Why Spent a Half of The 500 Million-yen ($4.5 million) on Transportation Advertising?

As it was announced in advance, bellFace's video commercial casting Mr. Shoei, a Japanese actor is, now, playing at some of public transportations in Tokyo.

bellFace Commercial: ''The New Faces in Office'' Version

In addition to what has, already, been invested , extra100 million-yen (＄883,200) will be invested to the transportation advertisement within this year. In total, the half of 500 million-yen (＄4.5 million) funds gained recently will be spent on a mass advertising. Although the budget seems rather small compared to that of the companies like Indeed, or Sansan Inc., this scale of investment is quite a decision for a start-up like us with ARR of only a few-hundred million-yen (a few million-dollar).

bellFace system is a B-to-B business model, uniquely, designed as an Inside Sales tool allowing sales personals to do their jobs in remote. So, why did we turn to off-line mass advertising?

When securing a certain amount of fund, starting an advertisement of some kind for the time being would be a typical pattern most start-up companies take. But it is not the case for us. In the hopes of wiping out such preconceptions, I want to point out the three strong reasons led us to this decision.

Reason ① : All for Customers’ Successes, and Satisfactions

The first reason is for the customers ’success of course. This comes before anything. But how a mass advertising contributes to achieving this goal? bellFace system is an online meeting tool enhanced, particularly, for Inside-Sale operations.
It is a strong, attractive, simple-to-use product. Frankly speaking, it does sell well. bellFace marketing team has been, in fact, very functional. Let’s not forget, by the best engineering members, the endless efforts are made to, constantly, polish the qualities of products’ use up
If I may say honestly, developing new customers isn't so difficult for us now. There is no real bottle neck to be found as far as the acquisitions of new customers go.

Despite of all our limitless efforts made for customer support, however, certain numbers of users do cancel, and walk away resulting all the time, and money they put to the preparation being wasted. What is causing this situation? An easy-to-use structure, and, an interface alone doesn’t, always, solve the problem. But a fundamental issue lies elsewhere.

Inside-sale style is not so well-accepted in Japan yet. The door-to-door sale style is still in strong practice in the Japanese business scenes today. This is the problem we face.

The reason for this popularity in door-to-door custom is simple!
Sale people want to physically, visit people!
Just imagine yourself coming across someone whom, finally, accepts your sale appointment after 20 or more of your calls had been hung up with a bang! Wouldn't the person be like an angle to you? You can't just say, ''Ok, then talk to you online'' to the angle. Meeting the potential customer directly would be the top priority. This kind of situation may give you a drug addiction-like excitement. It is very powerful, and, hard to resist isn't it?

To solve this problem, we have decided to release a mass advertisement. We are, of course, determined to, continuously, provide our full support to the bellFace users as we always have.
But, on the other hand, promoting the recognition of bellFace system itself among those people whom subjected to Inside Sales would be the most effective way to increase the business chances for bellFace users I figured.

bellFace is a business model designed to, automatically, spread its information while supporting the sale activities of the users.
When they contact with their potential customers via bellFace system, the actual contents, and utilities of the product will be introduced to the new people while having a conversation over the system increasing bellFace’s chances of new customer acquisitions. Therefore, backing up the successes of bellFace users is the only, and the most important mission we must fully, focus on. By doing so, the growth of our own will follow naturally. Putting up a video advertisement may seem costly, but this action aiming to increase the recognition of us among business personals is essential to our users' successes.

Reason②: For the Acquisitions of New customers

Developing new users is the second goal for this video advertisement.    I remember saying ''No problem for gaining new customers'' just 30-second ago, there are many issues for us too. Anyone would expect a worthwhile result out of an advertisement at this scale. It's hard not to. Yes, I'm, in fact, very much looking forward seeing the number rise as a result of this promotion! Who wouldn't be?
From numbers of choices recommended by Dentsu Group, I, personally, made the final decision to run the advertisement targeting the passengers of Yamanote-train line, those taxi users in Tokyo.

Since BellFace is a system built for ''inside sale'', the goal of the video advertising is to draw attention of those on their feet paying direct visits to do their sale talk. The video-clip will be on for 2-month. I assume that almost all people in sale do get on Yamanote-trainline. Not many goes without boarding it.

