Project Description

Challenge

Not too long ago we began to notice that our website, which we’d been using since the company was founded in 2010, was not reflecting the full service capabilities and service quality that we needed our digital presence to present. The competition was beginning to pass us by with newer, more engaging digital brands, and the design itself was not a strong indicator of the talent of our team. Moreover, our brand name – Crocodile Software – was limiting, since we had already begun adding new digital marketing services to our established capabilities in software development. Finally, we wanted an offline brand that would be aligned with our new online presence, and we wanted to completely revamp our sales and marketing plan to better incorporate industry best practices and emerging online advertising platforms. In short: we needed a marketing makeover, bigtime.

Solution

To address these challenges, we planned, designed, implemented, and are currently optimizing the following marketing solutions:

Brand Identity Refresh

• Brand Name and Tagline Change: Our re-branding began with creating a new tagline “Innovation with integrity.” to reflect the broadened emphasis of our services from strictly software development to a larger digital services offering that includes online marketing and advertising. In order to incorporate this change into our re-brand, we also decided to change the company name from Crocodile Software to Crocodile Digital.
• Logo Redesign: We redesigned the corporate logo with sharper, brighter colors, and we incorporated our new name and tagline “With Integrity.” into the redesign.
• Business Card Design: We designed 2 wholly unique business cards. The first set is a traditional design on matte paper that includes a beautiful Spot-UV crocodile skin effect on each side of the card. The second set is a stainless steel laser cut and etched vertical card design for our executive team. After proofing the designs, we sourced affordable printing from our specialty printing partners.
• Shirt Design: We designed Crocodile-themed T-Shirts and comfortable Golf Shirts for company employees to promote the new brand.
• Presentation Folders: We designed creative presentation folders for consultation leave-behinds and sales presentations. The folders include 2 pockets and a business card slip.
• Communications System: We wanted to convey an innovative and consistent greeting to potential customers calling our business line, so we procured a created a professional VOIP / PBX communications system that included sophisticated auto-attendant and dial plan capabilities. Then, we wrote greeting and voicemail scrips for the system, selected a voiceover artist who we believe represents the fresh, innovative focus of our new brand, and recorded the greetings for the new system. Check it out now by calling 713-343-7730.
• Website Redesign: Most importantly, we redesigned the centerpiece of our digital brand, the website! The new site is built on WordPress CMS and is responsive on all mobile devices. It includes a blog called Big Bytes, a Twitter feed, eNewsletter sign-up, detailed services pages, and creative work portfolio displays, among many other awesome things. Leads captured on our Contact Us page are automatically sent to our Salesforce account. In addition, the site uses a content delivery network (CDN) to load images and videos at blazing fast speed.

Inbound Marketing Campaigns

• Social Media Marketing: We created new Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, and YouTube pages to promote the Crocodile Digital brand, build an online community of potential customers, improve search engine visibility, and capture new leads. We regularly post links to new posts on our blog, new portfolio work, and short videos with applicable online marketing and business growth tips.
• eNewsletter Campaign: We designed an eye-catching, custom eNewsletter that we send out each month via Mailchimp to current clients and the potential customers who sign up on our Facebook page or website to receive it. The eNewsletter is a great way to nurture and grow contacts, promote great content (such as Big Bytes blog posts), communicate important updates about the company, and keep our brand front-and-center among potential clients and partners.
• Exit Intent Campaign: We launched an exit intent campaign on our website to convert “bounces” into contacts. Exit intent refers to people who come to your web page but indicate that they’re going to leave the page (as determined by the exit intent software algorithm). Before they can leave the page, a large pop-up window appears that attempts to capture their email address by promoting our eNewsletter content. When someone enters their email address, we add them to our Mailchimp eNewsletter list to receive the next eNewsletter monthly edition.
• Local SEO Campaign: We created and optimized more than 60 local citation (business listing) profiles to improve search engine visibility, build backlinks, and drive traffic to our website. Top citations include our Google+, Bing Places, Yelp, and Yellow Pages profiles. In addition, we optimized the meta tags and page URLs on our website to rank higher for our target keywords and display professionally in search engine result pages (SERPs).
• Digital Public Relations / Link Building Campaign: We initiated a digital public relations campaign on an ongoing basis to develop relationships, share audience, and earn backlinks with relevant online publishers (blogs). In addition, we look for opportunities to secure backlinks from sites with high domain authority (such as .gov and .edu websites). This is an ongoing campaign and a staple for improving search engine rankings and increasing traffic to our website.
• Inbound Marketing Management Tools: We use a number of software tools to manage our inbound marketing campaigns. These tools include Salesforce for contact and lead management, Sprout Social for social media page management & analytics, GatherContent for blog and newsletter content writing, Linkody for backlink monitoring, Buzzstream PR for online publisher relationship management, Mailchimp for email marketing, BrightLocal for search engine rank tracking, Google Analytics for website traffic tracking & analysis, and Google Webmaster Tools / Bing Webmaster for search engine optimization. We incorporate these tools and others as needed into the inbound marketing campaigns of our clients, too!

