How the BIG Gig helped my business: Renée Watson, The Curiosity Box

Renée Watson is the founder and Head of Explosions at The Curiosity Box. The Curiosity Box gives children, and their grown-ups, seriously fun experiences of science by delivering boxes of hands-on science, tech, engineering and maths activities and experiments to their home. Curiosity Box is the UK’s first science subscription box for families and is 1.5 years old. Renée took part in The BIG Gig in January 2017.

Why did you want to do a BIG Gig?

We are very new and on a steep learning curve. I wanted to get access to a wider pool of expertise to consider our marketing challenges and give us honest feedback and advice.

What was the main challenge you wanted help with?

Our biggest challenge, as a new business, is letting people know we exist and then convincing them to buy our product. I brought a general marketing question to the BIG Gig to get input to shape our marketing strategy.

What were the main ideas that you got from the BIG Gig?

I really enjoyed the variety and creativity of the suggestions I received. One of the big take home actions was to focus on niche audiences, with marketing messages tailored to that audience. There was specific advice on the kids of niche audiences that might be “quick wins” for us. This doesn’t seem like rocket science but really helped to focus my attention rather than doing what I had been, which was putting out a “ta da! Here we are!” kind of message to as wide an audience as possible.

How have these ideas helped you improve or grow your business?

By breaking down our message and fine tuning our audience targeting we have been able to grow significantly, with the vast majority of our new customers coming through targeted digital marketing. We passed our end of year target and we have also been able to bring our customer acquisition cost down by more than half.

Was there anything unexpected in the feedback from the group?

I think the most unexpected thing was the openness of the group. There was a very healthy amount of constructive criticism and honesty which was incredibly valuable and it was delivered in a supportive way so that I left feeling motivated and full of ideas that were ready to put into practice.

Do you have advice for others yet to take part?

Be ready to get some seriously good advice and a wealth of diverse expertise all focused on your business issue. It may well be the very thing you need to move forward.

Any last words about the BIG Gig?

Hooray for Thursdays and thank you to Paul, Frank and your team for making it happen.