Jussi Raisanen Shares What HeiaHeia Has Learned About Online Marketing

    To consumers HeiaHeia seems like a consumer product – you see friends sharing their runs and workouts through the service, and the product feels like a social B2C product. But as we wrote last summer, HeiaHeia’s business model is targeted towards companies and organizations that wish to proactively lower their healthcare and insurance costs by encouraging more active lifestyles.

    For companies like HeiaHeia that have some sort of B2C angle but are doing B2B sales, Raisanen says is important to understand that is that a lot of the things that work on the B2C side doesn’t apply to B2B. It’s a tricky situation to be in. The service they provide is very dependent on the individual getting excited about it, but at the same time it’s a B2B purchasing decision.

    So in order to grow, HeiaHeia needs to target Human Resources managers, CEOs of small startups, as well as employees that are interested in making their workplace healthier. This is a seemingly small and muddy niche to target with online advertising, but CEO Jussi Raisanen has picked up a few tricks that have worked for them.

    “One thing we’re experimenting with constantly is that we’ve been doing a lot of proactive advertisements in different markets. We’ve tried advertising, and we’ve been building an inbound marketing process that we believe is the best way for us to grow.”

    This inbound marketing concept involves blogging and generating traffic on their site by creating content and a discussion about what works in corporate wellness. Aside from just marketing, this has the added benefit of helping educated their customers about how to use HeiaHeia’s product better.

    Some of the things they don’t think worked so well was print advertising, or articles in some online media doesn’t drive hardly any traffic. But blogs or other kids of media can be very useful to them.

    But one thing that seems to be working for them is AdWords. “It looks like we’re seeing some good results, but again, it depends on the market.”

    Raisanen says it’s important to understand that some phrases and wording really works in some markets, but doesn’t in others. Over here, they can use terms like corporate wellness or employee wellness, but in other markets, people may not be using those terms. Or in some markets, its important to understand that some people may not be looking for your solution online yet, so theres another level of education to put in place.

    But the basic princliples of AdWords are simple. You try different keywords, markets, and landing pages, and then test which variables drive the most revenue.

    AdWords is not the only channel that HeiaHeia is using. They’ve also experimented with LinkedIn ads to target HR managers, but unfortunately it really hasn’t worked out for them.

    “Frankly I’m a little dissapointed in it,” says Raisanen. “I don’t see it as a problem, I think LinkedIn is developing so fast that LinkedIn is going to be an important tool for us in other ways. So my opinions might be outdated in a month. But so far advertising there hasn’t worked so well, so we won’t be focusing there too much.”

    Raisanen tells us that they have some news coming out soon, so we’ll follow up with the company in the near future.

    Hear it from startups
    This series of posts is sponsored by Tekes and produced in co-operation with ArcticStartup to share real-world tips from entrepreneurs.

    Interested in the fast turnaround of Tekes Tempo?
    Find contact details, information on the program, and how to apply on their about page.