The Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN) avails of Comit’s integrated PR, marketing communications and digital services to help it to grow its network of angel investors and increase brand awareness.
HBAN is a national organisation charged with promoting business angel investment syndicates across the island of Ireland.
Challenge
Comit has been working with HBAN (Halo Business Angel Network) since 2012. The HBAN executive team identified key objectives, including some very specific marketing and growth metrics:
- Get the organisation message out to a wider audience to attract more business angel investors with a view to growing the number of angel syndicates investing in Irish start-ups;
- Help promote awareness of business angels to increase the level of angel investment in Ireland.
HBAN wanted two things from Comit:
- An integrated marketing communications programme, with PR and digital marketing at its heart;
- Assistance with promotion and other partner related activities for its All-Island Business Angel Conference.
Solution
Strategy
We started by analysing the audience, the media they consume, websites they access and social media sites where we could best engage them. We then helped them define a differentiating consistent message to run across their communications.
We used true integrated marketing communications techniques including PR, advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, online video, SEO marketing and event marketing in order to create powerful multi-touch communications. The objective was to drive current and potential investors to the event to allow HBAN to connect with them on a more personal basis, and then to continue to engage them.
Tactics
Comit undertook a major profile oriented launch of HBAN with a major press release at its heart which summarised HBAN’s successes. The release announced jobs and investment facilitated by business angel investment. It gained universal broadcast, national, business and online coverage. We also issued a further five releases announcing its annual conference, its entrepreneur guide to angel financing, and new syndicate launches. PR highlights include:
- TV interviews on RTÉ One News, and the maiden edition of RTÉ’s Morning Edition;
- Extended radio interviews including RTÉ ‘s Morning Ireland, Newstalk’s Down
to Business and Today FM’s Sunday Business Show. Many more radio news shows featured the announcements from HBAN through the year;
- National papers including The Irish Times, Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Sunday Business Post, Irish Daily Mail, Irish Sun and Irish Star all featured multiple stories throughout the year;
- Numerous online media outlets including Ireland’s more popular online news sites such as RTÉ.ie, IrishTimes.ie and SiliconRepublic.com.
Comit also played a key role in helping HBAN develop the concept behind its All-Island Business Angel Conference. We developed:
- Marketing collateral;
- Advertising;
- Promotional sponsor and event highlight videos;
- The sponsor value proposition and package, and secured commercial sponsors as well as media partners, Silicon Republic and Irish Times;
- Email marketing;
- A strong digital campaign, including live tweeting the conference, which generated a very healthy 350 tweets, retweets and comments.
Other digital marketing activities included partnering with Silicon Republic to promote HBAN through its start-up pages, developing LinkedIn advertising, promoting SEO via social engagement and building online PR coverage and links.
Analytics and Monitoring
To monitor campaign success, and respond to successes, we developed a series of Key Performance Indicators. We track these on a regular basis and report back.
They include:
- Press coverage;
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO);
- LinkedIn advertising;
- Insights into what content is working best;
- Informing the team on new marketing opportunities.
Result
Comit’s work has resulted in strong engagement and brand equity with HBAN and the concept of angel investment.
- Growth: Comit’s HBAN promotional work around business angel investing and the conference resulted in a 75% growth in the number of business angels attending the event, with an even more startling growth of the overall number of attendees, well in excess of 100%, compared to 2011;
- SEO: HBAN features in three of the top ten organic links in Google for the search term ‘Business Angel Investment’. One of these is its own site and two others are other online news sites;
- TV: 2 appearances;
- Radio: 25 features including 3 feature interviews;
- National and business media: 38 articles;
- Digital media: >400 digital links.
What the client said
Michael Culligan
Holistic:
“Comit has been an invaluable member of our team. Its holistic approach to PR, marketing communications and digital marketing provided a very broad marcoms and strategic capability. Comit injected plenty of energy, enthusiasm, ideas and an unwavering focus on helping us achieve our growth and brand objectives. The result was a first year that significantly over achieved our expectations, with all business goals met, including growth of awareness and engagement with many new business angels."
Added huge value:
“I have worked several times in the past with Comit in more high tech roles, and while I could certainly see the benefits of its technology and business capability, I did wonder if they could bridge the gap to our broader and more financial audience. I am happy to say that the team’s technology and business focus added huge value and everybody very quickly got to grips with the broader brief and delivered seamlessly."
Transformed exposure:
“Comit helped us define a key message and then communicated that consistently through a wide range of media, which transformed our exposure. Critically, it helped us position our organisation and key annual conference at exactly the right level, with media partner exposure delivering huge added value."
Lots of interest in what we have to say:
“Success was evident in terms of the number of requests we started to receive to talk to press and at conferences about angel investment."
Higher level of national awareness:
“The results have impressed our stakeholders and have contributed to a much higher level of awareness of business angel investing at a national level.”
