Our client specialises in the development and manufacturing of flooring accessories, producing 5,000 products across 100 ranges. They are represented on five continents and in over 70 countries.

Within a sector that tends to take a relatively traditional approach to new business, our client had achieved great success and experienced on-going growth through a commodity sell approach and customer recommendations. However, to futureproof their marketing strategy in an increasingly competitive market and to ensure their sales didn’t become static, our client wanted to change the way they sold to clients. Going forward, they sought to develop a more proactive way of engaging with their target market, moving away from a product or commodity sell, and evolving towards a solution sell approach.

What they needed

Our client was particularly keen to promote a new product range of accessories for tiled floors with underfloor heating, but, as an extremely niche product, the flooring accessories were only relevant to a finite number of businesses. They therefore required a fully-profiled database to lay the foundations for well-targeted telemarketing, and needed support across both calling and database building. They had been working alongside a creative marketing agency, who then recommended us to our client.

What we did

Initially, we purchased a database of independent retailers then carried out extensive data profiling to identify which organisations fitted the precise qualification criteria. We refined the database by identifying key business activities, as well as understanding the nature of each retailer’s customer base. By identifying whether the retailers sold to residential or commercial markets, we were able to understand indicative budgets and could therefore establish which retailers to prioritise for calling. Throughout the campaign, we filtered out any non-relevant retailers which provided a more focused and information-rich database. This enabled us to target the most relevant and qualified retailers, therefore increasing quality of engagement and reducing any subsequent drop-out.

We recognised that our client had an extensive database of past customers, but had traditionally prioritised reaching new retailers rather than reengaging dormant or lapsed leads. To supplement new customer acquisition, we supported our client in also developing a reengagement campaign that sought to make the most of this previously-untapped data. Our client provided the data from their accounts system but this had minimal information and needed to be further developed. Throughout our calling, we identified which businesses were still in operation, whether there were any new decision makers, and whether they still had relevant requirements. We also looked at key factors such as historical spend, frequency of spend, mean time between orders and top product lines. By building this information into the database, we refined a database of 868 contacts to 184 targeted, highly qualified and relevant leads. By allocating voucher codes to current non-spenders, we were able to encourage retailers to purchase again. We progressed both new and reignited leads towards a range of outputs – sending product samples and product catalogues, delivering point of sale materials, organising sales rep visits with potential stockists, as well as feeding back any key customer queries for our client to action.

Our work paved the way for an additional strand of lead generation which explored and developed new routes to market. We targeted architecture firms as these represented higher-value, longer-term opportunities which could compliment the more immediate opportunities presented by retailers. Given the need for architects to participate in CPD throughout the year, we developed an engagement strategy around CPD sessions, setting appointments for our client to deliver seminars which could help architects work towards their professional development. These educational sessions provided our client with opportunities to present their portfolio of products in front of an engaged, high-value audience, which could offer long-term relationships and routes to both commercial and residential markets. By engaging with architects, our client’s products could be integrated into the architects’ design, and were therefore more likely to be considered earlier on in the buying cycle.

What we achieved

We offered a multi-faceted, three-strand approach to lead generation – building a database of new clients to increase market penetration, developing a re-engagement campaign to reignite dormant leads, and developing new routes to market through architecture firms. Our data cleansing and profiling activities provided highly a relevant database which ensured calling was targeted towards retailers with the highest likelihood of conversion – this led to high-quality engagement and reduced drop-out rate. Of the dormant customers we spoke with, 78% were reengaged, demonstrating the success of our qualification and targeting processes. By engaging with architects, we also paved the way for our client to develop new routes to market, and lay the foundations for long-term, high-value relationships.

Overall, we helped our client develop a more balanced sales strategy that considered both short-term and long-term opportunities, therefore futureproofing their marketing strategy in an ever-increasingly competitive market.

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