“We had an average website doing quite well, but with little or no social media presence. Feature media have raised the profile of our brand whilst bringing our PPC, SEO & Web together with very positive results. Our time is best spent doing what we know”
Ben Smith, Director, Spray Plant
Everything around us has some kind of coating applied, to make sure it’s applied properly, Spray Plant UK supplies the army of decorators and professional painters with the best Spray equipment. Spray Plant UK is a Leeds-based specialist supplier of spraying equipment. They have a physical trade counter and also a successful e-commerce store.
Spray Plant UK approached Feature Media in December of 2020 and requested some help with their digital marketing. They wanted to achieve their full potential and keep ahead in a competitive marketplace.
Although Spray Plant UK already outsourced PPC and SEO, they were unsure about whether they were seeing real results from these marketing channels. They wanted to know that all their digital marketing efforts were well-coordinated, to drive more leads and increase revenue.
Spray Plant UK were also aware that a leading competitor had a big online presence across multiple social channels, this was something they were keen to develop themselves. They already had both Facebook and Instagram pages but didn’t have a strategy, or someone internally who was dedicated to running them, so it was difficult to post consistently and gain traction on these channels. Spray Plant UK believed they had no issue gaining new customers but were less confident that they had returning customers. Feature Media knew that by building strong brand awareness from socials and targeted e-mail campaigns we could help Spray Plant UK develop relationships and encourage returning customers.
Retaining customers is a very cost effective way of driving profitable revenue, especially in Spray Plant UK’s industry, where machines need regular servicing and replacement parts. By routinely checking in with existing customers via email, promoting offers we hoped to build strong relationships and improve retention rates.
Although the initial request was for social media content and posting, we conducted a Discovery Meeting and carried out a full marketing audit, in order to feedback recommendations.
The first step was to look at SPUK’s brand personality, and key messaging. We explained the importance of this to providing consistent and meaningful messaging and SPUK were happy for us to source, collaborate and manage a third-party expert to develop this for them.
Following this, we undertook an audit of all Spray Plant UK’s current marketing efforts and competitor research. Once we had a good understanding of our starting point, we put together a strategic digital marketing plan, based on their business goals and commercial objectives. This included a forecasted projection of return on investment. Properly thought through strategic plans are essential to understanding what to measure and allow us to share the results with our clients.
When we began working with Spray Plant UK, we carried out a full website audit and discovered revenue from the website wasn’t being tracked, making it was impossible to see if PPC and SEO were a profitable investment. One of the first and most important steps for their marketing strategy was to start tracking and recording revenue. Feature Media wanted to ensure that any efforts put into digital marketing activity could be proven to be a commercial success for Spray Plant UK.
We made sure goals were properly set up in Google Analytics, so we could track revenue properly, this would also allow us to see if the new channels were generating revenue for Spray Plant UK. We were aware that PPC and SEO were bringing traffic to the website, but we needed to make sure that traffic was converting into revenue.
We wanted to post regular, valuable content, cementing Spray Plant UK as knowledgeable experts within their industry. We created a mixture of informational and promotional content that was posted across both Spray Plant UK’s Facebook and Instagram. When the socials started to gain a following, we noticed that Spray Plant UK began to be tagged in customers’ pictures; this was a great opportunity to start posting user-generated content. Most of the tags came from small painters and decorators and they were delighted when we reposted their work since it gave them free promotion for their businesses. This really helped develop a strong community of loyal customers. We found that user-generated content was also very popular and would often have high levels of engagement.
Another successful tactic we employed on social was to run competitions. Since the prizes were high-value items the competitions received a huge amount of interest.
We successfully built a list of customers from Spray Plants UK’s website to use for the email campaigns. The engagement was immediate, with high open and click-through rates. We found that this audience responded well to discount codes and promotions. Spray Plant UK also reported back to us they would often get replies to the emails from customers enquiring about products.
Feature Media holds monthly progress meetings with Spray Plant UK, to update them on our activity over the month and share the progress we were making. We find out which products they want to focus attention on pushing in the coming month, as well as updating us on any news within the industry. Feature Media also manages Spray Plant UK’s outsourced PPC, SEO, and web development teams to make sure all suppliers are working towards a common goal. Management of these teams on behalf of Spray Plant UK took the pressure off the management at Spray Plant UK, allowing them to focus more time on the day-to-day running of the business.
As the relationship has developed, we’ve become aware of other business challenges and used our extensive network of expert collaborators to support SPUK to solve these challenges and be in a good position to act on new opportunities. Feature Media is working with SPUK to optimise and develop their website, we have introduced the business to a fantastic partner in the education sector, which will generate lots of opportunities to promote SPUK and support learners in the construction sector…more to follow on this over the coming months.
Spray Plant UK are incredibly happy with the outcome of all the combined marketing efforts. They feel they’ve had an increase in both returning customers and have noticed a massive increase in the number of new customers.
Since the beginning of 2021 Spray Plant UK has experienced a revenue increase of 46%, a 50% increase in users to the website, and conversion rates have gone up by 21%. This is a particularly impressive outcome as none of these statistics seem to have been impacted by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. These increases can be put down to all the combined marketing efforts, as there was an increase in traffic from all sources. Spray Plant UK lost 10% of their customers due to administration during lockdowns but have still gained 30% more revenue from their new customers. These new customers have been acquired from all the new marketing campaigns.
Email was also a massive success with an average 2.2% click-through rate on campaigns and a 0.87% conversion rate from this audience directly buying on the website.
The Instagram page has been very successful, Spray Plant UK started with 282 followers in January, which 10 months on sits at 1451, with completely organic growth. Posts on Spray Plant UK’s Instagram would previously get an average of 12 likes and now they average 50 plus. Through regular posting and continuous interaction with the audience, Instagram has become a community of people that regularly engage with all the content that is posted. Spray Plant UK has commented with how pleased they are with how professional their social content looks.
Following extensive testing, paid adverts are now being utilised and driving sign-ups for the Spray Plant e-mail campaigns, where we share offers, discounts and product news.
The website now has a news page, and we’re writing monthly blogs which are also being shared on social media and in e-mail campaigns to further offer advice and tips to prospects and customers.
Finally, support with other business challenges has saved employees a couple of hours per week and we hope to support them to improve this further.