Outbound Marketing Campaigns

• Direct Mail / Appreciation Marketing Campaign: We created a SendOutCards (greeting-card) based direct mail marketing campaign with 9 unique card designs based on the recipient’s position in our marketing / sales / delivery funnels. Some of these cards are focused on warming up potential clients for consultations and the others are focused on thanking potential or current clients / partners for recent actions (such as completing an engagement with us or leaving us a positive review). As a result, we’re able to proactively develop and enhance relationships with the people who matter most to our business.
• Google Adwords / Bing Ads SEM Campaigns: We developed search engine marketing campaigns for Google AdWords and Bing Ads. These pay-per-click advertisements include both Display and Text ads shown to local consumers searching for keywords that match our specified list, which we developed as part of a thorough keyword analysis. We developed a total of 11 banner ads (each with 5 standard sizes) for the Display ad keyword groups, with intriguing copy for the Text ads in each keyword group. In the campaign, we’re able to specify “negative keywords” that are excluded from our list, dynamically vary bid amounts to optimize ad placement and conversions, and target new geographies as needed throughout the campaign. As a result, we’re able to compete for new clients in our local marketplace as they search for application development and online marketing services.
• Facebook / LinkedIn Ad Campaigns: We designed social media advertising campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn. We’re promoting 8 separate services in these campaigns, and we designed a total of 6 different images for each of those services which we are using for initial A/B testing in order to determine which images perform best. Facebook and LinkedIn advertising give us the ability to target highly specific demographic groups by including information like Interests and Current Position as campaign filters. Our focus for these ad campaigns is to generate qualified leads as the first priority and then grow our respective social media page communities as a secondary goal.
• Retargeting Campaigns: We also created retargeting campaigns in Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook, and Twitter. A retargeting campaign targets visitors to your website after they leave without completing a conversion target (i.e. fills out a contact form or makes a purchase). Once a website visitor leaves our site, they will begin seeing ads in Google, Bing, Facebook, and Twitter. We created a total of 11 branded banner ads (each with 5 standard size variations) to show to our retargeting audience, and we’re able to customize when and how often each ad is displayed to avoid brand fatigue. As a result, our brand is positively reinforced when potential customers check us out, and we’re able to nurture them towards conversion goals (i.e. contacting us or requesting a call back within the ad).
• Responsive Landing Pages: We designed and developed a total of 8 innovative landing pages for our inbound marketing campaigns. Landing pages are extremely important to a successful inbound marketing campaign because they significantly increase the conversion rate, which in turn decreases the cost per conversion and increases campaign ROI. The quality of a landing page is often the difference between a winning campaign and a losing campaign. Each of our landing pages is fully responsive on mobile devices, relevant to the campaign targets, and has a unique URL for campaign analytics tracking. In addition, since our landing pages were created with the Unbounce platform, we can perform A/B testing with different variations of each page in order to optimize conversions. We’ve also integrated each page with our Salesforce and Mailchimp accounts, so that when we receive contact information for a new lead, it is automatically added to our eNewsletter Mailchimp list and as a new Salesforce Lead. Check out an example of one of our campaign landing pages at https://rock.crocodiledigital.net/free-digital-marketing-strategy-consultation-retargeting-campaign/.
• Online Reputation Management Campaign: We designed a responsive email template to encourage clients to review us after the completion of an engagement. The email provides step-by-step information on how to leave a review on our Google+ and Yelp pages, with direct links in the email. The template is tied to a Mailchimp list and automation campaign. Whenever we add a new email to the list, the review procurement email is automatically sent to that address, and we can track opens in our campaign analytics. What’s more, we can proactively monitor every new review that we receive in our BrightLocal reputation management module, which enables us to follow up with clients about review requests and immediately respond to new reviews as appropriate. This campaign provides an incredibly convenient way to procure positive online reviews by making it easy for us to send the request and making it easy for clients to leave reviews.
• Outbound Marketing Management Tools: We use a number of software tools to manage our outbound marketing campaigns. These tools include Salesforce for lead management and campaign ROI tracking, Google Keyword Planner for SEM keyword analysis, AdStage for online advertising campaign management and dynamic optimization, Unbounce for landing page creation & management, and BrightLocal for online review monitoring. We incorporate these tools and others as needed into the outbound marketing campaigns of our clients, too!

Targeted, Measurable Sales Strategy

• Industry Data Analysis: We analyzed publicly available U.S. Census data on small businesses to narrow down our target market to specific NAICS codes (industries) that would most benefit from our services (and therefore be most receptive) to our outbound sales campaigns.
• Prospect Target List: We purchased premium Dunn & Bradstreet business data at a discount via our Salesforce subscription to Data.com. With this data, we created a target pool of businesses based on location, size, NAICS code, and other criteria.
• Lead Qualification Process: We created an efficient lead qualification process that includes Chrome browser plugins to quickly evaluate prospects and determine specific opportunities where our services can add value.
• 1-1 Email Templates: We developed an email template that is easily modified to send customized 1-1 emails to potential leads within Salesforce. As a result we’re able to efficiently contact leads, log outreach efforts, and track conversations on a massive scale.
• Campaign Sales Goals: We set measurable goals for each campaign. Goals include daily/weekly/monthly activity goals, sales funnel conversion rates (i.e. lead to opportunity, opportunity to new client), campaign conversion rates, campaign cost per conversion, campaign cost per customer acquisition, campaign ROI, website traffic, backlinks & social influencer shares, social media audiences, newsletter subscribers, positive online reviews, and total sales. Goals are tracked with our inbound and outbound marketing tools, as well as in a regularly updated goal tracking spreadsheet.

You might be wondering why we’re sharing so much information about our internal re-branding, marketing, and sales campaigns.

Well, the answer is pretty simple. We want you to know that we wouldn’t recommend anything to you that we aren’t doing ourselves, and we want to demonstrate the spirit of excellence with which we’ll help you develop your own winning sales and marketing campaigns.