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3rd January, 2009
th
SUBMITTED TO:
Group 15
Ashikur Rahman Khan ZR-26 Kawsar Ahmed ZR-50 Sadek Jake Alam ZR-55 Rashed Al Ahmad Tarique ZR-61 BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU.
Table of Contents
BACKGROUND....................................................................................................................5 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................5 BOOGLE.COM......................................................................................................................6 BOGGLE.COM: THE BUSINESS........................................................................................7 SECTIONS OF BOGGLE.COM...........................................................................................8 FINANCE.............................................................................................................................16 PROMOTION......................................................................................................................17 MONETIZATION................................................................................................................20 MONETIZATION
BACKGROUND
Our course coordinator, Prof. Dr. Abdullah assigned us a project to explore the realm of marketing innovative products. On his orders, we started with an empty slate and sat together in a group of three, brainstorming. Although we suffered minor set-backs, we, like our teacher were unwilling to give in. We took the easy road that others were unwilling to take. With the help of various internet and local sources, we managed to patch something up. Although of totally our own composition, it would be a great injustice to thank only a few of them here. We salute all those who have opened their doors to our queries. Within our restricted means, this is what we managed to patch up.
INTRODUCTION
When thinking about launching a completely fresh and new business, we took the challenge as an opportunity and tried to come up with something which has high prospect. When coming up with ideas, we filtered them according to the following criteria:
market
The product or service should be new. There should be an already existing market.
We intend to be the first mover and be able to use the benefit to expand the
The business should have room for growth. We should be able to expand it internationally if situation helps.
BOOGLE.COM
We decided to launch a web portal, Boggle.com, the first of its kind in Bangladesh. The portal will have a whole array of services featuring news, social networks, classified business directories, blogging platforms and job portals. The whole array of services will ensure that the visitors stay longer on the portal, monetizing our services more. We will also try and set the e-business framework for the country. These will be explained at a later stage of this report. Is the idea new? Not Really. We have seen sites like Yahoo! and Lycos experience an incredible amount of popularity just as they were launched. Yahoo! has gone on to be one of the most popular names around the world within just 14 years of launching their business. A glance at Yahoo!s business model reveals the story. Anyone who looks at yahoo.com and how it has changed over the years would notice a number of important points: 1. 2. A lot of features together Clean user interface A gradual progression in the complexity of the site in pace with bandwidth costs A steady influx of innovative features The services are free for the users
3. 4.
5.
Why do something that has already been done? And even more importantly, why should users use boogle.com and not yahoo.com? We have a number of factors working in our favor.
Bangladesh has truly been connected to the internet superhighway. Although speeds for home users are not yet up to international standards, the price of internet connectively has come down in leaps and bounds. Almost every middle and upper class home in the major cities has an internet connection now.
The internet users or netizens exists. What we need now is a means to make
them come through our virtual doors. Visitors to the site will only be visitors when they find nothing interesting here. To convert visitors to regulars, we need to provide what no one else has. There are no sites operating in Bangladesh that offers our services in one place.
Group 15 Principles of Marketing BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU
Finally, why not Yahoo!? When anyone types yahoo.com we see a fantastic
site. But something is missing. That something is national identity. We have Yahoo! India, Yahoo! Australia, Yahoo! UK and numerous other national sites, but no Yahoo! Bangladesh. If such a well-known brand as Yahoo! is making national sites, there is definitely a market where national identity and patriotism matter. But where some of the local news sites have failed, we want to learn from the failures of these local websites.
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top of the competition, a group of webmasters will always be looking to add new content to our pages periodically.
SECTIONS OF BOGGLE.COM
Boggle.com will come in many sections. Each of the sections will be named to allow users to easily remember e.g. jobs.boggle.com. These sub-domains, will be discussed in detail in this section.
