Click here for Part I, Part II & Part III

Helping Baltimore locals create the perfect night out

Philip DiMuro is the CEO and co-founder of Loople. Loople is a free app for iPhone and Android that helps users find local drink and food specials. With Loople, users can create the atmosphere for their ideal night out by filtering restaurants and bars by drink types, seating availability, live music, and more. Philip came up with the seed of the idea while working for the Boston Beer Company, and launched the app last year with the help of his co-founder Dave Phelan. As of September 2016, Loople is only available in Baltimore, although the team plans to expand if the app proves successful.

Philip DiMuro spoke with citybizlist publisher Edwin Warfield for this interview.

EDWIN WARFIELD: Can you walk us through Loople’s marketing strategy?

PHILIP DIMURO: The marketing strategy with Loople has been a grassroots marketing strategy. Essentially, we’ve always focused on building partnerships with local businesses, so we have a few of the social sports leagues like B’more Social, Kickball League of Baltimore, that are good partners. We have Charm City Trivia, which is the largest trivia company in Baltimore as a partner. We’ve worked with some of the largest festivals—events have been huge for us: Brew at the Zoo, Oktoberfest, and we’re even working with Baltimore Craft Beer Festival that’s happening in October. Leveraging things in our app helped them, so when it comes to the beer festivals, we can put pin drops into our map of the tents and the breweries they have, and color-code them by where they are in Maryland, and then use us as the free map for the event. So, we get people to download us coming into the event, and then see the use of the event, and then also use us afterwards because they see the long term value of it.

Q. What about your monetization strategy?

A. With alcohol brands is how our go-to-market strategy has been with monetization right now. The model is that these businesses have large budgets. I used to come from this with Boston Beer. I would have a local marketing budget that would go towards everything from sampling to actually buying radio ads for a brand and trying to promote events we are doing in the market. I was saying: “Why do we have these older solutions like radio, which aren’t really targeted? Why can’t we provide a better form of targeting for these alcohol brands, so we can reach consumers when they are already interested in going out and enjoying these types of products?” That was what we leveraged first and that’s how we closed our first two clients. Diageo and MillerCoors are two of the paid partners on our platform, and we’re continuing to take new meetings weekly at this point to bring new people in in the fall that will help.

One of the campaigns were running, I think, is an excellent example of how we try and find a balance between an advertisement that you see traditionally out there versus an actual value add for using our app. Right now the value add with this campaign we’re running with MillerCoors is that they have a partnership with Uber nationwide, where if you go out and you spend $20 at a local bar or restaurant in Baltimore and enjoy $20 of food or drink, in partnership with MillerCoors, they allow you to send in a picture of your receipt to a specific number that we advertise on Loople. What you’ll get is a $10 Uber ride credit to get home, and if you’re ever going to most businesses in Baltimore, even with it being a little less expensive of a city, you’re still probably spending $20, and you’re most likely going to be taking an Uber there. So, it’s an excellent value add for a consumer that is also driving visibility and driving engagement for MillerCoors.

Right now, a lot of the media that they are buying has been in staying top of mind with the consumer. It’s a very competitive market nowadays, and the difficulty is being memorable with your consumer so that when that consumer does decide to go into a bar or restaurant, or local liquor store, they can pick and choose in those few moments the one that stayed on the top of their mind. So, we sell our campaigns currently as impression-based businesses, but as we continue to scale, we believe we can monetize and we can develop a larger revenue model that’s focused on playing into the actual return on investment, or we know how many people came in and picked up the specific coupon that we ran just on the Loople platform. That is absolutely where we’re planning to go with this.

Q. Can you give us a one-minute pitch for Loople?

A. First, we’ll do the early pitch, which is for the consumer: For anyone out there that is interested in finding out the local happenings of the Baltimore bar and restaurant scene, you can download our app on iPhone or Android devices. What you’ll be able to do is see thousands of local specials that are already running in your city and be able to go out and enjoy it with friends and family, and have a better night out, or better evening out, when you choose to go. On the other side, for alcohol brands: if you’re looking to reach more consumers in a targeted fashion, and you’re looking to work with a real partner who is trying to help increase visibility, drive traffic to businesses, and ultimately increase sales, we’d love to talk to you. We’re a plan for your business.

Connect with Philip on LinkedIn

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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