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6. Strategy and Implementation Summary
The strategy and implementation summary for ChatInn are listed below:
1. Funding: Acquire the necessary funding for the star-up business.
2. Website and application for mobile devices development: ChatInn is a web base chatting service, so the development of the website is key factor for this business. The UI design and the quality of the website needs to make sure that all the users could get great and smooth user experience when they use this service at very first time. As for the application for the mobile device, it needs to align the design of the website and make sure the quality of the operation and connectivity is stable between the sever side and client side.
3. Setting up the operation and QA team: The QA team to ensure the quality and the improvement of the service. The Operation team is responsible for task coordination and deal with the feedback from customers and users.
4. Marketing: Establish the brand image and plan the marketing campaigns on the proper media and platform to attract the target users.
5. Sales: Generating the revenues from online advertising.
6. Business development: Find the potential partners that could align with ChatInn’s service strategy and establish the relationship.
7. Exit Strategy: When the user base is huge, there might be possible acquisition deal from bigger service provider.
6.1. SWOT Analysis
6.1.1. Strengths1. ChatInn's instant messaging service has unique design compare to the other competitors, it combines the ordinary IM feature and the web meeting capability together.
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3. The user could easily start a online conversation by sending the meeting link to the contact and don’t need to worry about which platform or device he or she is using.
4. ChatInn's web chatting service could be quite useful and handy for business propose and be implemented with other service easily. For example, conducting a quick meeting with the customer, posting the chatting link on any business web site as the contact information, implementing a instant 24/7 online service and etc.
5. The keyword related adverting (similar to Google's adword) for web instant messaging service is a brand new idea. The advertising on the active chatting page will depends on the content of the conversation and it will try to display the ads which might be interested to the participants of the meeting.
6.1.2. Weaknesses
1. Product development for web and the application incurs High costs before the service start collecting revenue. There will be no revenue being generated till the service is widely spread globally and the expectation time is about 6 months.
2. As a startup web instant messaging service, the brand exposure and popularity are low which will surely impact the revenue from online adverting. Therefore, it is important to get the chance of media exposure via the marketing resource and attract more users to try ChatInn’s server in the beginning stage.
3. The revenues are unpredictable and depend on almost one single stream only in the early stage. To find more channels and business partners will be very important for ChatInn to generate the revenues.
6.1.3. Opportunities
1. The potential market for instant messaging is huge and keeps growing. According to the research from Infoma Telecoms & Media, global mobile instant messaging traffic will increase from 1.6 trillion messages in 2011 to 7.7 trillion messages in 2016, doubling its share of global messaging traffic from 17.1% in 2011 to 34.6% in 2016.
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2. ChatInn’s IM service is still new in the current market. The combination of the web instant messaging link and the IM application on the mobile device will provide the simple and convenient user experience to the customers.
3. ChatInn’s instant chatting link could easily embedded into any personal, business, or social network sites, which would be the other major channel for generating the revenue and get brand exposure.
4. Since ChatInn’s web instant chatting link could be embedded to almost any website which means it could penetrate the other online service as well. Once the population of ChatInn is big enough, this feature might attract some major web service companies interest of acquisition.
6.1.4. Threats
1. The existing competitors of IM service on the market might tend to provide similar service soon which surely will impact the business.
2. The expense of the cost for server and bandwidth might increase rapidly when the service is getting popular, so it is crucial to get enough funding and stable financial preparation.
3. The success of ChatInn depends on the user experience and quality of the service. It’s easy for the users switch to other services once they got bad user experiences. To maintain the great quality of service and keep improving the service according to the feedback from customers will be the key activities of ChatInn’s business.
6.2. Competitive Edge
ChatInn seeks to establish a competitive edge in its target market segment by providing an alternative way for communication with friends, families and customers. The simple and user friendly UI design of ChatInn’s web portal make it convenient for exiting users to continuous use this service and it surely will be easy for new users to start using it as well. The web instant chatting link gives the users a simple and quick way to contact or being contacted and
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differentiate its service and product to other competitors and occupy the market share at the early stage of product launch. Keep improving the technology and maintain the sustainable quality of service for users and customers will help to ensure the revenue generating for ChatInn.
