The Marketing Secrets Behind the 1st Polish App Development Company

Walt Disney, Nestle, Unilever, Giphy seem to have something in common, besides being world famous.

They worked with Droids On Roids.

A Wroclaw app development company.

Pretty amazing I would say.

Featured in Forbes’ “30 under 30” or Deloitte’s Fast Tech CEE 2017, the Droids on Roids are in very good shape.

So, what lays behind 4-year revenue growth of 761%?

We’ll try to find you the answers.

We’ll dwell into employer branding and marketing strategies to see what led Droids On Roids to build applications for world known brands.

TABLE OF CONTENT

• Droids On Roids - Short Overview of the App Development Company
• Droids On Roids Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered
• Brand Awareness at the Droids on Roids
• The Droids on Roids Website and Conversion Rate Optimization
• The Droids on Roids Traffic Acquisition
• Content Marketing
• The Droids on Roids Social Presence
• The Droids On Roids Community Involvement
• Employer branding and hiring
• Marketing and Process Automation at the Droids On Roids
• Wrap Up

Younger than most of the companies we’ve analyzed, the Droids On Roids managed to outsmart competitors and climb to Clutch tops.

What kind of energy fueled this evolution?

Watch and learn.

Droids On Roids - Short Overview of the App Development Company

We call ourselves "Droids" because we enjoy being down to earth and straightforward with people. In this case, “Roids” is our passion for creating the best possible products for our Clients and that is why we might be the Droids On Roids you are looking for. - Wojciech Szwajkiewicz, CEO at Droids On Roids

But what do their clients say about the Droids on Roids? See next:

• high-level programming talent, attention to detail
• attentive customer service, proactive and responsive
• amazing project management skills and overcoming challenges
• top notch communication
• creativity in developing applications

So, you wanna hang out with Nestle or Disney, or have lunch with Unilever?

Let’s see how these guys do it.

Follow me to find out how:

• Content marketing plays out for the Droids on Roids
• Employer branding is at the core of the business
• Community involvement is a must to get your name heard
• You can benefit from open source as a marketing channel

Droids On Roids Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

Back in 2017, there was only one person behind Droids on Roids marketing. By the end of the year, the team reached 4.

So, it seems that Kasia Ubysz, their Marketing Manager is really an inbound fan. This explains the search traffic representing almost 70% of the website’s overall monthly traffic (according to Semrush). And that’s really something.

We’ll go deeper in the topic in the following minutes, when we’ll reverse engineer the Droids on Roids marketing strategies.

Brand Awareness at the Droids on Roids

Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer ― Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

So, every company should make some buzz around it, via networking, events, in social media, awards. Anything that might enable positive word-of-mouth.

It’s no easy job, this one.

The Droids on Roids Awards

The company is the first mobile app developer in Poland as per Clutch.

Wojciech Szwajkiewicz and Tomasz Muter – CEO & Vice-President of Droids On Roids – are included on the prestigious “30 under 30” list announced in October 2017, in the Polish Forbes magazine.

Only two weeks later, the Droids On Roids were awarded by Deloitte: a proud 17 rank in the Technology Fast 50 Central Europe 2017.

The Droids on Roids Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

Services, technologies, case studies, portfolio, social proof - everything is there, surrounded by an eye-catching design.

But is the website answering potential clients’ basic questions?

What do you do?

Mobile & web app development. Building apps for the US and UK.

How can I trust you?

Here are my most important clients, their testimonials, the open source libraries we created and the awards received so far.

How can I contact you?

Via chat or asking for an estimation. In order to be more convincing, and increase their chances of conversion they are making a promise to the potential client: free estimation within 3 days.

They use pop-ups when the homepage visitor shows exit intent. The pop up leads the visitor to the blog, so they try to move the visitor down in the funnel, educate him.

Next, when trying to exit the blog, there’s another pop-up, trying to move the user from the awareness stage of the journey to the consideration one.

Regarding the conversion rate optimization, they have just installed Hotjar, so they intend to better understand their website user behavior, and probably optimize around that.

It seems that Droids on Roids has experimented with marketing automation, first with Hubspot, and more recently with user.com

The Droids on Roids Traffic Acquisition

Direct and search traffic account for almost 90% of the website traffic.