They won't be in the job otherwise unless they've already made the best use of inside-sale style. I'm expecting a gradual, repeating, a body-blow of boxing like stimulation by the transportation advertising rather than a rapid, obvious responses like TV commercials.

For our growth, the direct online-use of bellFace system in web marketing is the key!

From the beginning, bellFace has been operated without a marketing department. This company was consisted only, of a product development team, and the costumer supporting team till a few week ago. A marketing team has just been established within a month. It didn’t exist till now, simply, because we had been concentrating on developing the system for our customers' best use. All our resources, and efforts were put to the on-going search for products’ improvements. After all, the products’ quality is what counts.

A little off the topic, but I feel that many of the venture companies in general, tend to focus more on presenting, and selling skills, than brushing up the product contents, thus leaves the customers’ satisfaction behind.
Japanese seemed to had been more of perfectionists over what they provided compared to now days. It, perhaps, is something called ''the generation gaps’’ between 1980's, and 20000's.

Now, our new marketing team is conducting advertisements, and AB testing. Mr. Shoei is the main cast in the video commercial. The level of familiarity the Japanese have toward this well-known actor should help raise the recognition of BellFace. I assume that human-minds are more opened to a new topic if it is related closely to something they've already known.
With the strong impact of muscle image added, this video advertising will be a perfect material for AB testing, and market research. This method should be effective in no time. I expect.

bellFace's current monthly fee per contract is ¥72,000 ($640) at least, requiring ¥100,000 ($888) as an initial cost in addition. So, the annual sales of a new sign-up in the first year would be round ¥1 million (≒＄8,828) . Therefore, LTV of 150 customers including their continuous uses, and the sales from up-sells should be able to recover the investment of ¥ 300 million (＄2.65 million ) . The question was
''Can we, at least, achieve 150 or more new sign-ups within a medium-term in addition to the users we have now. My answer was Yes, so I made the move.

Reason③ : Just Wanted to Try !

Fulfilling the small dreams

The third reason of this video promotion was, just for my own satisfaction.

It must be quite a feeling to see your company commercials delivered around the city. As a business developer, I've always wanted to see that happen with my own product. I suppose that these experiences, definitely, is one of the rewarding moments for any entrepreneurs like myself battling over business. Changing the world through business, to be a man of wealth, are a few of my ultimate goals. But meanwhile, the release of an advertisement will be one of my small but, a very important moment I'd like to, gratefully, share with my fellow bellFace members, and friends.

Lastly: Back Scenes of the Video Production.
You should have seen a TV commercial of GEORGIA; Coca Cola coffee brand, casting Mr. Takayuki Yamada. Our video piece was directed by the same director of GEORGIA. Attending at the back scenes of production, I was totally, thrilled by his persistency over the production. I suppose this is what we call ''the pro's work''. Standardization, and unification were essential in my former occupation where I made interview videos of 6000 or more CEOs from different companies. A few years later, here at a shooting studio, quite an opposite approach was taken; a sense of creativities, and originalities play the important roles in the operation. It is, often, said that success is in details. I consider myself lucky, and deeply, impressed to see the determination of the director for perfection in his work. There was not a single inch of a compromise. I have much to learn still.

By the way, the shot of the 3 built-up soleus muscles was taken separately using the same body parts of a professional bodybuilder and edited with the rest of video afterward. Moreover, the crews added some artificial shadows with eye-shadow powder to emphasize the muscular impression of the soleus muscles.

With a bang! the hems of the pants the three men in the picture wear rises in second. In making, some strings were attached to these pants, and pulled by three other men hid behind the main three. It was 100 % hand-powered, simple trick. But it required an absolute accuracy of all six people; 3 casts, and 3 more behind them, to move at exact timing of 0.0-second! It seemed almost impossible to me. This scene, along, was retaken dozens of times to get it right.

Since an online advertisement does allow its’ users to, easily, monitor the effectiveness in increments of 0.1 %, most of start-ups, the IT-related companies, especially, tend to rely heavily on the online style. The efficiency of the mass advertising, on the other hand, is unmeasurable. But it would be powerful tools for us if we could manage to develop a strategic application of the mass advertising for our marketing.