News: news.boggle.com
This is one of the most important sections for Boggle.com. This market is huge. According to Alexa.com (an online traffic measuring website) the biggest offline printed daily newspaper The Daily Prothom Alos online version, www.protham-alo.net receives about half of a million web traffic every day. The web version is reaping benefits from this by hosting a wide range of advertisements on its pages. Unfortunately, Prothom Alo will act as a huge competitor. Another big competitor would be BdNews24.com. They are relatively new businesses and are doing well. The market seems saturated at this point. We analyze our competitors strengths here:
1. A web-portal and not just a news site is our biggest advantage. Like yahoo.com
we have so many other services in addition to news that users will come not only for the news, but also for the host of other services on offer for free.
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sources would be acknowledged and a link at the bottom of the page will be provided to view the news in its original form. As our news would be in a more concise form, we would probably not lose much traffic to these other online news sites.
The international news section will contain international news of importance to the Bangladeshi audience. The health section will contain health tips and tricks, health facts, specialist advice, digital weight, blood pressure and sugar level charts for reference to obesity and diabetes. Online versions of these features are available free of cost and copyright. The sports section will contain domestic sports news, as well as feature Bangladesh games at the international level. We will specifically focus on foreign leagues like English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie-A as they are of high interest to the Bangladeshi youth. The technology section will contain, as the name suggests, technological news. We will focus on tech news worldwide, regular tutorials on programming and web mastering, competitions, gadget news, and the like. We will also have special tips
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for freelance workers. There are huge opportunities across the web to work freelance at really attractive salaries. There are jobs for everyone, be it data processing, programming, online marketing, search engine optimization, architecture, planning, designing and numerous others. We will show Bangladeshis how and where to get the jobs, and how to manage all of their projects. Our neighbor, India has thousands of its people working online for really attractive salaries or projects fees (payments are quite higher than their country standard). We will also teach our visitors how to get those works, and hopefully help a lot of our idle sons. These tutorials are not only easy to incorporate, but also freely available. The fashion and lifestyle section will have lifestyle and fashion tips for our youth. We will also cover all the fashion shows, concerts and hip parties. The media section will contain showbiz news, celebrity news, feature upcoming movies and drama serials. A heavy focus will also be passed on to Bollywood and Hollywood news, as they tend to be very popular with Bangladeshis. Arts and Literature will feature literary works and arts news. We will feature exhibitions going throughout Dhaka and other cities, feature literary works and reviews. This section will also, allow visitors to contribute and give them free exposure. The religion section will feature religious articles by religious scholars and analyses provided by scholars on confusing religious dilemmas. The section will also contain prayer times, rules, etc. The science section will feature science related news, breakthroughs by Bangladeshi scientists and students, research works by researchers, global scientific achievements as well as biographies of famous scientists. Coordination of these sections requires a huge amount of effort and we will have a director for integrating the sections. It is the directors duty to maintain the news section of the site. It is similar to that of a newspaper editor. Details on monetizing the news section will be provided in a later section.
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We will also host hotel booking services which can easily be monetized.
E-shopping: shopping.boggle.com
This section although similar to the marketplace section but differs in one key way. The entire site will be designed to serve NRBs who want to send gifts to their beloved ones within the country. We will also feature e-shops where we will sell goods to be sent abroad in mass quantities following proper procedures. There is a huge market across the internet for mass purchase of cheap products like garments from Bangladesh. A lot of low level merchants do not have the time or resource required to come here and choose their products. They lack trust and are less likely to buy from any given site. So when we have our own shop, they will see high credibility in us. We will deliver the goods in partnership with local suppliers here. We will be promoting small and medium industries at minimum cost. We cannot serve the local here through our shop. Why? It is unlikely for a Bangladeshi to have an international credit card. Also, online payment medium like PayPal are also non-existent. The government also seems to be highly unwilling to allow these services for Bangladeshis as they are afraid of monies being sent abroad illegally. However, we can accept local credit cards, and might design an online payment system in partnership with telecom services for a fee. This business is critical and needs to pass through a lot of red-tape from government and partner businesses. So this section will be a future expansion.