Just like the case of most of the B2B software companies, I'm suspecting direct traffic might be due to:

• branding efforts within offline events
• referral traffic not tagged (Clutch included)
• sales reps activities (they have two new business developers in the team)

Content Marketing

The main blog categories are business, scrum, UI, UX, Android, iOS, news, java, kotlin.

The technical themes are mainly covered by devs.

If we take a look at their top pages, we get this:

Earlier we just said that they are into mobile & web app development. Well, their most traffic comes via blog posts tackling android development.

The homepage also gets an important amount of traffic. That correlates with the 30%+ of direct website traffic.

And if we peek at their most important keywords:

we see “app development”, “android” related keywords.

So, they are really focused on their content strategy and it’s working well.

Now, let’s move on to case studies.

Case studies are also part of their content strategy.

The latest thing for Droids on Roids is the ebook on Flutter. Here's the lead magned they did:

It seems the ebook was a hit, as per this post:

So, they've got 1200 downloads, great reviews from Flutter responsibles inside Google and 1st global position for "Flutter pros and cons" and "apps made with Flutter". Great job, guys!

Moving on, the thing that caught my eye, as I haven’t seen it done by other software houses is a product design workshop:

When potential clients aren’t “warm” enough to sign the contract, the workshop might be the perfect way to introduce yourself to the client and let him taste a bit from the experience of working with you.

So...a potential funnel for the Droids could be: organic traffic to blog post -> ebook download -> workshop enrolment->sale.

Backlinks to Support Content Marketing

Looking good: do-follow backlinks from websites with domain rating above 70. The websites are technical or promoting jobs and events.

One could recognize here: Reddit, Behance, Medium, Stackoverflow, Meetup.com.

The Droids on Roids Paid Traffic Acquisition

Keywords they bid on relate to mobile app development, which is consistent with their content strategy also.

But they seem they’ve taken on a new challenge: IoT.

As per the display ads, the positioning is original: a 4-person development team at the cost of max $15.6k. Or Mobiles Developers, Tester and Scrum Master: 3 for 1 price.

At this very moment, the company uses Facebook sponsored posts for job hiring promotion.

The Droids on Roids Social Media Presence

As we've already been used to, Facebook is mostly used for employer branding, and LinkedIn messaging is addressing mainly potential clients.

The Droids on Roids Facebook Page

2900+ Facebook followers get regular updates from Droids on Roids regarding events they’re hosting, blog posts they’ve created, team events, jobs available.

Facebook’s posts are headed mostly towards posing as a great employer, with a great team and office.

Because most of the posts are people-oriented, this might explain the engagement rate that is higher than for other software houses we’ve analyzed.

Instagram

The Instagram account is clearly employer branding focused. This is the case for all the software houses we’ve analyzed so far.

It’s all about the:

• events they organize, attend to

• creative people

• having fun at the job
• the amazing office and cozy environment
• celebrating success

• hiring opportunities

• company culture

Linkedin

On their Linkedin profile the Droids share jobs available, awards they’ve received, events they’ve been to or organized. So the focus goes both the client and the employee way.

The posts are happening around twice a month.

The blog articles are being promoted. A business should never miss a chance to discover new audiences for the blog content: be it social media, Medium, Dribbble, there’s nothing to lose.

Twitter

The stories on Linkedin or Facebook are encountered on Twitter also, the messaging is being adapted to the specifics on each platform.

Unlike Monterail, the messaging here is not really client-oriented, it is mostly about employer branding.

Events, jobs, blog articles, it’s all on Twitter.

Dribbble

The engaging on Dribbble is simply fantastic. They’re getting close to Netguru’s Dribbble stats.

They really know how to show off their design skills, be it android, iOS, front-end or product design.

Open Source Libraries as a Marketing Channel

Remember this screenshot?

I hope it didn’t go unnoticed.

This is one of my favorite Droids on Roids initiatives on the marketing side.

They’ve put a lot of work in developing open source libraries but it finally paid out.

I mean, who gets to say that they’ve impressed Facebook or Whatsapp?

This really brought value to the user and managed to exhibit a lot of development skills.

So, if you're doing this, make it stand out!

The Droids On Roids Community Involvement

These guys are really into networking, from organizing to hosting and sponsoring, they’re everywhere.

The droids are coming! They are pretty much everywhere, educating developers and designers during events such as:

• Meetups for iOS developers or designers (Dribbbble meetups)
• Meetups for Androids developers
• iOS and Androids bootcamps

• Lectures around iOS and Android development

• Sponsoring tech meetups

Employer branding and hiring

No Glassdoor profile found, yet. There are some statements in one of their blog posts, but too biased to be reliable.

They’re looking to expand the team and they’re being open in terms of salary and perks.

It’s interesting that they’re making a Golang turn, the Google-backed programming language.

They really love their office cool look and are using this as a magnet for future employees.

No sacrifice is enough to get the right dude/dudette for the job, they’re willing to cover relocation fees.

There is so much focus on employer branding because the right talent is hard to find, competition is fierce, the average tenure being around 2 years.

Conclusions

Now, what seems to be the success recipe for the Droids on Roids?

• Building the right team - of developers, marketers, management
• Build a strong company culture
• Excel at project management skills
• Have a strategic approach to content marketing
• Meetups, conferences, you gotta be there!

“Work hard, play hard” seems to be the secret of Droids On Roids.

But the story doesn’t end here, in Wroclaw.

We are aiming for a bigger picture. A picture where software houses in Poznan, Wroclaw, Warsaw and Krakow are fighting for supremacy, where Netguru, Monterail, Droids on Roids and other knocking down barriers.

Wroclaw’s Software Houses Are Making a Statement in IT Outsourcing

We see a very clear trend in the software development space. The top companies use the power of Inbound marketing to grow their customer acquisition and business.

They don’t chase customer, customers chase them.

How did they get here using marketing? They build stellar content about technology and their successful case study.

We’ve done the heavy lifting for you analyzing all the aspects of marketing all the top software companies do to grow.

Sounds simple but sophisticated.

Take these insights, filter them for your business and buyer persona, then implement them in your business.

We’ve learned in our previous blog posts that 3 of the top European companies in software consulting and development are from Poznan, Poland.

And all 3 of them use content marketing and inbound marketing to blast a bunch of relevant traffic to their website using content marketing.

Traffic that converts in customers or future employees.

For our next blog post series, we go South from Poznan.

In our road trip in discovering the marketing strategies of the best software houses in Poland we’ve arrived at Little Venice, Wroclaw.

Here we look at Monterail, Droids on Roids, Divante, Tooploox. Probably it doesn’t ring a bell yet, but they’re on the verge of writing some history in IT outsourcing.

In IT Outsourcing Wroclaw is aiming to lead the way. Can Wroclaw’s IT outsourcing companies cope up with the challenge?

In our 5 blog posts series, we’ll decipher how Wroclaw’s IT Outsourcing companies grow and do marketing, community management, and employer branding.

Let’s uncover their stories together.

TABLE OF CONTENT

• Wroclaw’s Assets for a New Era of Growth
• Wroclaw's Software Houses
• Monterail - Delivering Meaningful Software
• Droids on Roids - World-class Software House
• Tooploox - We Build Great Products
• Divante - eCommerce Software House
• Summing Up

I felt a great disturbance in the Force as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced - Obi-Wan Kenobi

That’s disruption right there. It’s leaving a mark on every single industry. And if you want to grow your business, you’ll need to embrace change and drive innovation.

IT Outsourcing is no exception.

Wroclaw IT outsourcing companies are turning their backs to old-school ways of doing business.

Come with me on a journey of agony and ecstasy, a journey where we’ll meet the businesses that want to write the future of IT outsourcing.

Wroclaw’s Assets for a New Era of Growth

First, let’s see what makes Wroclaw so sexy in the eyes of IT investors?

• Income tax exemptions: regional public aid is granted for supporting new investments and new jobs creation
• Nationwide leader in R&D centers: companies that are developing here Atos, BNY Mellon, Credit Suisse, HP, Nokia Solutions, SII, and Volvo
• Local talent pool: Wroclaw University of Science and Technology offers students 50+ programs. 45k+ students enrolled in technical subjects in 2015, according to PWC report.

