Member Article

Behind the business with Magiq

Malcolm Duckett, CEO of real-time marketing software service Magiq, takes Bdaily behind the business.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

The key challenge we have faced in recent months is to successfully champion the idea that anyone can adopt a digital marketing strategy. Often the biggest hurdle is persuading potential customers that it is possible for them to implement a full-function lifecycle marketing solution without spending huge quantities of money or having rooms full of analysts, programmers and experts.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

The biggest success of this year has been in making the functionality of our product simple and available to all. Over the last 12 months we have developed, and brought to market a complete real-time, cross-channel, lifecycle marketing solution that can be used by any marketer without requiring the support of technical experts, IT teams or web developers.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Our focus in the New Year is to develop partner channels to deliver the solution internationally. We are currently negotiating a deal to cover Russia and Germany and have just signed contracts for Sweden, Spain and France. We are incredibly proud that our company, a UK PLC, is going out into the world and exploring foreign markets.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

Be smart: make sure you REALLY understand the market you are addressing before you start. Spend time researching the industry and the customer base to avoid spending time solving problems that do not truly exist in the field, or failing to recognise hurdles that will hamper the take-up of your product. Listening to your customers is important, it will tell you a great deal about what you need to achieve. However, at the same time you cannot rely on them to give you all the answers so never be afraid of innovation and autonomy. As Henry Ford once said “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘Faster Horses’!”

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in your region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

In the current climate, businesses across the board are slow to invest in large-scale projects, even if the successes are demonstrable. This, however, has resulted in an increase in cloud based solutions that offer cheap, short contract options for businesses to explore new solutions. These allow businesses to trial new ideas at a much lower cost and, as returns are demonstrated, they can invest further.

Magiq currently charges a small monthly fee to encourage businesses to trial the product and prove its value to their business with low financial risk. Once they have demonstrated for themselves what can be achieved they will be able to continue to invest and our business will grow. So, ensuring that the quality and performance of our service & technology is sustained is a key.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .