Women Outside The Box

Market

Target market

Women who:

- Are considering starting a business, currently running a life-style business, work as freelancers or are currently running a micro or SME.

- Start-ups
This includes students leaving university; new mothers from corporate careers looking to ditch the commute; women facing redundancy; women leaving the services; women over 50 looking for a better work-life balance. All of these segments need information, a network of contacts, a place to ask advice and share ideas.

- Life-stylers
This includes women in part-time home-based businesses. They need a network to relieve the isolation, to share best practice and to think bigger for when children start school.

- Freelancers
These include women who have left corporate or agency life usually through redundancy or a partner’s job move. They need to find complementary business partners to offer a more complete service and to find clients from among other businesses.

- Business owners and CEOs
These include women in both traditional and high-growth sectors. Some will be part of family-run companies. They need inspiration and confidence to scale their business and may need to keep in touch with how business is changing. They may need time away from being the boss to meet other women who understand their life.

Government figures suggest there are over one million women running their own business in the UK. We believe there might be at least one million more women who are considering self-employment. Due to public and private sector downsize and turning to outsourced services, we feel this market is growing.

Characteristics of target market

UK Market size (our estimate)
- 1 million women running a business (BIS statistic) with at least 1 million considering starting a business.

- UK market growth We believe this to be a growing market as we see the recent massive move to outsourcing.

- Global growth Similar changes have occurred in most countries. Many countries including the USA have instituted policies to help develop more women entrepreneurs. This suggests our target market is in the millions.

- Is ‘women-only’ really a separate market segment? We believe women have special characteristics which are not currently well-served by entrepreneurship websites and networks.

Women with a family are time-poor. They need online networking and business help they can access anywhere, anytime, on their phone or tablet. We believe many women still lack confidence and connections to put together start-up teams and seek funding. Our inspirational role models can help.

Marketing strategy

- Build brand awareness through Google rankings and social media, entering the debate on women’s and business issues.

- Incentivise members to get friends and colleagues to join.

- Run a major national competition to find the best women-led start-up with a very sizeable prize. (This competition is already agreed and funded by our strategic partner).

- Build hubs of influence in all major UK cities through City Business Clubs and other training events, festivals and Big Breakfasts run by City Leaders on a profit-share basis.

- Improve user experience and content and make the forum fully engaging to convert visitors to paid members. (These strategies will be run out by the new hires Seedrs and the Regional Growth Fund make possible).

Upsell online members to premium listings and training packs. (These areas of the site will be developed with the balance of our Seedrs funding).

Competition strategy

There are several women’s entrepreneurship sites but we believe they serve their market poorly. Most target life-style business owners with small amounts of general business advice and lots of confidence-building and life-coaching.

Whereas Women Outside The Box has a massive online business resource for members and our Forum discusses practical issues as well as offering inspiration and guidance.

Off-line women’s networks are popular but women scaling a business are soon put off by the influx of direct sellers and network marketers such groups survive on. Our City Business Clubs only target women with ambitions to grow to SME size and the training we offer them covers funding, tech and other issues few other women’s groups tackle.

Our festival and other events accept all women in business but still offer our unique blend of ambition, information and professionalism.

As our online resources and features grow, supported by an offline network of City Business Clubs and other events, we believe we have a head-start which will make it difficult for new entrants into the market to gain traction.