Placed App

Market

Target market

Our target market falls into two categories; candidates and venues, with the goal of easing the process of finding work and hiring staff, simultaneously.

Candidates:

• Aged 18 to 40
• Passionate hospitality workers
• Those seeking quality roles at quality venues
• New to the city and with limited knowledge of how to go about finding a job in London
• Students
• Hospitality school leavers
• Apprentices
• Millenials

Venues:

• Medium to large venues and groups (restaurants, cafe's, bars, pubs, nightclubs, hotels) in London to commence with
• Growing businesses and new openings
• Venues challenged by staff retention

Characteristics of target market

The UK restaurant market is a leading economy to emerge from the recession and has an estimated valuation of £53b in 2017. With multiple restaurant and bar openings on a weekly basis, staffing has never been as competitive and hospitality recruitment is very much at the forefront or needs for venue owners and managers.

The hospitality industry is also the 4th largest employing industry in the UK and the largest for people under 25 years old. With over 900,000 job applications made each quarter through the UK's largest hospitality job board sites, the market we are entering is definitely large and in need of a major shift.

The current methods of recruiting is to either use an online job board, a recruiter or to rely on word of mouth. Using a job board is the cheaper option but requires a hefty amount of time. Job boards provide a large number of CV’s that need to be manually sifted through after which the candidates will need to to be contacted via another platform. Using a headhunter or recruiter is for many business an unaffordable way to recruit junior to mid-level staff. These agencies usually take a minimum of 10% of an annual salary and since the churn of these positions is so high, commission-based fee's are totally illogical.

Venues that staff around 80 people will have about 4 to 5 new joiners a month, spend on average 10K a year on on recruitment, spend on average around 3 hours a day on recruitment and hold up to 8 interviews a week.

Marketing strategy

We have a strong network of contacts in the industry and because we found that venues are so eager to test alternative recruitment methods, our marketing strategies are geared more towards candidate acquisition. We believe firmly in having a strong brand identity and want to make looking for a job fun and easy whilst promoting hospitality as a respectable and "cool" industry to be a part of. In terms of the way we market Placed, we are first and foremost a technology-driven recruitment platform that not only provides easy access to hospitality jobs but easy access to the best ones at London's most prestigious and trendy venues whilst also accessing a world of industry news and benefits.

News, benefits & perks:
This is a great conversion incentive as well as the opportunity to offer our partner restaurants further marketing and exposure.

Online and affiliate marketing:
Having such a specific target market allows us to effectively target and convert users in an online space.

Email marketing and newsletters:
Our weekly newsletters are bright, informative and incentivise readers to download the app by showing latest vacancies at great venues as well as the perks of the week.

Presence at Universities and trade shows:
Having a presence at university open days creates further awareness to an audience of potential candidates looking for part-time work. We have already exhibited at industry event Imbibe Live which was a huge success and created great exposure to candidates, venues and industry influencers

Open days and industry events:
We’re planning on organising interactive and fun industry events and open days independently and with our partners, in order to attract more new candidates

Social media, PR and advertising:
We already have a strong social media presence and will also use PR and advertising to increase brand awareness and generate hype about Placed and its partner venues.

Competition strategy

Thanks to extensive advertising on the underground, no-one could possibly have overlooked that mobile recruitment is a hot topic at the moment. A number of applications have come to market that are designed to ease the job search process which is a positive feat as there is a noticeable shift in behaviour as to the way people look for work and find staff. Placed is however, a recruitment app that focuses solely on permanent positions within the hospitality sector. Having built Placed alongside the wants and needs of the industry, we know that the vast majority of venues desire to employ, train and retain quality candidates, meaning that our approach to the problem is in line with the requirements of the industry.

Unlike our competitors, we are not a job board simply providing access to CV's to be eventually be sifted through, rather we provide an effective matching system and a centralised process that eliminates hours and hours of manual labour.

Through our years of experience in and understanding of the industry, including it's high turnover of staff and costly recruitment fees, we know that our customers are in desperate need of a time and cost effective mode of recruitment which is something we have held in the highest consideration whilst building this business. In our view our direct competitors do not have the industry specific skill-set and network that the Placed team does, allowing us to create a platform that truly addresses the pain points of this sector.

We offer our clients highly competitive fees that sit slightly below most current offerings. We're changing the behaviour of existing recruitment methods through our centralised, automated, technology-driven service that save our customers time and money. Placed is here to change the way venues recruit and the way candidates look for jobs. Feedback has already dictated that our market is open to new methods and Placed is offering something better, effective, modern, innovative and of course, cheaper!