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TimberTECH

    From decline to growth: an Inbound story.

    Copy of +39% increase in growth quarter on quarter

    THE CHALLENGE

    Brief

    The market-leader in Cedar restoration, TimberTECH grew from a man with a van to a flourishing Nationwide operation over 30-years. But, the number of quotes issued had decreased 15-18% year-on-year since 2015, and there had been a downswing in profitability despite a significant uptick in new builds with Cedar cladding. Small competitors had started to pop up everywhere, encroaching on market share and undercutting pricing. 

    The managing director wanted a trusted advisor to

    • get a pulse on the business to define a clear strategy for future growth

    • deliver highly-qualified leads to TimberTECH, at pace, with the lowest possible cost per lead, to get sales now.

     

     

     

    registration

     

    Insights

    SEM  advertising was limited to decision stage call to actions i.e. ‘get a quote to maintain your Cedar”. This limited reach to homeowners who knew their Cedar required maintenance and were ready to get a cost, and disregarded homeowners in the awareness and consideration stages. A shift was required from 'selling' to ‘educating’: explaining to homeowners in the early stages of their buyer journey the benefits of regularly treating their Cedar and the risks of not treating it, as well as how to understand their Cedar required treatment. 

    A lead generation tactic, 'The Cedar Homeowners Guide' was in place on the website, but no automated email was sent: form submission meant a hard-to-find link on the web page. For every 100 leads generated through the website, only 5 became customers. With no nurturing in place to support conversion, it was up to the customer to reach out to TimberTECH if they had more questions. Understanding the conversion rate, just “switching on more advertising" would not see the desired high growth outcomes. 

    Sporadic email marketing newsletters were seen as a branding tool to stay 'top of mind' with a pray and spray approach. A new approach was required. 

    Cedar cladding requires treatment every 2-years, but "things were slipping through the cracks". The team relied heavily on manual processes to communicate with customers, e.g. excel spreadsheets to look up when they should contact customers to re-treat their cladding. Often, customers were contacted too late, or not at all. The business needed to reduce reliance on manual processes, and mak a shift toward optimised automated processes that would 'do the follow up for them". 

    Reporting was time-consuming to create: paper-based 'lead sheets' had to be transcribed into excel-based 'lead reports', which had to be returned to several times to understand whether a lead had turned into a customer. The leadership team struggled to understand ROI on marketing initiatives.

    SOLUTION

    • Customer Reactivation Campaign: A ’net new’ lead costs 25x more to acquire than a lead who has been a customer in the past. To deliver on the brief of generating high quality leads at the lowest CPA, we needed to reach out to past customers.

    • Lead Activation Campaign: To educate the 1000’s of leads who’d requested the Cedar Homeowner Guide, we needed to create a nurture pathway to sale.  

    • Customer Acquisition Campaign: HubSpot implementation to develop the assets and automations required to nurture new leads through to sale.

    beta

    Customer Reactivation

    A complex IF/THEN campaign was deployed to customers who serviced their Cedar over 18-months ago. Using marketing automation and CTA's, user action (or inaction) triggered different pathways: 

    • Customers could click to book a Cedar service, or could complete a form to let the team know they’d moved house. 

    • Direct mail was sent to the residence in the instance a homeowner had moved and there was a new resident, or if an email bounced.

    • Inaction triggered communication about the risks of not treating their Cedar. 

    • Positive sales signals, i.e. clicks / multiple opens, led customers down a different nurture pathway. 

    TimberTECH moved from a one-by-one, laborious follow-up process, to a personalised approach, at scale. The team were able to focus on managing *inbound leads* (customers who wanted a quote, or to book) rather than outbound ‘sales’ (sending out sales emails labouriously, email by email). The task tool could then be used to diarise follow up at a later date if required.

                       automated-testing

            email-sending-domain

     

                          marketing-free

     

    Lead Activation

    Separate nurture campaigns were developed using email and marketing automation tools to 1) leads that had only downloaded the Cedar Homeowner Guide, and 2) leads that had requested a quote, but not become a customer. 

    With the goal to educate rather than sell, a 'Cedar Diagnosis Scale' tool was developed to help leads self-diagnose the condition of their Cedar, and understand the impact of not treating their Cedar, as well as the benefits.  

    Rather than a quote, Guide leads were offered a professional Cedar diagnosis: a Cedar expert would visit their home, view their Cedar, and give a professional opinion on what they should do. Regardless of whether a homeowner wanted to sell their home, ensure their investment was protected, or be the best-looking house on the block, they got the advice they needed. And if they wanted to DIY, the expert would point them in the right direction., for no cost. 

    design-principle-human

     

    New Customer Acquisition

    The workflows developed in the lead activation campaign were then replicated to be triggered each time a new guide was downloaded, supporting a new lead's movement from awareness to consideration. 

    HubSpot now implemented into the business, landing pages were created that offered up a "Free Cedar Diagnosis" with the view to better educating leads before a quote was offered. Leads could submit photos of their home for review by a Cedar technician to then provide feedback, or book an appointment where a Cedar technician would come to their home and walk them through areas of concern, and recommendations for next steps (regardless of whether they wanted to DIY, or wanted an expert to help). 

    Facebook and Google Ads aligning to the awareness and consideration stages were turned on to direct traffic to the new landing page. A remarketing segment was also identified, and a Facebook campaign was switched on. 

    TimberTECH workflow

     

    RESULTS

     

                   trophy-1

     



    "The campaigns undertaken have shifted TimberTECH from decline to growth."
    - Mark Ralph, director, TimberTECH 

    Over 5-months: 

    • +44% Increase in online leads generated year-on-year 
    • +125% Increase in online lead conversion year on year 
    • +25% Increase in quotes year on year 
    • +3,900% ROI on potential revenue through Customer Reactivation Campaign *alone* based on past quoted value 

    IMPACT

                     success

    "We briefed RECIPE marketing to find short-term quick wins. They exceeded expectations. And then some: changing the way we think about our marketing and sales, they've helped us setup a sustainable model to generate and convert leads. Next, we're working with them to build out our entire customer journey in HubSpot: going beyond the attract and engage stages to delight. And I can't wait."  

    - Mark Ralph, director, TimberTECH 

                         

     

    NEXT STEPS 

    RECIPE marketing has been working with TimberTECH to implement HubSpot Sales Professional Tools to increase conversion on quote, develop automations that trigger service reminders based on the last date Cedar was treated, benchmark NPS and aftercare content. Here's how they feel 18-months later.

    TimberTECH

    Project type: Marketing Strategy development and implementation

    Website: timbertech.co.nz

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