When I was in Sydney, I met two fellow entrepreneurs – Huan Nguyen and Martin Pham who were founders of YourScene. As an entrepreneur myself, I wanted to find out what inspired them to create this unique product.
How did you come up with the idea for YourScene?
YourScene was originally devised as all good businesses start, with drinks and a group of friends.
The original idea was to start up a website where models, photographers and make up artists could connect. They would post jobs and bid for jobs using the same business model as Freelancer.
To promote this, we thought we’d run a photo booth at different events to get our name out there as people would be going home with our print outs with our logo and details on them.
We got so good at it that people started approaching us to service their weddings, birthdays and corporate Christmas parties. When we started doing this, there were only a handful of companies doing photo booths and within a year, there were over 50.
Soon, the market was flooded with too many photo booths offering lower prices but for substandard work. We didn’t want to get sucked into the war of reducing prices because in the end, no one wins.
So instead of competing with that, we thought we’d create something new to bring to Sydney and Australia as a whole. This is how we created our Tag’N’Print service.
2) How have you marketed your product?
The problem with being one of the first people to offer a brand new service, is that no one knows what it is.
I think especially within Australia, we are a bit behind when it comes down to anything to do within the Tech world.
Take photo booths for example, the consumer rental side of this came out years ago in America and it only hit it big here in Australia in the last two years or so. We still even have some customers tell us about how it’s such a good idea and they’ve never seen or used one before.
So, knowing all that, we knew we had to find a way to educate people on what it does, how easily it can be done and of course the benefits of having the service.
We found that the easiest way to understand how it worked was to actually see how it worked. We cold called big events, marketing and PR companies where we would arrange demon meetings. We would turn up to their office, set it up and show them how it worked.
There had to be an easier way! Lugging this box around to meetings in the CBD with the expensive parking fees was not fun, but it had to be done.
We then came up with the idea to make a video of how it worked, make it short and simple, easy to understand.
You can find the video here on YouTube.
We put the video up on our Facebook, used Facebook Ads to promote it and also ran a campaign on Google Ads.
We also approached some of our connections in the Sydney clubbing industry and offered the service to them for free as a test run. We thought that the younger demographic would be our target market and it has worked. We now have a permanent spot in two night clubs and potentially hundreds of people using and seeing our box each and every week.
These were the main ways we got ourselves noticed, but of course, we have bigger and better ideas on the horizon.
3) What platform has worked best (eg Facebook, Twitter, Google+)
I think that the best platform for us would have to be Facebook. To be honest, we always knew that social media marketing was the best way to get your product/service out there but we never really learned how to really utilise anything else other than Facebook. This was mainly used to get us noticed by people, we didn’t really pull many sales from Facebook so we stopped our ad campaigns from Facebook as it was costing us too much with little return.
Google ads was also an essential part in helping us grow to where we are now. I mean, for a start up company with no prior marketing knowledge, this is probably the best way to get people noticing you. It’s not exactly cheap, but it’s definitely cheaper than paying thousands of dollars for radio, TV or magazine ads. It’s a good way to run lean and gauge your audience.
Right now, we are focusing on building our Instagram and Facebook audience. Instagram was such an obvious ‘must’ for us, and we knew it, but we didn’t fully understand what we needed to do in order to get the followers we needed. We had more important things to do we thought, which was ignorant on our part.
We now have a dedicated team focusing on building our social media standing. We learned our lesson!
4) What is the USP of YourScene?
YourScene’s USP is that we offer peace of mind. We have a 100% money back guarantee and so far, I believe we’re the only company in our field that offers such a thing.
What motivates people to buy is not just the cost, it’s the peace of mind they get when they purchase. I think of business and sales to be just like a relationship. You want to know that this person you’re entering a relationship with will be good to you, they won’t screw you around and you’re not going to regret making that decision to be with them later on.
When people buy products or services, they want to know that they’re not getting ripped off or that they’re not going to regret it later on. It’s that trust barrier you have to get through in order to create a proper client relationship.
We offer peace of mind, not only with our 100% money back guarantee, but with our on going support, before, during and after each job. We build a relationship with our customers so that next time they need something, they know they can turn to us and we’ll help them in every way we can.
The undertone of our new marketing campaigns are built on this philosophy. How can I build a trusting relationship with this person/company,
I’m pretty sure you’ll be seeing a YourScene dating advice book in the near future! LOL!
5) Where can we find YourScene and from how much can we use it?
You can find us at www.yourscenebooth.com.au, www.facebook.com/yoursceneonline or @yoursceneonline on Twitter and Instagram.
We’re always running promo deals, but prices can be found on the website.
6) What are the plans for YourScene in 2014?
We are currently Sydney based, but have already started to build our network in Brisbane and Melbourne. So we’re planning to be fully established in both cities by the end of the year.
Something very exciting as well is that we’ve decided to move away from being a Photo Booth company and instead will be an Events Entertainment Services company.
We’ll be focusing on developing and bringing to market new services utilising new technologies. We love the look on people’s faces when they see something new and they’re just in awe of what they’ve just experienced.
7) Will you be expanding outside of Australia? We want you in Europe !
It’s funny that you ask this as we have had some offers to manufacture for overseas markets (mainly in Asia). This sort of steers a bit off our current goals, so we had to give that a miss.
But yes, we’d love to go global! Once we’ve developed something brand new that no one has ever done before, we’ll definitely be trying to push it world wide.