Group 15 Principles of Marketing BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU
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Web designing
Programming Domain selling Hosting selling service
FINANCE
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All the above-mentioned features cost money to make available to the users. Not only does it require hosting services, but also a lot of employees to keep running. Our main expenses would be: a. Employees 1. 2 web designers (15k each) 2. 2 programmers (15k each) 3. 5 article writer for the news section (8k each) 4. 2 operators for the social network (8k each) 5. 1 worker each for all the sections (In total 7) (5k each) Salary of employees: Tk.151,000 per month a. In addition, we need domain services: 1. Domain: $8 per year 2. Dedicated hosting: $200 per month
The monthly expenses for domain services is about Tk.14,000 per month
a. Hardware and broadband services: 1.About 15 computers which will serve us about 2 years without upgrades (around Tk.40,000 each) 2.About 15 broadband connections (around Tk. 800 per month each) The total expense here adds up to around Tk. 37,000 per month. a. The promotion budget would be around Tk. 150,000 per month distributed over all the channels mentioned below. b. The rent of premises is expected to be around Tk. 30,000 per month. Adding up all the above sections we arrive at a final sum of around Tk. 382,000. We do not expect to get anything back from the project in the first two years. We arrive at a figure of Tk. 91,268,000 to start up and run the business for the first two years. This investment is significant in the Bangladesh context, but is more than a fair deal.
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PROMOTION
Many a fantastic site has failed in the past due to poor promotion of their services to the public. On the other hand, there are also great examples of sites offering similar features to less popular sites, have become everyday names for Internet users. Without a shadow of a doubt, we would like to go for the latter rather than the former. What is needed for such promotion is an integrated communication mix. Any message that is not targeted would be a message not worth the effort. But we are not here to give lessons about what is right and what is not. All our promotional activities would be focused on a single target market the teens and twenty-somethings. Therefore we want to use channels that these people are in contact with all the time. 1. Billboards We see billboards everywhere all the time. It seems like we are being bombarded by them 24/7. They are an eyesore of the modern metropolis. But we are missing the catch here. Billboards are an art-form that is almost always out of place. Since we target mainly students, our boards will be strategically placed, in the introductory phase, at all the major public and private universities. Students here cannot seem to get enough of the Internet. We want to give these youth fun and information in one place. The messages have to be conversational and not commercial or too wordy. A good mission statement hits the nail on its head and penetrates easily into the minds of the recipient. That is our goal here. 2. Gaming tournaments Our second mode of promotion would be through sponsoring gaming tournaments. The gaming cafes in Dhaka city are few and far between, but whenever anyone advertises a gaming tournament, players flock to
Group 15 Principles of Marketing BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU
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the venues. Our aim here is to create a buzz among the gamers about our great gaming reviews and gaming portal. We would sponsor the winner for other tournaments. We can use the gaming cafes to our advantage, since they are quite inexpensive. 3. Co-Branding We would make deals with all the large retailers of computer hardware in the markets to have our boggle stickers attached to monitors and CPU cases. This is a page taken out of Intels books. A nicely designed logo on a lasting material looks fantastic, as displayed on laptops. We would not have to bear great cost for this form of publicity. Our only major cost would be the cost of the stickers. To keep retailers satisfied, we would give them the option to choose between a free business directory or free advertisements on our site.
4. National Dailies To reach out to a wide range of audiences, we would advertise in two popular national dailies: 1. The Daily Prothom Alo 2. The Daily Star This form of advertising however is expensive and would be kept to a minimum. We would place small teasers as button ads on the top corners of the front page, highlighting one feature each day. On the launching day, we would have a whole page feature in each of the dailies. On other days, we would have small button advertisements on pages read by young users, such as the entertainment and sports pages on weekdays, the technology pages on the weekends, etc. 5. Facebook Everyone would agree that Facebook has penetrated everywhere. Everyone seems to have an account on Facebook. This disease, as some
Group 15 Principles of Marketing BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU
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call it, is fast infecting many more. We can easily jump on the bandwagon and advertise with them. Even if one in ten of the viewers click on the link, it would be money well-spent. 6. Google AdWords Anyone and everyone uses Google to search what they are looking for. When anyone on any corner of the globe wants to learn anything about Bangladesh and we have the right services, Google AdWords will place our links on the top of the search list if we advertise with them. This opportunity cannot be let out of hand.
