We sat down with Scott Bowler a 9 year marketing veteran with a career spanning the UK, Africa and Asia to talk about his just recently launched startup that helps advertisers get the most bang for their buck.
What is your startup?
CallTracking allows you to prove which advertising & marketing campaigns make your company’s phone ring – it’s a fantastic way to bring analytics and attribution to offline marketing. I believe it’s going to revolutionise the offline marketing landscape in Hong Kong as it finally allows people to say “yes, I know for sure that this ad in the newspaper was worth it”.
Our online platform captures a wide range of data about customers calling you (even if you don’t answer the phone) and allows you to quickly identify which offline and online channels are generating the most calls, recapture lost leads, improve customer service and increase return on advertising spend (by reducing wastage).
How does it work? We’ve got thousands of phone numbers for you to use – you put a unique phone number on each advert (or campaign) and when someone dials that number the call gets handled by system and passed through to your hotline. Due to the fact that we’re handling the call, we can gather a lot of statistics and make them available to you. From the callers point of view, they will have no idea any of this is happening – the experience is seamless.
How did you come up with this idea?
They say necessity is the mother of invention and this was the case for CallTracking. Having worked for major brands in the UK I was used to being able to capture call data and analytics for my clients, and when I came to Hong Kong I fully expected to carry on this practice. I was very surprised that nobody had done it here, and I think you already know what I did next!
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
I believe there is a huge market in Hong Kong and Asia for CallTracking – everywhere you look there are giant adverts with phone numbers on them. Next time you walk down the street, make a mental note to look out for phone numbers – I think you’ll be surprised.
The beauty of this platform is that it’s priced at a level which accessible to everyone. If your company receives a decent number of phone calls and you have marketing or advertising campaigns running, then you benefit from the insights that are exposed.
Having said that, we are a bootstrap start-up, so we have to be very targeted in our own sales and marketing approach. We are looking to form key partnerships with publications, media buyers and technology companies to ensure rapid scaling – so if you’re interested in what we’re doing, please get in touch!
What are your future plans for your startup?
My mission is to help businesses discover which of their marketing and advertising campaigns provide the highest return on investment. My vision is simple: to bring this solution to Asia, Africa and South America. We have already expanded into Singapore and are in the process of setting up in other Asian markets (and one African market).
A key point is that I want to grow the start-up inline with our customers needs – if there is demand for a feature, we will build it. It will be interesting to see how the platform transforms based on this method of development.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
Benefit: people tend to be very forward thinking and open to networking – there is a strong start-up community and we’re all happy to share ideas and work together to help each other grow
Challenge: government support for start-ups is emerging but it’s still in its infancy – when compared to the UK there are far fewer grants, support networks and advice bureaus.
Exclusive StartupsHK Offer
We love the Hong Kong start-up scene and StartupsHK. As an early Christmas gift to fellow entrepreneurs, we are offering a free 6 month subscription to the CallTracking platform, which includes 5 tracking numbers and unlimited minutes to any start-up who applies* – just e-mail me on [email protected]
* We genuinely want to help start-ups, so there will be a screening process to ensure that the subscription will benefit your company – basically, we don’t want to give 6 months free if you’re not going to use it. This offer runs until Dec 31st 2013 – if you’re reading this after that date, send an email anyway, we might be able to help you out!
CallTracking.hk on Startbase.Hk: Calltracking.hk
Scott on Startbase.Hk: Scott Bowler
