Solway Printers
Tim Solway of Solways Printers came to me in need of some help.Tim had been running his printing company for over 30 years and clearly loved his business. However, Tim told me what I already know.
Tim said, “the printing industry is in tatters, no one is buying print anymore, all marketing has gone digital and printers are going out of business on a daily basis.”
Tim continued, “I need some help with my marketing. We are really good at what we do, but not so good at marketing what we do. We need to get an extra £20,000 per month into this business and we need to do it fast!
And by the way – I’ve got no money, or very little to invest in marketing.” I told Tim that my aim was to help him double his business in 12 months and he laughed! We didn’t do it in 12 months. We did it in 9 months. In this case study, I am going to explain how!
The first step was to pick up the low hanging fruit. I asked Tim: “Do you have people who have asked for a quote over the past 12 months, but for whatever reason, they have not converted?”
“Yes, ” Tim said, “lots of them.”
I asked if he had been thorough in following these guys up. “No, ” he said. “I’ve been busy!” I then suggested that he should call each and every one of his quotes up and try to convert them into sales.
We came up with a great script and Tim made 10 calls the following day. During these calls, he got £8,500 worth of sales, as well as four referrals into other businesses and we turned those leads into over £20,000 worth of business.
Not a bad first day!
Tim and his team continued to rake in those easy sales for several months.
The Third Step
Step three was a new website which we designed for him – you can’t be London’s leading quality printing company with a crap website (Tim’s words, not mine). Once the new site was live, we set about driving traffic to the site using SEO, PPC, email marketing and Social Media. Then we worked on improving the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) of the site. We were now in month six and were really getting some significant new business in, so we decided to take a bit of a step back and look at Tim’s clients. Who are they and what did they want?
The Final Step
I suggested to Tim that he needed to be more than ‘just a printer’. He needed to position himself and his business. Tim said that Solways was ‘London’s leading firm of quality printers’. He was very strong in his belief about this, and so we agreed to go with it! WE POSITIONED SOLWAYS PRINTERS AS ‘LONDON’S LEADING QUALITY PRINTERS’ So we decided to target the quality market.
Solways became famous for their quality 3 x normal thickness business cards (I know, I use them and every time I give them to anyone, they comment on the quality and thickness). They started to target businesses, industries and organisations who wanted a top-quality product and were willing to pay top prices for both the product and for the professional advice that Solways Printers provided. Tim and I have become firm friends over the past five years. He has taken me to the Cricket at Lords several of those years and he has recommended me to several of his clients and contacts.
Tim is very kind in his comments about me and how much I helped him and managed to turn his business around, but the truth of the matter is: What I told him was not so difficult, but what Tim did that others didn’t was that he took massive and consistent action. He picked up the phone, got on LinkedIn and wrote and sent out those emails. He invested in PPC Advertising and in a new
Demand Logic
When Gilbert Lennox-King of Demand Logic met up with me, he was the newly appointed Director of Business Development and Strategy at Demand Logic. Demand Logic is a simple, powerful and fast software enabling businesses to improve the fitness of their buildings – ‘Fitbit for buildings’. Demand Logic uses data analytics and an online collaboration platform to find performance improvements in
commercial buildings.
http://www.demandlogic.co.uk/
Gilbert said, “I have been given a remit by my fellow Directors to increase sales. My aim is to increase the company’s lead generation from 15 to 30 leads per month and so work towards doubling the size of the business” (Double your leads and you double your turnover). Having decided he needed independent help and advice, he joined my ‘RESULTS INNER CIRCLE Group.' JOIN MY INNER CIRCLE TODAY!website.
Initial Marketing Advice
As usual, I started by asking Gilbert what he was currently doing and how well it was working. We discussed some really ‘quick wins’ and ideas to improve:
The amount of business the company generated from current clients. The number of referrals they were getting. Online marketing results.
We met twice in those first two weeks. The group meeting followed, on the 26th September. At the start of each group meeting, each member got the chance to stand up and clearly state what actions they had recently taken and what results were achieved. When it came to Gilbert’s turn, he announced:
“We joined Steve’s group on 1st September 2017 with the aim of getting help to increase our lead generation from 15 to 30 leads per month. However, we have not done that!! Within 3 weeks of working with Steve, we have increased our lead count from 15 to 45!”
RPC Cleaning
After meeting RPC’s founding owner – Ray Coleshill – at an exhibition, we were delighted to agree on a marketing plan and plan of work to energise this wellestablished cleaning company, which enabled them to grow the business over the next 10 years. RPC remained our oldest client until Ray retired and over the past 10 years, we have helped them to:
- Create two new websites.
- Develop several videos.
- Produce weekly blog posts.
- Sending regular email communications to clients and prospects.
- Implement social media to reach and engage with new audiences.
- Free up valuable sales time, resulting in more opportunities to sell RPC’s services.
- Secure hundreds of new clients and exceed sales targets.
The First Step
RPC Cleaning, while well known and relatively successful, knew that, with the growth of many other competitors in the cleaning marketplace, they needed to do something different to get
themselves noticed and attract new customers. Ray explained that his goal was to generate new commercial and domestic customers within a 12-month timeframe, and furthermore, he wanted to ensure they signed up for repeat business and tried out his specialist cleaning services too.
In addition, he explained that he wanted to concentrate his time on selling/training his team and not on doing the marketing, which was not his area of expertise. This is where we were able to step in.
How we helped RPC We devised a new digital marketing strategy, which encompassed a refreshed website and involved driving traffic to the site using SEO, PPC, email marketing and Social Media, along with a short video of Ray promoting his company and some regular blog posts giving some useful hints and tips on cleaning. Overall, this integrated very well with RPC’s e-commerce strategy.
The Final Result?
As a result of the new e-marketing strategy we implemented, RPC achieved some impressive outcomes:
- Hundreds of new carpet cleaning clients.
- Hundreds of new commercial office cleaning contracts.
- Repeat annual cleaning contracts.
- Expansion of specialist cleaning services.
- Increase in no. of cleaning staff.
100% increase in website visits.