Brands have been floundering as they’ve tried to apply digital technology to their traditional, local marketing promotions. They’ve engaged consumers through social media, spent massively on marketing campaigns and promotions at local venues, yet they’ve still struggled to understand consumer behavior. They have not been able to assess the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and track their ROI.
Bizu is the only solution in this ecosystem that connects all players and competitors under one platform – we are the missing link in the relationship between brands, venues, and consumers.
With Bizu, brands and venues have a real-time platform to track, interact and gain insight on localized consumer behavior.
We empower brands to connect with their consumers and to accurately measure the return on their marketing spend.
While brands have been increasing their digital ad spend budget by 50% year over year, their local marketing initiatives and methods haven’t changed in decades. Brands haven’t utilized real-time analytics tools for tracking sentiment during the most crucial time for their industry: the point of sale and consumption.
In other words, they’ve had no way of knowing who has consumed their products, what consumers thought of their product, or the ROI of their marketing spend.
Typically, brands market to fans online and measure engagement by likes, shares, comments, etc. They host events at local venues where they hand out free samples – investing heavily in venue relationships and local marketing. But without validated metrics or KPIs that they can use to assess the success of their marketing campaigns, they’ve been spending thousands of dollars to give away free product – with no way to gauge the results!
Similarly, venues would like to improve their traffic, increase exposure, and to develop more in-depth relationship with brands to host promotional campaigns, but they haven’t been properly furnished with effective tools to partner with brands.
At Bizu, we first set out to help consumers connect with one another via our mobile app, then quickly discovered that brands needed serious help tracking the effectiveness and ROI of their local marketing campaigns.
We asked ourselves, how could brands know their consumers better, know if a campaign is working, and partner with venues more effectively and easily?
Help brands leverage digital, mobile, and social media to reach their end consumer. Track the effectiveness of local promotions, and find out who’s consuming their product, where and when. Facilitate partnerships between brands and venues.
What does this look like?
Real-time Analytics Platform
KPIs & Metrics Driven Campaigns
Digital Redemption campaigns
And the results?
Consumers can buy and redeem drinks through the Bizu app. They can gain points and receive tailored rewards from brands. They can also send friends drinks, and connect even when they’re not present.
Brands have a brand dashboard where they can easily access the data they desire and find insights into consumer behavior. They can begin to see trends, such as who is consuming their product and what products are being consumed. In addition to dashboard data, they benefit from automated event coordination with venues.
Venues get freemium-access to reporting and dashboard data as well as automated event coordination from brands.
Bizu launched a closed beta test in Miami Beach, involving 8 brands and 13 venues and 1357 users.
The testing included the completed, consumer-facing app, available for download from both the App Store and Google Play. We had a total of 833 items redeemed via Bizu, with 460 being brand sponsored beverages; 614 purchases made by users, and 1,840 checkins.
Another way to view these results is to see an 80% redemption rate and data on every user & redemption. Robust and clear data.
In another closed venue study, with Traveling Corks (a wines by the glass & wine shop) we collected the following data:
Bizu is now moving into into a trial phase with beverage brands in the Dominican Republic.
We’re placing our dashboard into the hands of brands such as Pernod Ricard, Molson Coors, Diageo, Brugal – and we’re even in talks with Coca-Cola about reaching the health conscious consumer with Dasani sparkling water, Coke Zero, and other waters and juices.
With every step that Bizu takes, our tech partner Rokk3r Labs is along for the ride. Having already created over 26 companies, collectively valued at over $200M, we’re thrilled to have them powering our software development and product strategy.
Bizu Timeline
It won’t be long before people become familiar with Bizu as the easy way to send friends drinks from afar, as the new way to get free drinks. It will become second nature for consumers to redeem drinks via Bizu at brand sponsored events.
The days of giving product away and learning nothing are over. Soon, brands and venues will take advantage of the Bizu platform to acquire and engage customers and to account for every marketing dollar spent, relying on our technology to run intelligent marketing campaigns in any market throughout the world.
Want to learn more about the Bizu platform and the company’s plans for the future? Make sure to request access to the Business Plan tab of the profile to see how you can get involved!
When the company Gabriela Arraiz was working for was acquired by Google, Nathaniel Waring reached out to congratulate her from Brazil, saying that he’d take her out for drinks to celebrate when he returned. She joked that it would be old news by then and that he’d probably forget, so he should figure out a way to send her a drink even though he was in a different country. As playful conversations between Founders sometimes go, this one led to the beta launch of the Bizu consumer app. They quickly realized, however, while working with brands to get users to download the app, that brands were the party with the bigger problem that needed solving…
Nathaniel Waring – Co-Founder & CEO
Stanford grad, successful IPO of Cox & Kings, 20 yrs in luxury travel and brands vertical
Gabriela Arraiz – Co-Founder & COO
Serial software startup entrepreneur and e-commerce expert, exited Channel Intelligence to Google, MAJ in U.S. Army Reserves. Currently completing her MS in Cybersecurity at USF.
Ricardo Sencion – Director of Latin America
Serial entrepreneur, 15 years in F&B industry working with beverage brands, bars/restaurants/hotels and event promoters