The Story of Krakow's Wonder-child of AI App Development

Introducing Miquido: Krakow's AI App Development Company

Founded in 2011, it took 8 years to get to 170+ employees and be awarded by Deloitte in its Fast Tech 50 in the CEE.

In 2020, Clutch featured Miquido in its Top Polish App Developers in the 2nd place.

Furthermore, Miquido seems to want to step away from the traditional software development company. It’s developing its own products.

Which is great news.

But what are the assets that made Miquido so fortunate? Let’s hear it from former clients. It seems they are praised for:

• Goal-orientation
• Being really well-organized
• Delivering high-quality apps
• Fluid development process
• Responsiveness, good communication

Before dwelling into the research I’m gonna be a little party pooper and reveal to you some of my findings.

In the following section, we’ll dive more into Miquido’s marketing approach.

We will understand how crucial employer branding is in a very busy Krakow tech scene. You’ll also comprehend that building a community around you is beneficial for all your stakeholders.

Miquido’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

Today there are so many marketing channels out there, you feel like in an amusement park: intrigued, overwhelmed, what to begin with, which are the best ways of having fun without wasting money?

What about Miquido? What’s their weapon of choice in this martech playground? Are they delivering purposeful customer encounters?

I think it’s time to find out!

We’ll go deep into their branding strategies, then the inbound content strategy and other marketing efforts.

Employer Branding and Hiring

Employer branding is mirroring a company’s culture. Building a positive culture is the root of a strong employer brand.

Let's see which is Miquido’s approach.

• Company culture

It’s a culture that supports continuous learning, through organizing events, meetups and a training budget of 3000 PLN/year.

• Team

Storytelling & video = powerful tools to send the right message to a potential employee. Check out these videos about people at Miquido.

• Career pages: some of the best I’ve seen so far. Neat design, transparent responsibilities, benefits & salary.

The Miquido team is planning to expand, there are 10 hiring opportunities, and also 10 paid internship positions are listed on their website.

And a novelty in this industry, Miquido has a person in charge of employer branding.

Miquido’s Social Presence

Customer expectations are now higher than ever. There’s FOMO all-over the place (fear of missing out), everyone is in need of instant gratification.

In order to provide your stakeholders with an answer to their question, you must be wherever they are.

Now, let’s see how Miquido is addressing social media interactions when promoting their employer brand and AI app and mobile app development services.

Facebook

For Miquido, the Facebook profile is very much used for employer branding. No surprise there, because we’ve seen that they even have an in-house specialist dedicated to employer branding.

On a smaller scale, Miquido is promoting events and blog content on their Facebook page.

LinkedIn

The LinkedIn account mixing employee branding content with educational and sales-related content.

They are also broadcasting lots of news from the events they attend to, awards they receive, projects they do.

Events promotion can go two ways - building a brand in the eyes of potential clients or building employer branding.

From time to time their projects are featured in LinkedIn posts, from AI app development products to open source projects, like the one below.

From time to time, the blog articles and Medium content they create get shared on LinkedIn.

Community Building

The community you grow will be the very first audience to advocate for your brand. They’d be your evangelists, they’d make you aware of potential failures, and even make your business better.

Miquido understands this and does not shy away from engaging with new audiences.

From small-scale events to large ones (like Mobiconf), Miquido is taking risks, reaching out, and tapping into new audiences.

So, we’ve got events/meetups for designers, testers, and developers.

We’ve got hackathons, like this one in London where they were the Abbey Road’s (world-famous recording studio) partner.

They also co-organize conferences, like this one that speaks of Golang.

Aaand, the cherry on top, Mobiconf, one of the best mobile conferences in the CEE. That seems legit, considering they are an awarded mobile and AI app development company.

Miquido’s Website

The layout of the website is clean and fluid.

Social proof is everywhere.

Why do we always insist on social proof?

Our clients are getting more informed by the day. They do a lot of research before any buying decision. How can a business prove it deserves them as clients? How can they promise a meaningful experience?

Miquido is showcasing the portfolio, using client logos, case studies, and testimonials.

Testimonials are so powerful because they’re seen as being really objective. The more someone outside the brand speaks of you, the higher the credibility.

When reading the case studies you see even more social proof, as in awards received by the apps they’ve built, the number of downloads.

Awards are also showcased:

When we reach the Miquido blog, we see more proof of their good work: Miquido was named a 2018 Google Certified Agency, and it seems this is not happening to many development companies.

Ok, now I trust you, I’ve seen some case studies. I think I’m ready to get in touch. How can I do this?

Well, it’s easy peasy, complete our contact form.

They used to do some basic segmentation via their form about a year ago, before the rebranding, like below:

Now (March 2019), they are leaving out the segmentation and go straight for email and the option to book a call.

They are monitoring the actions of website visitors using Hotjar, so I assume that they are interested in conversion rate optimization.

Miquido’s Inbound Marketing Strategies

Like we’ve seen so far, software houses approach content marketing as a channel for lead generation.

In tech B2B (non-SaaS), sales cycles are long, because of the high product value. This means knowledge needs to be proved through original and useful content.

In this chapter, we’ll look into Miquido’s content marketing strategies around reach and act from the RACE approach.

• REACH

At this stage, Miquido is keeping its blog up to date.

The articles are written by marketers, the head of sales, head of R&D. It all depends on the content of the article and the background needed to write it.

Miquido also features case studies, that prove their expertise.

Miquido is also delivering content via Medium, and it seems this strategy pays off in terms of engagement.

They tackle topics such as AI app development or product design.

• ACT

Now it’s time to move readers further down in the funnel. For that, Miquido uses CTA’s inside blog articles, that invite to a newsletter subscription.

For the case studies, the CTA invites readers to connect with Miquido and talk about project ideas.

Miquido is also offering a strategic session to those willing to continue the conversation.

Now, looking a bit more into the numbers, it seems that organic traffic is growing slowly. This year it managed to get over 1000 visits/month.

This means that there’s room for growth, but we all know that content is not quite easy peasy, it takes lots of work and patience.

Miquido’s Paid Traffic Acquisition

Miquido is experimenting with paid ads as well, as per Ahrefs and Spyfu.

The keywords focus on the bottom of funnel keywords such as “ software companies in uk”, “mobile app development company in uk”, or “hire flutter developer”.

I haven't seen any display or remarketing ads yet.

Summing Up

So, which are today’s main lessons?

Like in Codete’s story, being all-in for events means you open up to new audiences, audiences that can become future clients or future employees.

Conferences, workshops, hackathons seem to be the solution for a world that gets more in more digital, where human interactions get more and more treasured.

Experiences are more valued than ever and by building true and humane connections might just be your trump card.

In the long run, focusing on a more scalable strategy, like inbound marketing, will also pay off.

And don’t forget the employer branding. When you compete with other tens of IT companies for the same talent pool, you must be really smart about it. It’s tough out there and you’d better choose your weapons carefully: from salaries and perks, through the right communication means.

Now, what other stories do we have upon our sleeves? Besides Krakow’s software houses outsourcing success stories, we’ve got software houses in Poznan, Wroclaw and Warsaw to watch out for.

You can find all the stories in our Growth Marketing Secrets of Top European Software Houses ebook.