How Ipsum Academy Can Help You!

Published in

Technology for Entrepreneurs

9 min readApr 6, 2020

Tess Kisilevich, Jamie Monge, Brianna Tipping

University of Calgary

Many people who first start a business have a large learning process to go through. Including everything from accounting, market research, pricing strategy, and customer relations. Due to the large amount of knowledge growth in relation to available time, certain concepts are often skipped. Marketing strategies are one of those topics that people commonly skip over considering the difficulty and time behind developing a marketing strategy. Additionally, many start-ups simply do not have the budget to hire marketing and advertising companies. All of the problems above can also be found in small businesses who have been around for 20–30 years. The rate of advancing technology has many small business owners struggling to keep up with customer's current buying preferences. This means that many small businesses are simply unable to reach their target customer base and lose out on the powerful demographic information that can be retained with online marketing.

Though this is commonly the case, there are consequences to not having a marketing strategy in place. Apart from not attracting customers, Chron says that companies may also have an uncoordinated promotion strategy, an ineffective tracking system and as a consequence they may develop budgeting problems (McQuerrey, n.d.). Uncoordinated promotion strategies will cause a company to inconsistently target demographics, which will result in less traction on ads. In addition to lacking a promotion strategy, a company may also lack an effective tracking system. This means that the company is losing out on valuable knowledge like which demographic is engaged by an ad, or which advertising platform attracts the most customers. These two problems can result in a budget problem, Chron stated: “If you randomly place ads, run commercials and print promotional materials with no real goal in mind, you can overpay and see poor results (McQuerrey, n.d.).” By establishing a marketing strategy, a company creates marketing goals, conducts industry research, and determines the message that is conveyed. Without these, a company can lose credibility (Hudson Integrated, 2014).

Ipsum is a solution for all of the above problems. It is an application that would consolidate market resources and recommend marketing services through blogs and video tutorials that would educate consumers by allowing them to get advice from people in similar industries. Ipsum would also offer a premium version of their application that would connect business owners with a network of marketing freelancers that would be available to provide hands-on help with marketing their business. The founders of Ipsum created this business idea after watching many small businesses in Calgary, Alberta struggle as online marketplaces and advertisements have overpowered the traditional brick and mortar store. Ipsum strives to be a site that creates connections between struggling business owners and marketing professionals — allowing them to create mutually beneficial relationships.

The mobile application and website were created to integrate all available marketing services into one tool. This tool was designed to also offer a detailed education on how to use the tools — in the most efficient manner possible. Ultimately this application will support businesses who are struggling to attract customers by ensuring that local small businesses are able to overcome this hurdle through education and discussion facilitated by the blog on Ipsum.

How Ipsum Works

Ipsum created its prototype through a platform by the name of ‘MarvelApp’, and the website on a server is named Wix. This platform allowed us to develop a functional prototype. Firstly, Ipsum decided whether it wanted to build an app for an iPhone, iPad or android prototype. For this version of the app, Ipsum decided to gear it towards iPhone users, but future versions would allow use through any device. The application aims to look formal and classy, giving it a more professional style. The theme was all focused on the logo and maintaining a grey palette.

The product starts with accessing our application and sending the user directly to the login page. Our login page allows the user to create a new account or continue as a guest. This option ensures that Ipsum’s customers do not feel any commitment. Though, the company expects that many users will create an account since that allows the app to provide relevant data to them. By signing up, the application asks customers to give Ipsum their top interests and industry choices, so according to their choices, Ipsum’s algorithm will gather more information and articles related to their preferences. Once the user has indicated their interests, their profile will display content related to their personal preferences, and the user can filter by industry, city, social media platforms used, and more.

Ipsum’s main page has a toolbar right at the bottom that provides the option for Ipsum’s customers to access main content, blog, prices, the ‘about us’ page and the explore page. The application’s main pages are market research, product main, social media, education and tutorials. Each section will provide our customers with the information needed to succeed and to improve these specific aspects of their businesses. Within each section, there are particular subsections, making the application as simple as possible.

Ipsum’s unique feature is a community blog. This feature will only be available to those that make an account since personal preferences will be needed. On this blog, Ipsum’s users can read posts from other users in a similar area or a related industry. Additionally, the users can create articles, allowing them to share personal experiences. Ipsum created this because it realizes that it does not hold all the valuable information that its users may need. Information from locals, to locals, is not only a way to create a community, but also contribute to the education component of the app.

