Creating a marketing strategy to scale a B2B service company
Voloco, a highly skilled team of experts in the construction industry providing quantity surveying, design and bid management services to the construction sector, contacted Sharp Thinking to create a marketing strategy for the future. The company founder wanted to create a new marketing strategy to scale the business.
The approach: Understanding customers and employees to enhance their position
Firstly, getting under the skin of the business was vital to determine how the company worked, analyse it’s historical performance and identify it’s key attributes. This enabled Sharp Thinking to provide advice and focus on the areas to grow.
This background work, which is vital before jumping into marketing execution, enabled Sharp Thinking to create a marketing strategy that could both target existing customers who weren’t using all of their services and in some cases weren’t aware of their capability. Added to this were the views of staff and their existing customers. And a comprehensive market review ensured we had a good feel of the state of play in the market.
From this we could ascertain what the business stood for, its core values and offering. We needed to differentiate from the competition and create relevant messages that could be backed up and appeal to the wider market.
The outcome: A refreshed positioning that appealed to the broader construction market
· A positioning that elevated their strategic role
With the knowledge of their customers and views from employees, the construction business were able to redefine its position leveraging the tremendous expertise within the team and become thought leaders in the market.
· Greater understanding of how to use social media as a business development tool
The social media landscape can be daunting if you haven’t used it before in a business context. By guiding the business and training the team, they could reach a wider audience through LinkedIn to establish new connections and build awareness of their brand and capability.
· Lead scoring and prospecting
Sharp thinking created a new prospecting strategy and sales process with lead scoring criteria. This would ensure a more streamlined approach and would ultimately accelerate the sales cycle and increase contract values.
· A 12 month structured content plan
This would bring consistency and integration across all marketing to ensure everything is working together. Plus, it would introduce timely themes and events which could be leveraged and resonate with the target audience. Essential to build momentum and scale the business, the content plan provided structure and ensured the right blend of content to deliver results over time.
· A website brief and agency benchmarking
Preparing marketing briefs is both time consuming and requires skills and expertise. Sharp Thinking helped with the agency website brief as part of the project along with creating a scorecard and assessed all tenders.
"Cannot recommended Nat and the Sharp Thinking service enough, thorough, detailed and going the extra mile". Ben Webb
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