Design and implement a marketing strategy to fully exploit competitive advantage at Air Spectrum Environmental
Benefits
- Positive ROI in 18 months, with no increase in total marketing spend
- 87% more on-profile leads generated in first 12 months
- Website traffic from search engines increase by 36% in first full year of new SEO strategy
- Designed and implemented a new marketing strategy, with robust planning and KPI’s
Background
Air Spectrum Environmental is an international manufacturer and supplier of odour neutralisers and odour control systems, dust suppression and dust control systems, and insect control systems. The business was well established and ambitious to grow.
Challenges
A ‘Marketing MOT’ diagnostic revealed some key challenges for the commercial team. The business had invested in some good quality marketing materials, but marketing activity was very fragmented, with little measurement on how this impacted on sales or profit growth. There was no dedicated in-house marketing resource. The company needed to set clear and coherent marketing objectives, strategy, and plans.
Aardvark Marketing was hired to help the business improve in 5 critical areas:
- Define marketing objectives & create KPIs to track progress monthly
- Develop, agree and implement a marketing strategy
- Devise and follow a marketing plan, with a calendar of activities and costs, reviewed and updated monthly
- Improve customer understanding
- Define and exploit Air Spectrum’s commercial competitive advantage
The Solution
All marketing activity outsourced to external agencies had to have a detailed brief and a full review after the activity to ensure strategic alignment, reduce agency re-work and improve commercial effectiveness.
Detailed individual customer interviews and a full customer survey were implemented to gain deeper understanding of their customers and enable the business to define and exploit their competitive advantage.
All activities were integrated utilising the website as central hub. The business accepted the recommendation to consolidate the existing four websites into a single site, making measurement and lead tracking easier and less expensive to manage. The aim of all marketing activity was to send traffic to the website or to generate a direct enquiry. The website was redesigned to convert visiting traffic into enquiries, supported by the introduction of Online chat. A new process for filtering of enquiries was introduced and follow up activity was allocated to specific people in the team. Digital investment was diverted from paid search (Adwords) to SEO. The measurement and tracking activity showed up opportunities to improve lead generation and conversion rates. A feedback loop, reviewing the quality of website traffic and conversion rates from the site visits, was used to adjust the marketing activity mix and the new website content.
A multi-touch marketing programme was implemented with the aid of a grant which covered 40% of the cost to design and implement the program in the first year, which reduced the overall cost and risk of the new activity.
Regular new content, including case studies, news items and a quarterly newsletter was introduced. Content was distributed with the main focus on the website, Linked In and Twitter.
To enable the business to carry out the new marketing strategy efficiently and effectively, Aardvark marketing acted as trainer and mentor to a new in-house marketing executive.
Results
- Positive ROI in 2018, with no increase in marketing spend (including consultancy costs)
- Lead growth of 87% for second half of 2018 vs. 2017
- 36% increase in search traffic in first full year of new SEO strategy
- Growth in page 1 rankings from 18 keywords to 41 in 12 months
- 225% increase in click-through from Adwords campaign with 33% drop in cost per click
- The new website achieved a record trust score on launch
- Online chat conversion to leads is consistently over 40%