Brandbox helps companies get the leads they’re looking for

Each week we’re profiling one company that has been selected for Boost – our early-stage startup growth program. Catch up with these companies in person at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam on May 26-27.

Generating leads isn’t easy, and creating custom interactive content can take a long time as well as costing far more than businesses expect.

Dutch company Brandbox solves that with its content studio that makes it easy to make games, quizzes and social feeds without the huge up-front investment.

Tell us what you do in two sentences.

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We empower companies to generate leads and drive sales through highly engaging interactive content. Examples include:  quizzes, photo uploads, product advisors, personality tests and games. Companies can work together with their (in-house) agency or by doing it themselves.

What’s your background? How did the company get started?

We started out as an agency working for entertainment companies and artists ranging from Katy Perry to Linkin Park. We witnessed firsthand how the social web could help connecting with new audiences which were getting increasingly hard to reach through traditional channels.

We also set up our own music community called Jimmy Alter which showed us to the power of having direct access to fans who were willing do to (practically) anything to promote their favorite bands.

Who’s your biggest rival and why are you better than them or different?

Well, you have big marketing suites such as Adobe which contain many modules. They are typically more expensive to purchase and often harder to integrate or set-up properly. As such, I don;t really see them as competitors but more as (future) partners.

Our team is focused on providing amazing interactions which consumers love to do and because we have an agency background we know what’s important in order to run successful online campaigns.

Right now we are seeing amazing ROI: better lead conversion, conversion to sales and high percentages of participants who share branded content and who come back. Also, we are seeing companies who were used to our source digital marketing turn into marketing powerhouses with ongoing engagement on all of their touchpoints.

I think one of our main benefits is our very simple implementation; a transparent pricing model and providing a balance between easy deployment for novice users and advanced customisation options for bigger brands and power users.

What’s the most important thing you have learned from working on BrandBox?

The importance of product market fit and the power of agile for the whole organisation.

For instance, it’s often better to launch a feature and then re-iterate than not launch at all. It also means that you have to accept that your product is never finished; it is a constant process of learning, adapting and improving but, that’s what makes it so amazing.

Also, the power of practice what you preach is something we value so we now use BrandBox internally for our sprint reviews.

➤ Brandbox