The Pitch: A healthy business hitting its stride
Melanie Brown is on a mission to combine passion and good health with a range of walks uncovering Melbourne’s secret small businesses and natural beauty.
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In the Herald Sun’s ongoing series about Victorian entrepreneurs, The Pitch, our experts examine Melanie Brown’s Urban Hiking, a passion project promoting good health and fun as people hit the often hidden urban tracks.
WHEN Melanie Brown moved from Perth eight years ago she set about discovering Melbourne.
“I have always had outdoor pursuits from the time I was a teenager. From my early 30s getting out and hiking has been a bit of an addiction,” she said.
“I found I was getting more and more into it and wanting to get people fit and showing them how easy it is to get from A to B by walking.”
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With a background in environmental management and working in mining and public service, she is passionate about making the most of urban open spaces.
Ms Brown came up with the idea for a series of urban walks that would get people active and connect them with local small businesses.
Over time she thought she had the makings of a business.
In early July she quit her job and started working full time on what was to become Urban Hiking.
She signed up for a Kangan TAFE New Incentive Enterprise Scheme.
During the course she looked at how to build her business and completed a business plan.
While she was working away on the business she dipped her toe into organising some walks.
She also was doing some contract work, leading walks around the city and getting a feel for what people enjoyed.
Her own walks, under the Urban Hiking banner, have been fine tuned in a number of ways.
Through the program and road testing, she moved her offer away from tourists to walks.
She said the distinction was that tours were more for tourists while the hiking could reach a wider demographic, including tourists, locals and newcomers to the city.
She signed up for Airbnb Experiences, a market place where people can advertise experiences. This was good and bad as you have to run the experience even if you have just one booking which meant that she wasn’t making any money.
“They have weird rules. Even if it is one person you are supposed to run it,” she said.
She said this helped her decide what she did not want to do.
Ms Brown tapped into the Meet Up online platform.
“It was just a good way of getting a foot in the door in an informal way,” she said.
“I set up my account in early August and just started doing free stuff to start building a community and testing out products.”
She said she still runs the occasional free walk where they might meet at a location and walk before heading to a venue for a meal and a drink. This gave people a chance to sample a basic walk and could lead to return paid walks and for them to recommend her walks as well as her refining her offering.
She said the level of service of the free hikes was lower than paid hikes which included food and other activities in the price.
She said while people could dismiss her walks, suggesting that they could do them by themselves, they often would not get around to doing the walk and going solo would not include the knowledge, insights, company and friendships of her walks.
Ms Brown has built up an Urban Hiking community via a Facebook page in which she posts tips about hiking, her events and businesses the walks visit.
Hikes include ferry trips to Williamstown with hikes to Spotswood, ending with a meal at a local brewery. She also hosts Wednesday night guided and paid walks from Federation Square.
By tying in with local businesses she not only promotes them but her own business. They share posts on social media in cross promotion.
After assessing the market, she decided, apart from evenings, there was not enough demand for weekdays at the moment.
She has resumed full time work in recent weeks.
“I think I will run two events a month to start off and do a rolling series of six week programs,” she said.
Longer term she could see a market for hosting corporate team building events.
She said the customers tended to be aged 30 to late 60s and more women than men.
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WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY …
John Downes, business coach, Acorro
WHAT a great social, fitness, and environmental opportunity to share your passion and some of Melbourne’s most beautiful and often unappreciated sites.
It’s great to see you have taken a considered approach using the NIES scheme to help define the concept, a business plan, and to then test it out on customers; before pivoting from tours to hikes.
Three things: 1. Know your customer: Who are your target personas and what are their unique characteristics? And why would they be motivated to post or bring a friend/refer one?
2. Customer Needs: What is your customer data really telling you? Is there sufficient demand for this service to enable you to make it a sustainable income for yourself and others? What is your conversion rate? What is the referral rate from first-time, experienced and frequent hikers? What is really driving customer interest, the dating aspect of the hike, meeting other like-minded souls, improving health outcomes, or exploring the urban landscape? What are the implications for the offering based on these specific customer needs?
3. Health Outcomes: Is there any opportunity for grants support from City of Melbourne, or other healthy community sponsors?
I wish you the acorro three: pleasure, fulfilment and to earn a just financial reward from your passion, sharing a healthy exploration of Melbourne.
Vivian Vo, mentor, Melbourne Innovation Centre
KNOW your content, know your niche and most importantly know your audience. Taking the time to understand your customers is an essential process for any business. Define your personas by considering your customer’s attributes, goals, challenges, and motivations. For the purposes of content marketing, personas can help you deliver content that will be most relevant and engaging to your audience.
Urban Hiking’s social media visuals are stunning, creative and relevant, a true investment towards building your brand’s authenticity. Brand building relies on the consistency of posts. Consider creating a #hashtag unique to your brand and encourage hikers to post and share photos on their socials. People love to be acknowledged, Consider doing this in a creative and fun way by sharing their photos on your page. These days, social media sharing etiquette insists you ask permission to share photos. Particularly on Instagram where the credit of the photo can be easily lost.
Consider the message your brand wants to portray. This can easily be achieved by highlighting your mission and vision statement on your website. Your content strategy should incorporate publishing blogs and articles on your website. Consider bringing on influencers from industry to collaborate. Platforms like Tribe are a marketplace used to find suitable influencers. This type of collaboration helps increase brand awareness while establishing credibility.
Bruce Hall, mentor, Small Business Mentoring Service
I LOVE Urban Hiking’s idea of slowing down to take in the wonderful sights and experiences Melbourne has to offer. The question, from a marketing perspective, is why?
Why do I need to pay money for something I could do free? The answer being, because you will miss the “hidden secrets” and “experiences” the guided tours provide.
To generate interest and get people to part with money, I suggest Melanie focus more on the question of why. Create a sense of anticipation by focusing on the experience. “Discover the hidden magical…” “Experience the wonderful…” “Learn the amazing history of….” . Ultimately the tours are about creating magical memories.
Describe the experience and give potential customers a reason to make a booking.
With regard to the website; at least 300 words need to be added to the home page. Include the target keyword in the page copy, the first sentence and the Meta Heading 1 on the page. This approach should also be taken with the other pages.
Also, the popup “Join Our Mailing List” is too large and should only appear after visitors have had time to engage with the site. Finally, the images used need to be compressed so the pages load faster.
A terrific concept with great potential. But needs to “sell the why” not the product.
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