Voxofon, LLC

Case Study: New Company Launch

Situation:

In the summer of 2008, DoubleDimond Public Relations was contacted by Voxofon, LLC – a husband and wife firm that provides Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services for international calling. The couple had recently moved from Norway, where they owned (and still own) a profitable calling-card business. Voxofon operates solely online, and they had set up a temporary website that wasn't attracting any traffic. The name Voxofon received no hits whatsoever when entered into a Google search.

Goals:

1. The initial goal of a public relations program for Voxofon was to gain the attention needed via media coverage to launch the company in the United States.

2. The ultimate goal was to have international recognition for Voxofon as a major player in the VoIP telephony marketplace.

Challenges:

  • Lack of branding – graphics, messaging.

  • Established, well-financed competitors.

  • Lack of financing to add advertising to the mix.

  • Owners trying to navigate a new culture – one with less interest in international calling than overseas markets.

  • Strategy:

    DoubleDimond decided on a two-pronged strategy. First, it was important to create a Voxofon brand before going public with its service offerings; and second, we would have to get very creative to overcome the lack of advertising support and the established name recognition of competitors.

    Tactics:

  • Establish an Overall Brand - After doing research on Voxofon and its competitors, DoubleDimond determined that the company offered the most ways to call – website, land lines, cell phones, smart phones, virtual phone numbers – of any of its competitors, and made these all available on one account. So the message was that Voxofon offered the "Widest Range of Low-Cost Options" for international calling.

  • Graphics Branding - DoubleDimond revamped the Voxofon logo and color scheme to make it more vibrant and memorable and distinguish it from its competitors. They created a new home page for the website that emphasized the new brand – in look and content.

  • Media Training – To prepare the owners to make the most of media interviews – or even presentations to potential clients – DoubleDimond conducted media training.

  • Publicity – DoubleDimond publicized all of Voxofon's new services and applications – not only via a wire service and individual media pitches, but also via targeted pitches to influential tech bloggers and other non-traditional media writing for various customer segments. Using feature coverage in such technology media as VoIP News, DoubleDimond obtained feature coverage in the Houston Chronicle and Houston Business Journal.

  • Social Media – DoubleDimond set up a blog – Voxoblog – for Voxofon, as well as a Facebook account. They also obtained a Wikipedia entry. In addition, DoubleDimond monitored all telephony blogs regarding any VoIP entries, promoting Voxofon to the sites that mentioned its competitors and alerting Voxofon to any questions regarding its services that were found on any of the sites.

  • Targeted Giveaways – At Christmas, DoubleDimond arranged for Voxofon account cards – that looked like miniature Voxofon ads – allowing for 100 minutes of free calls to be given as holiday gifts to U.S. service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan and to international students at Rice University and the University of Houston. These giveaways not only brought in new customers, but also led to additional media coverage.

  • Results:

  • Within eight months, Voxofon's customer base went from 0 to between 10,000 and 20,000 on any given day.

  • Entering Voxofon on the Google search page generates more than 60,000 hits.

  • Voxofon is regularly mentioned along with its much larger competitors in major news outlets covering VoIP news and services.

  • The company was successful enough to be invited to present a new product at the prestigious DEMO conference in the Spring of 2010. It now has applications for all major smart phones and is regularly referred to as one of the leading providers of mobile IP-based communication services.

  • MEDIA TRAINING

    Many people see the media interview as an opportunity to promote their organization...

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