Digital inbound marketing is an effective way to grow sales for any type of business, whether you are a product-based sales company or a more service-oriented business. This case study provides an overview of our work with a specialist technical training provider, explaining how we’ve helped them expand their online awareness, strengthen their business reputation, and grow their turnover.
Customer background
The customer provides training courses and workshops for electricians, specialising in accredited City & Guilds courses, as well as specialist training in areas such as emergency lighting, fire alarm systems, and renewable energy infrastructure. The business serves a wide range of customers, from individuals becoming qualified as electricians for the first time, to upskilling services for independent electricians, and bespoke training solutions for SME contractors and construction businesses. They deliver in-person training from two modern centres in the West Midlands and also have an online learning platform that allows them to offer blended and online training courses.
The challenge
Despite the quality and range of electrical training courses that the customer provided and the respect and credibility they held within their local market, their business name was largely unknown. The problem they had was getting their business name ‘out there’, getting the inbound leads, and closing enough deals to bring their training centres to capacity. This was a classic awareness and visibility issue. The customer had tried various ad hoc marketing approaches but without measurable success, and no coherent strategy. There was also no system in place to consistently follow up on leads and sales opportunities so many enquiries went to waste.
Objectives
The customer came to JDR with two interconnected goals. First, they wanted a coherent marketing strategy that was easy to run, that allowed them to monitor and measure their results and delivered a good ROI. Secondly, they wanted to increase their business and turnover year-on-year, establishing themselves as a nationally recognised name in the electrotechnical training sector.
How we helped
To reach their goals, we put together a custom marketing programme with an emphasis on SEO, Google Ads, and content marketing to increase visibility and web traffic, and a targeted email marketing and call tracking strategy to maximise conversions. Aspects of the service included:
- Premium technical content with four articles written per month and two guides per year
- Search Engine Optimisation to increase organic leads
- Hub spot support and implementation
- Sales email templates
- Google ads set up and management
- Email marketing
- Call tracking, reporting, and analytics
In terms of tangible results, one of their training centres now operates at almost full capacity, which was one of their main goals. Uptake for several of their courses has doubled or even tripled in revenue this financial year compared to last financial year. This has allowed them to achieve a significant company revenue milestone and make ambitious plans for the coming years.
Our general advice and coaching support have also helped the customer to utilise HubSpot to its full capacity and focus on sales leads more systematically. The customer is now in a position to consider recruiting an internal Business Development role to increase deal closures.
Results and progress
Since coming on board in, the customer has seen significant improvement in all their target areas, frequently exceeding initial expectations. For example:
Email marketing
Before the campaign started, the customer had a very hit-and-miss relationship with email marketing, with a small database and low engagement rates. This has now improved to the point where email marketing is one of the customer’s strongest marketing tools, used to increase awareness about the range and variety of courses they offer, as well as encouraging repeat business from existing customers. The average open rate is now around 20%, and the click-through rate has increased over the past year by 1.37%.
SEO and keyword rankings
One of the main issues the customer had was poor visibility on Google for important keywords. This has improved over the past two years, with the customer now ranking for around 1,900 keywords, and the average position in Google going up 58 positions since starting with us.
The customer now ranks highly on Google Page One for several lucrative and highly competitive keywords, including:
- Level 3 electrical course
- Ev charger installation course
- city and guilds level 3 electrical installation course
- EV charging course
- City & guilds electrician courses
- Online electrical courses
After consolidating their search position for these core terms, we introduced a range of additional keywords, for which the customer ranks in position one:
- Commercial electrician courses
- Electrical arc flash training
- Fire alarm courses
- Inspection and testing courses
- Upskilling courses for electricians
On average, the customer received around 30 inbound leads through their website each month before they started with us, now they get over 100 each month.
Content
Although the customer did maintain a company blog before starting with JDR, this was only updated when there was time, and there were often long periods between article publications. One of the main aspects of their campaign was to develop a consistent content marketing strategy that included regular publication of articles and guides. JDR have a strong technical writing team with extensive experience working for electrotechnical clients, allowing the customer’s blogs to speak directly to their target readership and effectively convey their value proposition.
Over the past 12 months, five of the customer’s top 10 landing pages (as in the first page a person visits on the website) are blog articles. The new downloadable guides have also proved their worth as lead magnets, accumulating around 800 downloads so far.
Google Ads
Google Ads has become an important revenue stream for the customer, with 173,000 impressions and 9,000 clicks since the start of the campaign. Encouraged by a consistent ROI, the customer has recent doubled their advertising budget and created new Google Ad campaigns, which have already yielded success.
Customer feedback
The customer has been happy with their progress so far, including the big increases in course uptake, and achieving their significant turnover milestone, which “has always been a big milestone of mine”. We’d like to thank the customer for being a pleasure to work with and look forward to bringing them ever greater success over the coming years.
Find out more
To find out more about our work with small businesses and how we can support your company to achieve its growth goals, please contact JDR today by clicking here.
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