Business Surgery: BaseKit

Year established: 2008 

Location: One Castle Park, Bristol 

Sector: Software 

Number of staff: 50

Company owners: Simon Best and Richard Healy are our founders, as well as investors (Eden Ventures, Nauta Capital, NESTA)

Key clients: Telefonica, Fasthosts, Names.co.uk 

The company

BaseKit is a software company building products to help people create their own unique web presence. Whether that’s creating a website, a store, or a blog – products that help you share your ideas with the world.

Established in 2008 after BaseKit’s founders won the start-up funding competition, Seedcamp, the firm began life in Chepstow. 

Since then the company has been awarded further funding and continued to grow its team each year, now employing 50 people and counting and expanding into a Bristol office.

The team strives to deliver a ‘fantastic’ experience to customers through innovative product design, cutting-edge engineering and dedicated support.

Its product is licensed by more than 100 hosting companies and telcos around the world, and has been used to create four million websites, stores and blogs.

The challenge

“We’ve had success in the hosting market but we’re unsure how to address new markets for our products. We are targeting small/micro businesses with a mobile site creation tool, and we can see that this could be attractive to companies that are already reaching this audience but we don’t know how to make a connection.”

FEEDBACK

Gary Trimnell, Technical Director at E3

Put more emphasis on the value that can be derived and how the solution can support rather than the other way around. Think about marketing your challenges and results – success stories identify what the similar challenges are even though from different sectors.

Create thought leadership in the space you operate in to drive awareness of the brand rather than the hard sell. Build advocacy with agencies and developer community that work in/with agencies and that way with other clients.

Paul Childerhouse, Managing Director at Pioneer Group

We are facing a similar challenge with the launch of Google Chromebase for Meetings in the UK. One approach that we have found successful is to run small showcase events for 10 – 15 people at a time to get to know individuals and personally present your service. These can be hosted in your place of work so don’t incur huge entertaining costs and only need to last for a few hours, letting you run sessions throughout the day.

Audiences are best targeted regionally and can be easily done on social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn, as the ad terms allow you to be really precise. By adding that personal touch, word will quickly spread as SME business owners then to have like minded clients and friends who can also benefit from your service. Partner with other businesses or clients using your service to extend this to other regions, we for example would be happy to help for Reading and Stockport.

Read more: Business surgeries