A common misconception about digital marketing is that only mid to large sized businesses, or those with a national reach, stand to benefit from working with a marketing agency. For everyone else, certainly for any business that’s more Sme than sMe, the fees are beyond what you are likely to gain – especially when working with an elite level agency. But as you'll see from this case study, businesses of any size can get results when working with a good marketing agency.
Certainly there are plenty of agencies that predominantly work with large businesses. Not always the largest – those businesses often have in-house teams, but certainly big and established companies with turnovers in the tens or hundreds of millions. However, at JDR, the backbone of our client base has always been modestly sized firms – from family run retailers to independent design businesses, precision engineering companies, and plumbing and heating engineers. This has remained the case as our agency has expanded in size – we are now an Elite HubSpot Partner Agency, one of only a few active in the UK – and we know that this is true for many other marketing agencies, too.
In this article, we would like to share a recent example of how we have helped an SME business expand their online presence, make more sales, and subsequently grow their business – a bread and butter project for our team at JDR.
The customer, who has asked to remain anonymous, is a plumbing, heating, and renewables servicing business based in and around Northumberland, and whose services include annual boiler services, installations, and emergency repairs for a wide range of boiler systems, working primarily with domestic customers.
The company has been going for over 30 years and is run by two brothers – both experienced plumbing and heating engineers – and is a prime example of a successful, locally based, small-scale SME, committed to professionalism and quality.
The customer got in touch with JDR to enquire about our website services. Their current website looked okay but the content and quoting tools were out of date, and as it was built on WordPress it was difficult and time-consuming to update. The site also wasn’t well optimised for lead generation – there was only one enquiry form on the website – and didn’t work perfectly on all mobile devices.
The challenge the customer faced was that they were getting leads coming through, but they weren’t their ideal customer types, or they weren’t in the right location.
The customer wanted a new website to work as a lead generation tool, bringing in accurate leads that could be followed up through an email marketing/nurturing programme on HubSpot. As the client is a small business without much time to spend on marketing, they wanted the process to be automated as much as possible, maximising the value of their time and making sure that all email enquiries were responded to promptly.
They also wanted new SEO-optimised content to improve their Google visibility and draw in the right type of customers.
Using HubSpot CMS, we created a bespoke website with concise new content explaining the customer’s value proposition, accreditations, and services, with clear CTAs and lead generation opportunities on every page for customers to get in touch.
After the website was live, the customer joined our inbound marketing programme, through which we worked with them to maximise conversions through the new site and grow their local customer base.
Within a month of the new website going live, the customer received 46 form submissions, which included 17 new bookings in just under three weeks - an extremely positive start to the campaign.
What the customer said:
“Thanks very much for all your efforts. We are really pleased.”
The customer has been a pleasure to work with throughout the process so far and we look forward to bringing them many more bookings in the months and years ahead! If you would like to find out more about this project or how we can help your business, including a discussion of costs and projected ROI, please contact us today by clicking here.