CI Marketing

Operating: 7 years
Leaders: Mark Barrett
Location: Sydney - Australia

Background

A successful, small business marketing agency on the northern beaches of Sydney, CI Marketing was primarily building websites but also running marketing campaigns, helping businesses write and execute their marketing plans and providing marketing and branding consultancy.

We’ve been working together for 4 years, so far.

Issues

• Cash flow was constrained – always
• Some jobs were slow to complete and get sign –off (and therefore payment)
• Small (even micro) business focus meant continued price pressure and low margins
• There was a consistent load of small, fiddly jobs that didn’t generate revenue but that took lots of time.

Goals

Mark wanted to grow the business, make more money and be recognised for excellence in his marketplace.

Our coaching relationship has been characterised by change and by the Law of Unintended Consequences – when we took action, a new problem presented itself! They weren’t all unintended, of course, but some were!

The first focus areas:

• Marketing campaigns to generate more enquiries – we developed a series of direct mail campaigns and local advertising to small businesses on the northern beaches, positioning the business as a small business marketing agency and website-builder from a marketing point of view (as opposed to built by IT nerds)
• Improving cash flow – we changed the terms of business and started charging everybody a deposit of 50% of the cost of a website before starting work
• The Consequences:
• A huge proliferation of work – lots of enquiries and lots of new websites to build
• Difficulty executing all the work – a backlog of work built up rapidly
• Bottleneck at the MD – as the principal salesperson, marketer and the holder of most of the technical knowledge, the MD’s ability to do the work was limiting turnover

• Improve speed to deliver – CIMarketing implemented a new platform for building websites that meant the company changed from writing code to assembling websites using a pre-built platform. Reduced time to build a website from 4 weeks to 2-3 days (and quality and functionality actually improved)
• Changed focus – the efforts of the team shifted from writing code to build websites, to marketing the websites and the design and structure aspects – bringing improved results for customers.
• Changed target market – the company began to shift its focus from local small businesses, to larger businesses anywhere in greater Sydney.
• New branding – the company embarked on a re-branding exercise to enable the market shift – no longer a small business marketing company, now a marketing agency with online expertise and a creative pedigree.

This was a significant change in the company’s direction.

The consequences

• Bigger, more complex websites – began to attract and win larger, complex sites for bigger companies (including global businesses) – better margins, higher prices, less fiddling about.
• Increased capacity for work – the new platform streamlined delivery and also meant the company could build more websites with the same team.
• Hangover of small clients – while winning new, larger clients, the company is still dealing with very small clients and a huge hangover of small jobs that aren’t earning money (this isn’t a new problem but it is much more obvious now)
• Lack of systems to manage jobs – anther old problem that became more apparent – few and poor systems to manage the much larger number of outstanding tasks at any one time. Jobs were getting dropped or taking too long to finish.

Focus Change

• Qualifying out – the company started rejecting work that was not a full website at a reasonable price – sending low-cost, bucket shop work elsewhere
• Price increases – the company started charging much higher prices for its websites, to customers who understood the value provided and were happy to pay for it.
• Systems – the company has implemented an online ERP system to manage workflow, timesheets and projects.
• People – the company has hired new staff to help manage the work and provide customer service and account management to complement the team of designers and marketers.
• Managed services – the company now strongly markets websites as a build + an ongoing managed service, to keep the site fresh and to ensure strong SEO performance – so the site delivers sales and marketing value to the customer and is more than just an online brochure.
• Team structure change – MD is now sales + trainer, no longer executor of work, which is all handled by the designers, supported by the customer service manager
• Office Move – to new premises that support the new image of a marketing agency that happens to be online

The Consequences

These changes are still bedding in, but…..

• The backlog of work is clearing
• Time to sign off on sites is reducing (so payments are coming in more quickly)
• Cash flow is much improved
• Revenue and profit have increased and are moving continually upwards
• The company is finding it easy to find new business of the right sort

Summary

CI Marketing is poised for its next stage of growth – the company has a structure and systems in place to accommodate sustained growth, the marketing and service tools to generate it and a hefty target agreed with the Business Coach to chase!

Target

Three times revenue growth in 2 years’ time - And they’ll meet it, too!