Lead Generation

Direct Marketing Campaign – Brandon Consulting

233 Accounts, 16 Quotes Requested, 7x ROI

The Situation

Brandon Consulting are the branch of Brandon Global IT that deliver cyber security solutions exclusively to the Credit Union sector in Ireland. This is a very well defined market with a clear number of market constituents governed through regulations published by the Central Bank of Ireland.

Brandon Consulting had developed a strong presence in this niche and had ongoing relationships with a number of Credit Union clients. The issue they faced concerned generating demand from the market for cyber security services that met and exceeded their cyber security obligations.

In addition there was a need to generate consistent demand throughout the year in order for effective capacity planning.

The Solution

In order to achieve this a three-pronged direct marketing campaign was developed consisting of direct mail, email and telephone follow-up.

While recent trends have been toward email marketing, a traditional mail campaign was conceived in order to stand out from competitors. The mailer consisted of a personal letter (with time-sensitive offer), corporate brochure and gift pen to each organization in the target market. An e-shot was launched in conjunction with this to increase the reach of the campaign.

Mailers were staggered at 50 per week to allow enough time for the sales team to follow up with a telephone call.

Benefits

The campaign generated huge interest which resulted in the mailing process slowing down to allow the sales team to focus on live opportunities.

From all the interest, 16 quotes were received which lead to 7x Return on Marketing Investment (compared with a 4x RoI target).

Social Media Strategy – Facebook – DNG

24k local reach, 1,777 followers, 72% of web traffic

DNG John O’Brien is a real estate agent and property consultant based in the North-East of Ireland. Given the unique nature of the business customers could include landlords, renters, property buyers and sellers – both domestic and commercial. Consistent engagement with these segments is crucial to finding new opportunities and growing the business.

The Solution

This broad audience means that social media is a perfect fit for their marketing messaging and to build an engaged audience. In particular Facebook was chosen as the core focus of social media efforts due to the large, demographic-spanning audience and higher rates of engagement over other platforms.

A content level of 10 posts per week was used as a benchmark for consistency, mixing general industry news with posts of properties for rent and sale. To streamline the process a social media tool called Buffer was used. This allowed all posts for the week to be ‘queued’ at once, and cross-posted to LinkedIn all from one platform.

Facebook Insights illustrated how various posts have performed, the demographics of the page followers and comparison of key metrics against competitors. The knock-on benefits of social media were tracked using Google Analytics on the company website.

Benefits

Engaged Local Audience

There are almost 1,300 followers at the time of writing, accumulated over a two month period. Having a large, engaged local audience means that DNG can use it as a point of differentiation when trying to attract property sellers and landlords over competitors.

Return On Investment

As performance can be effectively tracked between Facebook and the website it is possible to measure the increase in awareness, interest and leads attributable to this project. This makes it see the ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment).

Lead Generation

Facebook is now responsible for direct leads for DNG John O’Brien which come in through the Facebook Messenger system. In addition 72% of traffic now originates from social media, meaning that the majority of leads that come in through the site are also attributable to social media, and Facebook in particular.

Web Design & Inbound Marketing – Brandon Global

8 blogs per month, 110% traffic increase, 546 LinkedIn followers

Following on from the collateral development and brand realignment project at Brandon a new website was required. The current website was not fit for purpose in terms of design, content and scope to build a digital marketing and inbound strategy around.

You can view the previous website here.

The Solution

Upon assessing the situation, it was decided that two new websites would best fit the business strategy – one for Brandon Global IT and one for Brandon Consulting. As time was of the essence Squarespace was chosen as the web platform due to its clean, minimalist design, its scalability and because it offers the latest technical features.

When the static content on the site was developed a number of lead generating landing pages were set up on the site. These included an IT Security Self-Assessment, IT Support Dublin / Galway, a cyber security ebook, an IT quote page among others.

In addition a content plan was developed that included eight blogs per month designed to attract larger numbers of more targeted traffic to the website. This content was then posted on the company page on LinkedIn.

In the background Google Analytics was integrated following best practices such as spam filtering, view setups, Google Tag Manager and account integrations.