• Wroclaw is the most attractive Polish city for relocation, as seen by native Polish employees, especially top specialists and managers. The criteria for this top referred to the aspect of the cities, career opportunities, employer activities, employer-institutions relationships.

• Lots of business and tech events (startup weekends, conferences etc)
• 60+ tech meetup groups, with members ranging from 100 to 1600+

Wroclaw's Software Houses

According to Stratistics, the IT Outsourcing market is expected to reach $481 billion by 2022.

The growth is fueled by new business models and new technologies: cloud computing, VR, AI, blockchain.

In our growth saga, we’ll try to figure out how Wroclaw software houses are moving a needle in IT outsourcing and if they have adapted their software solutions to the new market demands. Also, we’ll unfold their marketing strategies and analyze their employer branding.

Monterail - Delivering Meaningful Software

Website: https://www.monterail.com/

No. employees: 80+

Revenue: 3M+ (Owler estimations)

Technologies: Vue.js, Ruby on Rails, NodeJS, React, AngularJS,

Services: web development, custom software development, mobile app development, product design, IoT development

Verticals: business, healthcare, financial

Key clients: Merck, Solarflare, Cooleaf, Loyco, Gutwin, Tailored, University of Wroclaw, Xchanging, Teambook, WFC, Innovestment

Offices: Wroclaw (HQ)

Reviews: 4.8 - Clutch (13 reviews), 4.7 - Glassdoor (11 reviews)

Co-founders: Szymon Boniecki and Bartosz Rega

Featured two times in Deloitte’s CEE Tech Fast 50 in 2017 and 2016, Monterail is among Wroclaw ’s most dynamic software houses.

In our next blog post of the current series, we’ll go beyond the introduction, we’ll unfold the marketing secrets behind Monterail’s growth and understand how employer branding is built.

We’ll go deep intro content strategies, social media and community engagement.

But, until then, you can take a peek inside Monterail’s company culture here:

Deloitte recognizes Monterail as one of the fastest growing tech companies in Central Europe

Droids on Roids - World-class Software House

Website: https://www.thedroidsonroids.com/

No. employees: 40+

Technologies: Android, iOS, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, React, MongoDB, Vue.js, Express.js

Services: mobile app development, web development, product design

Verticals: entertainment, business, consumer products and services

Key clients: Giphy, Oh Mi Bod, Skybuds, Loop, Electric Objects, LiveChat, Złote Wyprzedaże, Disney, Nestle, Unilever

Offices: Wroclaw (HQ), London, San Francisco

Reviews: 4.8 - Clutch (20 reviews)

CEO: Wojtek Szwajkiewicz

The company brags with being recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies from Poland. Droids On Roids is ranked in 5th place for Poland and 2nd for the Lower Silesia region, in the category “Income between 5-50 mln PLN”.

Their income has increased by 761% over the last 5 years (according to the same Forbes magazine) and they shook hands with big clients such as Nestle, Unilever or Disney.

They organize bootcamps and meetups and strive to build their employer brand.

They invest heavily in content, that’s why their monthly website traffic is around 75k (according to Similar Web), not bad for a B2B, right?

Tooploox - We Build Great Products

Website:https://www.tooploox.com

No. employees: 100+

Revenue: EUR 3M+ (2016, via Financial Times)

Technologies: Android, iOS, Python, React, C++

Services: AI, data science, blockchain, IoT, mobile app development, web development, product design

Verticals: education, tourism, health, e-commerce

Key clients: TEDx, Homebook, Happy Cow, Domodi

Offices: Wroclaw (HQ), Warsaw, Gdansk, Berlin

Reviews: 4.8 - Clutch (3 reviews), 4.6 - Glassdoor (23 reviews)

Co-founders: Pawel Solyga and Damian Walczak

Tooploox ranked 4th in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 CEE in 2017 with an impressive 2827% revenue growth.

With a 67% increase in employees in the last 2 years, the company has big plans. Looking at their open job positions Tooploox is embracing the AI future.

This is just a hint of our in depth-analysis, following this blog post. We’ll tackle employee branding, content and social media strategies, and try to figure out what lies behind their inspiring growth.

