Scribd
Upload
663 views12 pages

Case Study - Guru - Com MARKETING

Guru.com is an online marketplace that matches independent professionals with companies seeking contract work. It launched in 1999 and saw rapid early growth. By December 1999, it had 35,000 registered professionals and 2,500 hiring companies. However, the ratio of hirers to professionals was declining. To address this, Guru.com needed to develop a strong marketing strategy to attract more hirers, keep current professionals engaged, and compete against other talent platforms. The document evaluates different media options and proposes a multi-channel campaign combining television, print, and internet advertising over 365 days with a total budget of $12 million. The goal is to raise awareness of the independent professional lifestyle and position Guru.com as understanding their

Uploaded by

Ali Ovais
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
663 views12 pages

Case Study - Guru - Com MARKETING

Guru.com is an online marketplace that matches independent professionals with companies seeking contract work. It launched in 1999 and saw rapid early growth. By December 1999, it had 35,000 registered professionals and 2,500 hiring companies. However, the ratio of hirers to professionals was declining. To address this, Guru.com needed to develop a strong marketing strategy to attract more hirers, keep current professionals engaged, and compete against other talent platforms. The document evaluates different media options and proposes a multi-channel campaign combining television, print, and internet advertising over 365 days with a total budget of $12 million. The goal is to raise awareness of the independent professional lifestyle and position Guru.com as understanding their

Uploaded by

Ali Ovais
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 12

CASE STUDY GURU.

COM

Marketing Management

Who are the Gurus?


Launched Dec 1999 -Guru.com, an online marketplace for freelance talent. Business Model - matching services between employers seeking professional expertise and companies posting projects. *Independent Professionals (IPs) could search

for projects or for other IPs (Called Gurus) to help them handle complicated jobs.
Other Offerings!! Back-office support, online store offered products and services, Tax Guidance, Career guidance & Discounts on various insurances (Health). Consultations on all aspects of running a solo business. Age group of Individual Professionals 25 55 registered with Guru.com. Well educated and Independent. Distribution partners of Guru.coms include Fast Company, Industry Standard, Web Hire, Dev X, Macromedia. The Competition: Freeagent.com, Monster.coms, Talent Market iNiku (a division of Niku), eLance and eWork.

The Journey!
Motto -Of, by and for Gurus. A preview site was launched, focussed only on IPs. 3000 Number of Registrations To begin with, also offered free-bees for signing to the site. November 1999, the team closed second financing round raising $16 million from capital firms, Greylock and August Capital. December 1999 40 Employees, 35000 registered Gurus and 2500 registered hiring companies. 3000 people were hired in a matter of a week! After successful start - Gurus started registering at a rate of 24,000 per month and generating 1.1 million find work pageviews yielding 44 pageviews per guru per month. Visitors to the site had turned an average of 11 pageviews per session. The growth in page views, new hirers, and new projects was close to 17% per week. Based on the study by Guru.com, it was observed that about 73% of hirers had rated their experience with the site as excellent or good. This proved that Guru.com provided quality
service to customers, as majority of the customers were satisfied, and in turn became referrals by spreading positive word-of-mouth.

The Goal: To achieve 400,000 gurus registered by end of 2000 from 105,000 by Feb 2000.

The Competition, The Market!


The business of outsourcing was growing with companies expected to spend up to 81 billion in 2003 from a figure of 51 billion five years back. Revenues of talent facilitators such as Guru.com were expected to rise from 1 billion now to 2 billion by 2005 By 2000 Free agent.com expected to have 150000 registered users, the market had 10000 employers vying for the project seekers which was almost to the tune of 143000 in total. Number of outsourced projects expected to increase from 20mn to 50mn Ranks of contractors were set to increase from 21% of US workforce to 41% in 2010 Number of Gurus signing per week 6000, and it was very important to attract good projects to keep them engaged.

