Anja Kullberg’s career began as a marketer at Electrolux. She has since had a long career as a marketer at both large and small companies. For the past six years, she has worked as a marketing consultant, taking on roles such as interim marketing manager, advisor, and project manager. Currently, her main focus is CMO at MIOO, where she is also an investor.
– I also did e-commerce for a few years in the early 2000s. Generally, I enjoy working in founder- and entrepreneur-led companies with high tempo and quick decisions.
MIOO was founded in 2019 by Tomas Grönqvist and has received a lot of attention in both digital and entrepreneurial media. The main target audience consists of bike commuters who need continuous service. MIOO has developed a platform that offers easily accessible bicycle service for both businesses and individuals. As a cyclist, you can subscribe to a service plan, as a company you can book service days where employees get their bikes serviced at the workplace.
In Anja Kullberg’s current role, the primary focus is working with the existing customer base in order to identify new concepts and ideas to test in order to find product-market fit.
– It’s an iterative and exploratory process where we use a lot of email marketing to reach out, Kullberg says. We need to simplify concepts and ideas so that tests can be carried out easily. We rapidly terminate things that don’t work and refine things that do.
MIOO’s founder has extensive experience from the cycling industry and were formerly a professional cyclist in Italy. This also reflects the brand, where the two O’s represent a bicycle, and “Mi” is Italian for “My” – hence “My Bike”.
Since its inception, MIOO has delivered over 20,000 services with their mobile service stations. The company also has a partnership with the e-commerce chain Bikester for bike assembly – and offers service packages to businesses customers. MIOO’s marketing mix includes guerrilla marketing and creative approaches to reach its target audience.
– For instance, we set up mobile air stations at Lidingöbron in Stockholm and offer air to all commuter cyclists as they pass on their way to and from work.
According to Anja Kullberg, it’s important to challenge old truths and dare to try new approaches, especially when times get tougher and marketing budgets decrease.
– One thing many marketers forget is to focus on their existing customers. It is common to focus on customer acquisition, even though it’s more cost-effective to invest in growing sales with those who already are your clients, e.g. through new offerings and upselling.
– There are also many new opportunities to streamline processes with AI that didn’t exist before. I use Chat GPT a lot in my work and also simple services for things like meeting notes. Sometimes I’ve also used generative AI tools for images to get inspiration, but to a lesser extent so far.
A concrete example of how MIOO works with service prototyping, as highlighted by Anja Kullberg, was when the company simplified its existing service agreement.
– We tested the service agreement in various ways. A new and scaled-down packaging turned out to be very appreciated. By scaling down the offering we could create a packaging that was more cost-effective yet still including the essentials.
How do you cut through the noise?
– You always have to start by asking yourself why people should like your brand. It requires having something at the core that is authentic. In the future, the importance of brand and identity will most likely increase as content can be created more easily and in larger volumes. If you want to reach your target audience by then, you will need to set high standards for brand consistency.