Ipsum’s most important feature is its educational videos, where it shows it’s clients in more depth how to use the various services and receive additional support. These videos are not specific to an industry, and therefore the preferences will not be applied to this section. The videos will cover information like how to conduct local market research, the benefit of social media advertisements, how-to videos, and more. Ipsum’s education videos are created with Loom. Loom is a screen-recording software that allows Ipsum’s marketing professionals to create tutorials, to post on its website, and walk consumers through different marketing tools. By posting videos for customers to view, they can follow step-by-step information that tells them how to create accounts, how to set up advertisements and even rewind if they do not understand something.

Ipsum offers a premium feature that operates like a listing site — where marketing professionals can list their services and decide their pricing. Ipsum’s users can connect with the freelancing professionals to receive professional marketing help. Once customers decide on a marketing professional they would like to work with — Ipsum will take a 10% commission fee off the professionals posted price for facilitating their connection.

The base of Ipsum’s application is on marketing assistance. Therefore, we are vetting for freelance marketers to have a wider variety of resources and creating a more extensive network for our customers. Ipsum will grant a 100% satisfaction guarantee to its customers when it comes to using our applications. With this, we ensure the customers of Ipsum’s customer loyalty and assure them with outstanding service.

As mentioned before, the application aims to be as accessible and adaptable to Ipsum’s customers as possible. It allows the user to navigate quickly and search for any industry to which the user shows interest — teaching business owners about how best to utilize new technology by retaining their customers and reaching more potential customers than ever before.

See our prototype in action!

Competition

Currently, there is a gap in the market for educational marketing tools. As technology advances and consumers stop shopping at brick and mortar locations a clear gap will appear in the market where business owners have to learn how to transition their business plan to account for less foot traffic. Ipsum would help business owners fill this gap by building up their online platforms.

Ipsum’s competition consists of marketing companies, blogs, other apps and the option to not use marketing at all. Ipsum provides a better product than all of the above competitors because of its ability to integrate all education tools into one platform and host a community through its blog so that customers have support from professionals when needed. The educational tools, like walk-through video tutorials, will be one of a kind in this industry, and because of the ease of learning on Ipsums platform — the barriers to entry will be lowered for small business owners that are looking to advertise their company.

Marketing firms or consultants are Ipsum’s direct competitors because they have the same target market and often require the least amount of work for customers. The reason that this alternative is often not an option for small business owners is because of the steep costs and lack of connections in the marketing community. Professional marketing firms, consultants and services can range in price from $30,000 to $250,000 per year — a price tag that is often too big for many small businesses. The other direct competitors to Ipsum are listing sites that marketing freelancers use. These sites offer a similar service to Ipsum but the reason many customers hesitate to use them is because the quality of marketing work is not guaranteed. This can be problematic and create a higher barrier to purchase — since customers don’t want to spend their limited money on a product that they do not like.

Blogs are the second level of direct competition that Ipsum would be facing because their goal of educating people about marketing and their target market is identical to Ipsum’s. The reason that this alternative is less attractive to potential customers is that the information is often spread out over multiple sites, requires lots of time to find it and often does not offer industry-specific advice. The marketing blogs that currently exist often offer vague advice that doesn’t provide any tangible value to consumers looking to improve their marketing. The step by step videos offered by Ipsum, help customers learn how to use different marketing applications with the freedom to pause, rewind and learn at their own pace. Once customers are comfortable using the applications, they can begin exploring the blogs for more tailored advice by filtering the results by industry, location and software preference.

Another competitor that is a threat to Ipsum is other apps. They are a direct competitor because they provide a similar service. Ipsum has compared itself to MailChimp and Digital Marketing (SEO and influencer guide). MailChimp’s price ranges from a free option to $300, so it does compete with Ipsum’s pricing strategy (MailChimp, 2020). What sets Ipsum apart, is the community blog, where local business owners can share expertise and experiences. This allows for a local and more personalized experience. Digital Marketing is free and focuses primarily on social platforms. With further analysis of Digital Marketing’s platform, it is determined that the content is “one-size-fits-all”. There is no personalized content, it is solely a learning platform. Out of the two applications, MailChimp provides a bigger threat to Ipsum.

The replacement competitor in the marketing industry is simply not marketing the business. For many small business owners, the choice to not market their business could be a fatal decision. Fortunately, most small business owners recognize this. From primary research, it was determined that 88.9% of people actively market their company (See Appendix A). Additionally, 100% of people believe that having a market strategy is an important part of their business (See Appendix A).