Business Case Study: Skytango

How I used Growth Hacking to launch an award-winning drone-tech startup
OVERVIEWRESULTS

Overview

Client: Skytango

Year: 2015-2018

Services provided: Consulting & coaching

Target Markets: Ireland, UK, U.S., European markets

In Short

In 2015 I co-founded Skytango, a Dublin-based tech startup and a SaaS marketplace for the drone industry.

I have been responsible for the whole marketing strategy of the startup since its very beginning.

Given the limited funding available we focused our efforts on growth hacking and digital marketing.

Leading a team of 3 to 5 people, I took charge of: market and competitor analysis, brand positioning, pricing, reporting for investors, web design and build, digital PR management, editorial planning, content production, inbound marketing, social media management, adv, industry partnerships, email marketing, onboarding, email automation, CRM, influencer marketing, SEO, CRO in addition to limited offline marketing activities such as attending trade events. 

Being a newly born startup I also wore many hats: supporting and testing the app development, searching investments and dealing with investors, building partnerships in the industry, financial planning etc.

I exited the company in 2018.

Goals

 

  • build Skytango’s website, with ecommerce capabilities and integration with app
  • set up the startup’s B2B and B2C growth hacking strategy
  • set up the inbound marketing strategy via production and distribution of tailored content produced internally
  • make Skytango known in the drone industry, in particular in Ireland, UK, U.S. and European markets
  • generate awareness on the main issue Skytango addressed: the lack of compliance and operational transparency in the drone industry
  • positionate the brand linking it to the target values: unique solution in the market, innovation
  • build and reinforce relationships with industry key players
  • attract potential investors and secure funding for growth
  • implement a B2B business development strategy
  • generate prospects, qualified leads and B2C customers via all the available channels

About Skytango

Skytango is a Dublin-based award-winning tech startup founded in 2015.

It offers a SaaS (Software as a Service) marketplace for the drone industry and a drone management and workflow solution aimed at simplifying the deployment and management of drone technology, while promoting compliance and recording operational transparency.

Services provided

 

Audit

Strategy

Analytics

SEO

Social Media

Advertising

Content Marketing

CRO

Marketing Automation

Email Marketing

E-Commerce

Web Design

Results

 

2015

Selected to participate to the NDRC 2015 LaunchPad, securing a EUR 20k seed funding. NDRC is among the highest ranked tech incubators in Ireland.

2015

Won the NDRC LiftOff competition among 12 contestants, securing additional EUR 30k funding.

Won the Ireland/UK Challenge Cup 2016 by the venture firm 1776, a global incubator and seed fund that finds promising start-ups focused on solving the world’s most fundamental challenges and helps engineer their success.

2016

2016

Selected as finalist in the 1776 Challenge Cup Global Challenge competition in Washington, DC. Among over 2,000 participants, only 65 startups around the world were selected as finalists.

Selected by Google to participate to the Google’s Adopt a Startup programme which aims at supporting the best tech startups in Ireland.

2016

Website

I built the front-end Skytango’s website using WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS, and Divi, the most popular WordPress premium theme.

The marketplace and the integration with the external app were outsourced to a dev company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Performance

I paid attention to making the website perfectly responsive on mobile and tablet.

Also, I made sure the website was fast-loading, meeting as many as possible of the Google’s performance recommendations.

Load time

E-Commerce

The ecommerce side of the website was built via WooCommerce, the most famous WordPress open-source plugin for e-commerce.

 

 

 

Content Marketing

My content marketing strategy mainly aimed at producing high-value, SEO-oriented original articles for Skytango’s blog which generated a substantial organic traffic.

A good part of the content strategy included outreaching and conducting interviews with key players and influencers in the drone industry to increase the brand visiblity, reinforce its positioning and build useful partnerships and relationships.

Monthly Visitors - Organic

Monthly impressions on organic searches

Inbound links

Advertising

Due to our limited funding, I could only allocate a very small budget to advertising.

We were able though to take advantage of Google’s financial and consulting support for our campaigns as Skytango was selected by Google to participate to the Google’s Adopt a Startup programme.

During the programme I ran a successful video campaign on YouTube, which resulted in very low CPM and CPA, and limited local PPC campaigns in Ireland and UK.

Social

I focused on Twitter and Linkedin for our B2B objectives and Facebook and Instagram for our B2C objectives.

We adopted a specific tone of voice for each platform and experimented with different formats.

The fact that drones were a trending topic helped us in gaining virality and achieving a great followers’ base in a very short amount of time.

It also allowed us to take advantage of the spreading of UGC with our branded hashtags.

Followers gained

Monthly impressions on social

E-Mail Marketing

I built Skytango’s mailing list mainly via subscriptions on the blog, but also low-budget but effective contests ran on social media.

The mailing list was segmented based on types of subscribers.

The e-mail marketing calendar included tailored content and formats for each specific segment.

Among the most performing content, I produced a high-value educational weekly newsletter which quickly became a reference source in the industry.

Subscribers

 

 

 

E-Mail Automation

We relied on MailChimp and Intercom to create e-mail automated flows in order to reach the right people with the right message at the right moment.

Among the automated e-mail flows I setup:

  • Welcome
  • Order follow-up
  • Customer feedback
  • Re-engagement
  • Onboarding

PR

Social media and participation to events were instrumental in achieving significant milestones in terms of relationships built both with potential partners and clients on the B2B side.

Overall, we participated to 40+ trade and startup events, in Europe, U.S., Australia and Asia.

Most of the times I established a direct media partnership with the event organizers, which reduced or completely covered our costs.

We also managed to get a good press and media coverage thanks to our wins in startups events.

Mentions on top media

Media partnerships signed

Industry relations activated