:
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- Develop a clever brand that would define trust in the business & connect with the needs of the target audience.
- Develop a content strategy to educate the target audience about the benefits of the new product.
- Develop a unique style to set the brand apart from competitors.
- Develop a beta account portal which would automatically store signup emails & push to email marketing platforms, send out new account password emails, send / reset recovery passwords emails & be the go-to portal for beta account holders.
- Develop an SEO strategy to set the markup in the right direction for proper indexing activities.
- Integrate & theme a WordPress blogging installation to provide the business with an inbound marketing tool.
Branding
When dealing with a startup company, the name is just one of the elements you need to get right in order get 1 inch closer to the goal, which is still 10 miles away. With no direct competitors in sight, we first created a list of alternative CMS’s that most hobbyists used to create websites of similar genres. Most names were fairly universal in nature, leaving room for elasticity in brand direction. While we believed that this platform could one day expand to various other niches, it was critical to maintain focus on the current target audience.
With the rise of tablet devices, smartphones & laptops, the old days of thinking that you needed to be hunched at a desk were long behind us. Technology, apps, the Internet were all beginning to be consumed pretty much anywhere – especially in comfortable places such as couches. This brought forth a variety of new ideas for both the product’s user interfaces & user experience, but most importantly a nifty concept for the brand name…
With the ability to marry the word “couch” to any additional descriptive word in the future, this compound mix was ideal for the new platform if it was to expand towards other niches.
Couch Gamers was selected as the first name for this niche gaming platform. It was descriptive, distinctive, pronounceable & memorable, fitting comfortably with the company’s long-term goals.
Within a few days, the new logo was in development.
