The Austrade Landing Pad programs have been widely acknowledged as a fantastic medium for Australian startups at growth stage, looking to expand globally. While the Landing Pad is a physical location in a specific market like Singapore, the program is much more than just having access to office space from which you can access the market or region. The real value is in the hands-on management you get from the Austrade Team, both in terms of local market strategy and the incredible network of partners who are all keen to work with Austrade to help growing Australian scaleups, achieve success in the region.
So we are incredibly excited to announce that Metigy has been accepted to the Singapore Landing Pad program for Q1/Q2 2020, and we have already embarked on the adventure.
Singapore is an obvious starting point for Metigy, as we focus on refining our SEAsian strategy and rolling out to the 11 markets this growing region includes. While our existing SEAsian customers make up circa 21% of our total customer base, the region itself is the fastest growing SME market globally. As I covered in my post in December, “Why is Metigy interested in the SEAsian SME market?” SEAsia is on track to have 150m SME’s by 2022, which makes it the fastest growing region by a long way and it will be 5x the size of the US market at that point. Importantly for Metigy, 97% of those SME’s won’t have any adtech or martech and there simply won’t be enough skills or consulting expertise to meet that demand. This challenge needs to be met by technology and a product like Metigy which is designed for SME’s and includes a completely frictionless sign-up, onboarding, education and support model and a product whose core technology is driven by AI and machine learning, is the perfect affordable solution for micro-businesses and SME’s across Asia.
Being immersed in the market is a critical element in ensuring we refine our GTM market strategy. Acknowledging that each market is uniquely different and the product and communications approach needs to be adapted for not only language but logic specific to customers in each market, is an important mindset for our leadership team. We have already met some very experienced and capable contacts who are helping us adapt and respond to each market opportunity. The introductions via the Austrade team are also proving incredibly helpful in developing partnerships that will have a real impact on our growth and success in the region.
Aside from developing our own direct to market communications and acquisition, we are actively seeking co-marketing partnerships with organizations that have a substantial SME customer base. We already have a number of great options under development where Metigy will not only deliver a sound commercial benefit to our partners, our product actually contributes to the success and growth of their SME customer, which for our partner, means better retention and tangible growth in their customer’s business derived though more strategic and results-driven marketing activity. Most of our forward-thinking partners have realized that they need to add more value to their customer relationships and a next-gen AI-driven marketing technology that delivers tangible SME growth, is a very logical way to demonstrate that value add.
On a personal note, it is an incredibly beautiful city to visit and work in. Let’s face it, growing a scaleup globally has plenty of highs and lows, so visiting and working in a place that inspires you through the execution of an incredible vision that built a world-class city of the future, is a bonus. It’s very status as a gateway to SEAsia is also highly symbolic for our team. I look forward to updating our community on some great new initiatives in the region.