6.3. Marketing Strategy
For a startup web IM service provider like ChatInn, it is important to the marketing strategy to develop an attractive image to the target users and customers. The goal is to attract as many users as possible in a short period of time with the feature of web instant chatting link which could be handy for online auction, small online business activities, and online dating service and so on. This can be done in a number of ways:
1. In-App Advertising: Games is always the most popular downloads in both iphone and android platform and ChatInn will focus its marketing resources on that category. The CPM (Cost Per thousand views) is about NTD 200 on one app, so if the target is to show the ads 1M times, it will cost about 200,000 NTD. In-App advertising is a great way for promoting the new app, since the users could download the app and try it right after clicking the ads on their mobile devices.
2. Google AdWords: Purchase Google AdWords with the keyword set as “ChatInn”, “IM”,
“Online Service” and “Chatting”. Monthly spending for Google AdWords is NTD 3,500 per month and plan to running it for the first 6 months.
3. Online Advertising: Focus on the popular websites for 3C and mobile devices such like Mobil01 and Sogi with text advertising and it will cost NTD 40,000 for 5 days on each site.
4. Professional blogger marketing: Advertising on the technology news, 3C, applications or related web sites, blog and forum with the content provided by professional writer or blogger. Word of mouth advertising is quite efficient and powerful for app market, people are easily starting to try a new app if it’s been recommended by a friend or some web site.
ChatInn needs to increase the number of active users as many as possible at the product
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launch stage since it increase the capability and profitability for the service to find a business or advertising customers for ChatInn.
5. Global advertising: When the amount of active users reaches certain level (for example, 200K) in Taiwan, the marketing strategy will start focusing on the market overseas. The marketing resources will spend on the popular local media in different region and needs to be adjusted according to the local culture as well.
6.4. Sales Strategy
The sales strategy for ChatInn will be adjusted to focus on different target market at different stage after product launch:
1. At the beginning stage: In the early stage after product launch, ChatInn? sales resource will focus on business purpose market, such like 24 hrs online services for small-middle size of business.
2. The amount of users is big enough: Once the amount of the active users is above 200k, ChatInn will be able to attract the customers for the advertising. The advertising for app will be regular banners style on the top of the application and as for the advertising at ChatInn? web portal, it will be key words advertising. Advertising is one of major channels for ChatInn to generate revenue and actually, it will be the main resource to keep the business running and expending.
6.4.1. Sales Forecast
ChatInn's sales are highly depending on the size of user base and it's expected to have very low sales income in the early stage of product launch. Due to the characteristic of IM application, the user base will grow rapidly when it reaches the proper level (e.g., 100K).
Once this service gets more and more popular, it will be attractive to the customers to buy the advertising and the price will be higher.
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Table 3: Sales Forecast Sales Forecast
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Sales
Advertising Contracts $1,670,000 $7,500,000 $14,600,000
Business Services $169,000 $920,000 $1,840,000
$0 $0 $0
Total Sales $1,839,000 $8,420,000 $16,440,000
Direct Cost of Sales Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
$0 $0 $0
Subtotal Direct Cost of Sales $0 $0 $0
Chart 4: Sales Monthly
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Chart 5: Sales by Year
6.5. Milestones
The following table represents the important milestones with the detail information which includes the dates, budget, person in charge, and the department for ChatInn. ChatInn is a web instant messaging service provider, so the most important and key activity is the development for the tool. ChatInn provides both web portal and app for the mobile platform and the
synergy between server and client side on the mobile device makes ChatInn different with other competitors. In the early stage of the web service development, it is important to well plan and build up a stable, firm and quality structure for the software. To ensure that, not only focusing on the product research and development, but also the will be a lot of resource spending on the QA work to make sure the user experience is well satisfied. ChatInn’s service provides 3 ways for instant messaging, web portal, app on the mobile device and between web and app. Web portal is the core function of those 3 methods, so it needs to be developed first, then the application for mobile device could get started after.
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Milestone Start Date End Date Budget Manager Department Web Portal Startup 7/1/2012 8/1/2012 $30,000 Ellie Operation Web Portal