Redblaze is a formidable incentive and performance improvement agency. They approached Richard with a specific business challenge, in which he and the Digital Marketing team did more than just rise to...he tells Lou Walden all about it.
Tell me about RedBlaze…
RedBlaze is an incentive and performance improvement agency. They work with business to design, plan, organise and deliver incentive programmes around the world. Their clients tend to be Call Centres or organisations that are heavily sales orientated. They do quite a lot of work in the mobile industry for example.
RedBlaze work with their clients to put together unique incentive trips in the UK and globally, from hot air balloon trips over the Grand Canyon to a jeep safari in the Arctic and take care of all of the logistics; flights, travel, accommodation etc. They also create engaging recognition programmes and incentive campaigns to reward high performers. They've been established for 25 years.
What was their business challenge? What was in the brief?
The majority of their business comes through referrals. They've been successful at building loyalty and long-term relationships with their clients. The next step was to generate new business, in new segments and they had hired a Business Development lead to support that - but of course they also needed to focus on their marketing activities.
How did you start your approach?
The first step of working with them was a Discovery Workshop. This involved a day in their office to discover and analyse their competitors, their audience, current marketing activities and material, the sales process and a website review. (This also included research into average order value and margin). A complete audit to understand where they were, to establish what was working for them.
During this process we uncovered that they were trying to reach a very wide audience - that they were ‘something to everyone’. And that their proposition was quite broad (they managed incentive programmes but also events, conferences, exhibitions, stands). So we began by looking at what they were best at - what the company is known for - from there, we crafted their core proposition. This was done by understanding who their target audience were, based on adjacent/connected industries to their current customers.
We recently relaunched their Google Ad campaigns and in month 1 they won a contract worth over £175k in revenue.
We were then able to align their website with this proposition, the other stuff is great (and that can be a cross-sell opportunity) but the objective was to drive traffic to the website, where they could pick up their leads.
We quickly agreed on a budget and mapped this out across the marketing channels, with a bias towards website traffic. This meant that short term goals were around paid media (rather than SEO) Google ads, ad groups and refining them over time based on keyword volume, traffic and conversion rate.
What have been the results of these tactics?
Within the first 12 months they secured over £200k of revenue! And based on their monthly spend, that is a substantial ROI. We recently relaunched their Google Ad campaigns and in month 1 they won a contract worth over £175k in revenue.
And now we’re reviewing the activity to increase the budget. We need to ensure we have enough data to inform the next step in the plan…we don’t want to just throw more money at the same activity. The win came early in the campaign, we need more data to scale up appropriately. The average deal lead-time in their industry is about 90 days and they receive weekly enquiries, so there’s lots to help us.
Within the first 12 months they secured over £200k of revenue! And based on their monthly spend, that is a substantial ROI.
How do you work with Redblaze?
We have a monthly review meeting, where we run through everything we’ve activated and what the results have been. Plus we’ve created a real-time dashboard that all the data goes into; Google analytics, AdWords, social channels etc. All the key metrics are there; website visitors, conversions, spend, ad groups/keyword performance. They appreciate this as it’s all in one place…no need to go into multiple platforms. We also use Monday.com for planning - we work on a 6 month rolling plan - they can see what the plan is going forward.
Next is the further enhancement to the website, SEO and a small piece of content work - a regular blog that they contribute to as they’re the industry experts.
They’re a perfect client, we work in partnership with them and converse with their Business Development person to constantly improve and refine every element over time. They take our advice on what needs to happen…they trust us.
They’re a perfect client, we work in partnership with them...they take our advice on what needs to happen…they trust us.