The Benefits

Project Lead Time

Overall lead time for site deployment was just over two month. This reflects the streamlined nature of using Squarespace as a web platform.

Cost-Effectiveness & Scalability

There is just one set fee for hosting which allows Brandon to add as much content and media to their website without worrying about hosting costs escalating.

Not only that but Squarespace takes care of technical updates which keeps the site at the forefront of the latest developments with minimal effort. For example, AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages) have become a major ranking factor for Google’s mobile users. Squarespace blogs were automatically updated to leverage AMP.

Traffic Increase

Since taking over webmaster duties for Brandon site traffic has increased by 110%. This is deeply correlated  with our commitment to content publishing and means that visitors more closely resemble our buyer personas.

LinkedIn Followership

When I took over the LinkedIn account for Brandon they had 484 followers. Since implementing the content strategy, and incentivising Brandon staff to share company content, our followers grew to 1,030.

Email Marketing – New Vend

100 Clients, 52% Open Rate, 24% Click Rate

New Vend are a supply chain and wholesale business that operates across Ireland. The company enjoys strong growth and a satisfied customer base thanks to their innovative business model.

However, any time there was a change in retail prices or other messages that they needed to communicate  they relied on Microsoft Outlook to email their customers. This wasn’t ideal for a number of reasons; it was slow, cumbersome and management at New Vend didn’t have visibility into open rates, and click-through rates.

The Solution

I worked with New Vend to set them up with a purpose built email marketing service. Mailchimp was used as the email provider as they provide a reasonable freemium pricing plan that allows up to 2,000 contacts at no cost.

I compiled, cleaned and uploaded their client data to Mailchimp, segmenting by type and location to allow for highly targeted communications. I designed a branded template for use for pricing updates which included tracked hyperlinks to the New Vend website.

Once the service was set up I trained the Sales Director on how to use the software, meaning he can send updates to customers as needed without having to rely on an external provider.

Benefits

No Ongoing Fee

Due to the cost-effective nature of Mailchimp’s pricing plan, and that New Vend have been trained in it’s use, there is no ongoing cost to the company of using this solution.

Time-effective

As well as that, Mailchimp is a streamlined service for this type of task and so represents a much more productive use of time than using Outlook, Gmail or other traditional email service.

Feedback

The management team now know exactly which of their clients has opened the message, and who hasn’t. Moreover, any contacts that have clicked through to the website for more info are also tracked.

Event Marketing – Flow Group

2 training days, 20k targeted outreach, 100 attendees

Flow Group is an international HR development and consulting company that has been helping organisations to become more effective for over a decade.

Flow have a strong existing customer base, with repeat business representing the majority of their annual revenue. However, their concern was that this would stagnate, and inhibit future growth of the company.

Our Solution

I directed digital marketing efforts as part of a wider project to assist Flow with the promotion and management of an upcoming training day. Our focus was on expanding their customer base and ensuring high attendance at the event. Our business development plan consisted of three broad marketing strategies:

Direct Marketing

I implemented an email campaign, consisting of 5 e-shots over a 3 month period. The emails had a mix of educational and promotional content to educate the target market as well as attract attendees. We followed this up with a telemarketing campaign into the prospect list.

LinkedIn Advertising

I managed a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign on LinkedIn, aimed at our researched buyer personas. The adverts drove targeted traffic directly to the Eventbrite page.

Social Media

In conjunction with the adverts, I set up a LinkedIn page for Flow, grew their followers and published content in the build up to the training day.

The Benefits

Attendance/New Customers

There were 50 attendees at the training day, with targets surpassed for both new and existing customers.

Brand Awareness

Our integrated email marketing and PPC online advertising campaign drove recognition of the Flow brand with almost 20,000 impressions and 300 clicks from the target market.

Social Strategy

A formal LinkedIn strategy was initiated, with a company page set up and training and advice provided on how to turn it into a sales tool.

Best Practices

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and direct marketing processes were brought into the company, and internal staff are now better prepared for future campaigns.

The initial event exceeded all KPIs such that we ran a second event for Flow four months later which also garnered full attendance.