Integrated Marketing Results In New Clients

Eighteen months ago, Roeing Corp. called a time-out to reevaluate its approach to wooing customers since, despite growth, the company felt it had become lackadaisical about identifying and providing solutions to new clients. The end result is a new marketing focus for this solutions provider. While some changes were subtle tweaks such as updating marketing materials, others were major overhauls, such as adding a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Since then, Roeing has enjoyed 7% growth in its client list and 12% revenue growth in 2008, which, given the economic turndown, is a welcome outcome.

Located in Lafayette, IN, Roeing offers a full suite of services — networking, security, telephony, software, IT training, consulting— with experience culled from nearly 30 years in the technology trade. Executive VP David Ingram says that despite the company’s success — Roeing’s gross earnings were $7.2 million last year — its leadership knew marketing was a weakness. “We wanted to extend our reach geographically and eventually see a 20% increase in our client list,” says Ingram, who notes that Roeing is particularly earnest about building regional business within a few hours drive of its headquarters, not expanding into neighboring states. Once the company decided to invest both time and money into marketing, Roeing’s first step was installing a CRM tool. The company chose a Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a choice that Roeing customized to integrate its existing Service Works (also a Microsoft product) service, product, and accounts receivable modules. Even with about $20,000 invested in the CRM software, he believes Roeing is coming out ahead. “This tool allows us to track correspondence, invoicing, customer follow-up, marketing campaigns — all in one place,” he says. Prior to the installation of the CRM tool, Roeing primarily organized its efforts through meetings and one-on-one conversations between staff members. He does warn, however, that the initial cost of the software was only one part of the investment. “Changing to this model is a work in progress, because while we started learning the CRM tool a year ago, we continue to refine our process and roll out more functions,” says Ingram. Even after investing about 300 hours into training during the past year, Roeing continues dedicating significant time to training and honing usage of the CRM tool even today. The upside? Ingram says that knowledge has assisted Roeing in sales of the CRM tool to its customers.

Seek Professional Marketing Help To Share Your Story
At the same time Roeing was converting its workflow over to the CRM tool, it was seeking a marketing firm. “We’ve always had a tendency not to outsource, but we needed more expertise, and we didn’t have the time for marketing,” says Ingram. Roeing limited its search for a marketing firm to Indiana to ensure knowledge of local markets. Its choice was actually a former client. “We had done work with this firm, and we felt they understood us and how we did business, plus they understood our market since they were from the area,” explains Ingram. After the marketing firm proposed an initial plan for Roeing’s marketing needs, Ingram asked the marketing firm to develop phased rollouts in order for the proposal to better fit Roeing’s budget. “By breaking down the proposal into smaller combinations of projects, we could do this piece now, this piece later, which made it more affordable and allowed us to move forward,” says Ingram. The marketing efforts the company chose focused on direct mail and email campaigns geared to communicate to a specific audience about a detailed technology solution. Roeing reinforces its marketing messages at seminars and lunch-and-learns it hosts as well as during conferences at which the company exhibits. Both those efforts revolve around one-on-one interaction. In 2008, Roeing earmarked a marketing budget of about $35,000 — it was nearly nonexistent before — to address the cost of the marketing firm and implementation of those targeted promotions.

Invest In Business Directories To Identify New Customers
Once a direction was determined with the marketing firm, Roeing tackled identifying new clients by purchasing mailing lists from companies specializing in business directories. Ingram said he researched online several business directory companies, looking at how each builds its lists, how it maintains and updates those lists, how it sets prices, and if free trial lists are offered. To test the company he felt was the best fit, Ingram signed up for a 30-day trial. He then selected a list that covered many of Roeing’s existing customers. “I looked at the clients we knew and checked their information against the list’s information on details such as staff, size, CEO, budget, etc., and then I felt confident the list was fairly accurate before we committed to buying,” explains Ingram. From there, Roeing spent $2,000 for a yearlong subscription, which allows downloads of up to 12,000 companies per year. Now, Ingram can drill down each search by region — especially useful since he is looking for new clients within an hour or two of Roeing headquarters — plus by size of business, its vertical focus, and more. Once Ingram has honed a search, he downloads the information into the CRM system and starts building a promotion geared toward that specific audience. “The first time around, it took us about a month to move from getting the list to starting the promotion; now it takes between 16 and 30 days,” explains Ingram. That streamlined method is important, he says, given today’s uneven market. “We try to tailor each promotion to a unique audience,” says Ingram. “The market is so fluid that we have learned that what worked 18 months ago wouldn’t resonate today; it just wouldn’t hit home.” Now, with a fully integrated process that connects business directory listings with Roeing’s CRM tool and its marketing firm, the company is in a prime position to respond quickly to market trends.

Traditional Networking Another Portal To Clients
While Roeing has also tackled marketing for many years by offering technology seminars to reach local business leaders and spread awareness of the company’s offerings, landing people in the seats has gotten increasingly more difficult. To make those presentations more fruitful, the company looked for new avenues to reach viable audiences. “We joined our local Chamber of Commerce, and also the chambers in the smaller communities around our headquarters,” explains Ingram. “It is fairly inexpensive; it costs us about $1,500 to $2,000 for five or six memberships, and we get access to their lists and coverage in their newsletters.” In return, Roeing offers seminars and other technology presentations to fellow members. For example, once Roeing installed its own CRM tool, Ingram did a presentation on the why and how of purchasing and using a CRM tool. While Roeing has found the marketing outcome from Chamber of Commerce presentations is more a matter of increased corporate awareness, its other seminars do provide solid results. “If we have 15 attendees, we typically get about four leads [30%], two sales in 60 days [15%], and four sales in about 150 days,” explains Ingram.

Another way to reach potential clients involves showcasing vendor partners at regional conferences. “We often work with schools, and since we feel the Astaro security products fit that market very well, Astaro graciously pairs up with us for presentations when we attend conferences geared toward that school audience.” The main place that happens is at the Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators (HECC) conference, a statewide K-12 education gathering attended by public school IT administrators from around the state. When the conference rolls around, Astaro flies in a representative who attends conference appointments with Roeing to answer questions about how the Astaro security solution fits schools’ particular needs. Roeing builds interest in those one-on-one meetings through targeted direct mail pieces prior to the conference. Ingram admits that the relationship with Astaro is one of the most integrated vendor relationships Roeing has.

Roeing has consistently attended the HECC conference and typically secures at least one new sale plus new additional projects from existing clients the company reconnects with. Still, Ingram is always looking for other good conference fits. For instance, a regional builders and property managers conference has been a successful venue for Roeing to demonstrate the company’s experience installing technology networks in apartment complexes. When Ingram evaluates which conferences to attend, location is key because he wants to focus on markets within a few hours of company headquarters. He says conferences priced between $800 and $1,000 for exhibition space tend to be good investments.

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Overall, Roeing has seen positive outcomes from its refocused efforts in marketing — its revenues are up about 8% due to new client contracts. That increase can be traced to both those changes that required new investments, such as the CRM tool, and those that simply meant revisiting previously successful efforts, such as attending conferences. But that doesn’t mean Ingram expects to slack off from the marketing efforts the company launched 18 months ago. “We’ve seen a combination of outcomes so far. We have some existing clients with whom we have a better relationship, and we’ve picked up some new clients but I’d still like to hit that 20% revenue growth goal,” says Ingram. While Roeing hasn’t achieved that goal yet, Ingram believes the company is better positioned now than before to add new clients and to weather the economic downturn.