7. Search-Engine Optimization This is one of a bunch of new tricks to get a greater number of hits from searches. We will ensure that certain Bangladesh related keywords are present in our pages. When people see our link at the top of the list, surely they would be interested to see what we have to give.
MONETIZATION
The network needs a large amount of resources to run. This money will not only have to be earned back, but has to provide enough dividends over time to make investing in it worthwhile. Moreover, since our services are free to the consumers, we have to ensure that our accounts are kept current through funds from other sources. The network will be monetized by a number of streams. 1) GOOGLE ADSENSE
AdSense is an advertisement application run by Google, the largest online advertiser. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and more recently,
Group 15 Principles of Marketing BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU
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video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Any webmaster can enroll for the program. AdSense is the best advertising network on the internet. You select where to put your ads on your site, and the ads shown are automatically targeted according to the page contents. The income from AdSense advertisements are quite high, and are paid on per click basis. The cost per click ranges from 5c to sometimes $1+. As AdSense ads are high paying, the earning prospect is quite high with a lot of traffic. For a typical website the click through rate is about 5%, meaning 5% of our visitors will click an ad So if we have only 10 thousand visitors on a certain day and 5% of them that is 500 of them click an ad, the earning will be 20c (on an average per click) X500=$100 just from AdSense. However, 10k visitors are lot, lot lower than the amount of visitors we are targeting. We are targeting at least 100,000 visitors per day. That equals $1,000 per day.
2)
TARGETED ADVERTISING
Since we will have different sections for different topics, the main advantage we will be having is targeted traffic. For example, the health pages of the news site, we will have traffic which is interested about health news. That is an excellent page for promoting health and nutritional products. For the fashion and lifestyle pages, we will have targeted traffic who would be interested about beauty products or fashionable clothes. The education portal will be a highly targeted advertising spot for coaching centers, private universities, and tuition seekers. Like these, we can attract a lot of advertisers who would like targeted traffic.
Group 15 Principles of Marketing BBA 16th Batch IBA, DU
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We will offer advertisers guaranteed impression for their ads. So when an advertiser buys 100,000 impressions, 100,000 impressions will be provided (monitoring to be done through web trackers or specially designed plug-ins). So advertising with us will not be uncertain. Web traffic is better to advertise to than advertising in newspapers or television. How? Since the audience is capable of clicking advertisements, which will take them to the advertisers site where they can be transmitted more details or offers. However, one problem might be that many products or advertisers would not have their own sites or landing pages. We will offer advertisers an option: we can offer them to create special pages for them within our domain featuring their news or promotions at a little added charge. 3) TOURISM PORTAL PARTNERSHIPS
We can arrange for online booking of hotels and motels through our site. We can act as affiliates to some hotels, thus be eligible to enjoy commissions whenever a visitor books through us. 4) MARKETPLACE LISTING
Although listing will be done free for all companies, we can have featured positions for businesses at an added charge. 5) SOCIAL NETWORK, JOB PORTAL, AND ALL OTHER SITES
When we receive enough traffic, we will have employers posting their employment ads directly on our site. They have to spend in recruitment ads anyway, and if we can better solutions at cheaper rates, they are sure to choose us. We have an added advantage above all other conventional media advertisements. Although advertising in newspapers and televisions look to aware people and are limited to conveying their message within short time spans or short spaces without
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feedback, but ours will lead to action traffic, who, if interested, will click on ads and see what the advertiser have to offer in details.