Case Studies

Background

Handyman Matters of Richmond is one of the fastest growing handyman companies in Richmond, VA. The owner, Michele Deane, has run the business for 3 years and is well-respected in the area. Her company provides home repair, home improvement, home remodels services to residential clients and handyman services to commercial and property management clients.

The Problem

Before she started working with Indispensable Marketing, Michele Deane had spent over $40,000 working with four different tactical marketing professionals–a web designer, SEO specialist, pay-per-click specialist, and direct mail specialist. All of them promising to grow her business fast, make the phone ring and generate all the leads her organization could handle. Well you know the story, in order to be effective, all of these areas need to be closely coordinated, but in Michele’s case these specialists were not communicating with each other, pulling her marketing in totally different directions and in some cases were barely even generating results for her. Michele thought about a conversation we had 2 years prior about developing a solid marketing foundation, and made the call for us to help turn this chaos into clarity and generate real results. 

The Solution

Upon being hired we immediately recognized two of the marketing specialists working with Michele was not a good situation, their services were not generating results and basically stealing our clients hard earn money. We proposed that Michele fired these two marketing specialist, and have everyone involved in working on Handyman Matter’s marketing report to Indispensable Marketing, who would then report to Michele. That way, everyone would be on the same page for the results we were seeking, marketing efforts would be coordinated, and Michele would only have to deal with one company instead of four.

Michele agreed to this plan, and allowed Indispensable Marketing to take over supervision of Handyman Matter’s marketing. One of the first things we did was interview Michele about her vision and research information about her best customers to see what they had to say about the business. We also met with the various marketing providers and starting developing a lead generation system that runs without the owners efforts.

Next, we identified the unique difference, wrote core positioning messages and developed website content for Handyman Matters of Richmond. This content was packaged up in a marketing plan that could be used by Handyman Matter’s employees and service providers. It is also being used to create an “offer” that could be used in lead generation campaigns.

Once the new website and marketing plan was finished, Indispensable Marketing began improving Handyman Matters marketing activities and adding some as well, including:

• Development of Call Intake Form – Systemized the process to hire additional dispatcher
• Improving Lead Conversion – with new leads coming in we went to work on converting more of them
• Brand Identity – Ensuring all marketing efforts are branded with our core message
• Commercial Accounts were mined from 2 national property management firms
• PPC Pay-Per-Click – Advertising generates 50-60 leads a month 
• Real Estate Referral Program – Program generates 10-20 high quality leads a month
• Profitability of projects went from 12% to 20% over 3 months
• Revenue goal was met or exceeded for 3 consecutive months. Update: 300% over that year

Results

Thanks to Indispensable Marketing’s supervision, these new initiatives were integrated seamlessly into the existing marketing plan so that they complemented what was already being done and built upon past successes. Michele now has time to create strategic partnerships, spend weekends with her family, develop employees and run the business without worrying that the money she invests in marketing is going to waste due to lack of incompetence or uncoordinated efforts.