Project Description

Case Study

Generating awareness and leads with Inbound and ABM

Businesses sometimes view marketing as a choice between goals: focus on brand awareness, or invest in lead generation? With the right strategy in place and the resources to execute, savvy companies find success by pursuing both. Case in point: BFC.

Having attempted everything from trade shows and direct mail to cold calls and webinars, BFC was starting to doubt that marketing could ever make the phone ring from someone they didn’t already know. When they approached Simple Machines, their mandate was clear: drive new leads and build awareness in the market.

After completing the research and analysis to uncover BFC’s best opportunities and define its core message, we refreshed the website’s design and navigation, updated the messaging and optimized the website for search.

Next, with a strong content strategy defined, we built its inbound content campaign and leveraged a mix of blogging, email, social media and paid advertising to drive awareness and content downloads. In the first quarter of launching, BFC saw 28 new inbound contacts and 11 service inquiries. Where the website was getting 1,621 monthly visits in 2016, traffic increased by over 213% to 4,927 visits by February 2017.

“Customers are able to find us now, so we’ve seen increased activity on our website. People are also staying on the website longer. We’ve seen increased calls requesting information that we were not receiving before.”

– Lori Nelson, VP of Marketing and Business Development, BFC

Once the inbound channels were up and running, we launched an Account Based Marketing (ABM) campaign while continuing Inbound marketing execution. Through targeted channels such as direct mail, promoted content offers and sales enablement, BFC has created awareness and new leads with specific segments of the market it is best fit to serve.With ongoing Inbound marketing and ABM campaigns in flight, BFC is now in a position to continually improve marketing ROI and achieve its aggressive goals for growth.

Client Profile

A family-owned and operated company based in Batavia, Illinois, BFC provides printing, mailing and fulfillment services along with the technology to manage and implement printing. From on demand print and fulfillment to automated technology solutions, BFC is a company of experts at producing and delivering printed and digital communications.

Challenge

While BFC had been in business for over 40 years and enjoyed high retention rates with their customers, they were not seeing any inbound leads and they knew they had minimal brand awareness – even in their own industry. Furthermore, the lack of branding and messaging clarity was making it difficult to attract and close new business. To sharpen its message and launch a marketing operation that would create awareness and drive leads, BFC hired Simple Machines.

Solution

Simple Machines first analyzed BFC’s market and buyer personas, competitors and opportunities in the discovery process, and then delivered positioning and messaging recommendations along with a project plan. This strategic platform was used to make brand and messaging updates to BFC’s website and collateral.

With this strong foundation built, Simple Machines launched BFC’s Inbound marketing in concert with Account Based Marketing campaigns. BFC is now seeing a regular stream of inbound leads, increased brand awareness and steadily growing traffic to their website.