Post launch of the preview site, Guru.com the bulk of focus was on offline marketing such as events and public relations. Featured in MSNBC.com, in Wired and the Industry Standard positioning as experts on the new independent lifestyle. Generated 250million media impressions, through articles in Newsweek and USA Today, and a long featured story in Inc. magazine tracing Guru.coms venture financing experience. Contacted research community and established ties with analysts at Forrester and Jupiter to define the IP movement and speak for the category. Held series of gatherings and personal meeting sessions with the Gurus (around 5000 gurus overall)to understand who the customers were and what they wanted. It also helped Guru.com to verify their research findings. The idea was primarily to build communities and brand awareness. As part of their offline event strategy, the company had launched the First Guru Awards, which give it exposure and proved to be a low-cost way to get customers.

The Way We Do It! The Offline Campaign

The Number Game! Costs Associated with the Offline Campaign


Award Event $300,000 E-mail, on-line ads and print direct email : $500,000 per month Average cost of acquiring a Guru : $15 Average cost of acquiring a hirer (company) : $74

And What do the Numbers Say? Observation


Increase in the number of members (gurus and hirers) from 77,000 members to 105,000 members though only 10% of the registered members were hirers. Declining average acquisition cost from $51 from January though it was fluctuating over a period from Jan to June with average remaining at 50%. The average of (%guru/%hirer) from existing members to new members was approximately same and eventually decreased in Fiscal year 2000 and Fiscal year 2001 (96/4) Challenge in keeping the Gurus stay active for a longer time with lower number of potential projects will eventually lead to contraction in the number of Gurus. Lower number of projects would lead to lack of specialty skills or location mapping again summing to reduced Gurus.

Identifying the Problem


Guru.com through their survey realise the proportion of hirers to gurus is diminishing. This may result in lesser number of projects and eventually affect Guru.coms business. Therefore it requires a strong marketing strategy to a) keep the business afloat b) to win over the competition Guru.com needs to deliver the right message to its target sector. They seem to have a confusion over the right channel to deliver the message. The need to decide over the right medium as soon as possible, is also a concern for Guru.com To Make sure thus adapted marketing strategy is within the outlined budget of $12Million.

Pros

The Medium
Television

Cons

Appealing & Visually Exciting

Expensive No guarantee of right exposure Will target specific time slots Dependent upon achieving the effective reach and frequency

Captive Repeated exposure Maximum Information Dispersion More Economical

Print

Not as appealing as TV

Most rational of all the media for acquisition More than 60% of the gurus fall in the bracket age for Gurus existing in Guru.com Around 51% of the population use the Internet to learn about their profession, research and sending emails.

Internet

Not the most visible and effective medium for branding

The Message . The Mission!


The objective of the campaign is to create awareness of the guru lifestyle and of the convenience and ease it provides. Propagate the message that Guru.com understand the needs of the gurus and of the people who hire them. Sell the notion of empowerment for the independent professionals. Depict a concise, crisp, to the point and notional message which conveys the bundle of offerings from Guru.com. Message that is simple yet powerful and evocative. Sensitive to the traditional corporate America along with being edgy and irreverent to provide services to one and all without being indifferent to any corporation. Achieve the goal of 400,000 registered gurus by end of 2000. Message has to be honest, aspiration based and inspirational Concentrate more on Hirers to maintain the level of guru-hirer proportion.

The Channel
We think it is important for Guru.com to communicate their message via multiple media viz. Television, Print & Internet. In appropriate proportions with focus on Launching the brand with the underlying message of awareness instead of product. Importantly, if they could engage gurus to reflect their experience over these selected media, they would connect with prospective gurus as real, authentic & engaging. Hence, We propose the following media plan in order to reach its desired audience, with a greater focus towards Hirers in order to attain the right balance.
Early Morning Television Late News Magazines Print Media Newspapers Emails Internet Online Ads Communities Events Award Functions One/Quarter 365 Days 30 Days

Budget =$3M

Budget = $ 1.5M

Budget = $ 6M

Budget = $ 1.2M

THANK YOU

You might also like