Furthermore, here’s an interview featuring Tooploox, Droidsonroids and Monterail’s founders/CEOs where you’ll understand their culture and what made these Wroclaw software houses grow.

Q&A session with the founders of the fastest growing tech companies in Europe according to Deloitte's Technology Fast 50: Monterail, Droids on Roids, Tooploox

Divante - eCommerce Software House

Website: https://divante.co/

No. employees: 150+

Technologies: Magento, Angular, MongoDB, Node.js, Hadoop, Symfony 2, Progressive Web Apps, Modern JS, Vue.js, React

Services: B2B Commerce, eCommerce, Mobile, UX Design, Magento developers, Magento consulting, Magento hosting, Pimcore development, OroCommerce development, Frontend development

Verticals: automotive, energy, financial services, e-commerce, telekom

Key clients: Continental, ING Bank, Tchibo, Intersport, Santander, Knauf, T-Mobile

Offices: Wroclaw (HQ)

Reviews: 4.6 - Clutch (10 reviews), 4 - Glassdoor (1 review)

CEO: Tom Karwatka

So, let me repeat this once more: Continental, ING Bank, Tchibo, Intersport, Santander, Knauf, T-Mobile. Can you feel the envy?

With premium clients, monthly website traffic over 45k, and revenue growing a minimum of about 30% year on year, Divante is an inspiration.

It also got featured in Deloitte’s Fast 500 EMEA in 2017, with four-year revenue growth of 259%.

In our next blog post, we will look into reverse engineering Divante’s marketing and employer branding.

We’ll dive into how traffic acquisition and conversion rate optimization are managed.

If you want to learn more about how Divante managed to hack the enterprise sales process, you can watch Tom Karwatka speaking at the Web summit 2017:

Tom Karwatka Presentation @ Web Summit 2017: hacking the enterprise sales process

Summing Up

Wrocław is a city which is becoming increasingly entrepreneurial. It started to evolve over time towards business based on specialized knowledge. The next step to be taken, based on PWC’s report, is an innovation-based economy.

Wrocław’s innovative potential is primarily the high-quality human capital as well as world class business representatives.

Wrocław’s specialization is primarily IT services, so there’s no surprise that companies like Monterail, Droids on Roids, Tooploox, and Divante have risen to Deloitte and Clutch tops.

Spoiler Alert!

Before going ahead with reading the rest of our Wroclaw software houses series, let me unfold some of my findings:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of open source. Take Divante for example, with its Open Loyalty and Vue Storefront it managed to impress Facebook and Whatsapp.
2. Long form content matters: case studies (Droids on Roids), research papers (Tooploox), reports (The State of Vue.js by Monterail), ebooks (Divante). Blog posts are merely for the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, but you need to move the potential buyer down the funnel. And long-form content can do just that and establish you as a trustworthy and knowledgeable partner.
3. Choose your weapon, pick a niche. Tooploox goes with AI, Divante with e-commerce, Monterail established itself as the Vue.js guru.
4. Build your employer branding through social media channels and community involvement (Divante, Monterail, Tooploox, Droids on Roids)
5. Not enough talent pool? build it the goddamn pool: offer fellowships (like Tooploox), host workshops, hackathons (Divante), meetups or even hold your own conference (like Monterail’s Vue Conference)
6. Haven’t found a tech-skilled content writer, have your developers team involved in content writing! Monterail, the Droids on Roids, Tooploox and Divante are doing it.
7. Tools and marketing automation. Be it Hubspot (Monterail), Pipedrive (Tooploox), Hotjar(Tooploox) automation and marketing tools can save you time and money
8. Have a content marketing strategy: from content creation to promotion, be consistent and test a lot. Just check Monterail’s campaign on Vue.js, they’ve totally nailed it.
   

Now, let’s remember Wroclaw is not the only Polish city with potential for IT innovation. Poznan, Krakow, Warsaw are on the list too.

Because we don’t wanna fall in the “can't see the forest for the trees” trap, we made a macro analysis too, comparing the Polish, Ukrainian, and Romanian IT outsourcing markets in our Ultimate Guide To IT Outsourcing Companies in Central Eastern Europe.

There are a lot of stories worth reading in our IT outsourcing saga, so stay tuned.