Success Stories

Reformers Bookshop

The Marketing Challenge

Four years ago, we were a small bookshop in the suburbs of Sydney, until I read an article by Carolyn Tate entitled “How to Avoid the Top Ten Marketing Mistakes”. The realisation hit me - our marketing truly was mediocre!

How it was resolved

As a result of working with Carolyn we audited all marketing activities, ceased any that had no tangible results and developed a proper plan that fleshed out the remainder. Carolyn facilitated a planning session where we worked out how we could best serve our customers. With her advice, we improved our branding, redeveloped our website, launched a new range of products that the customers love, reviewed our processes to give our customers a better shopping experience, improved our colour brochure so that it is now a powerful and highly profitable marketing tool, built alliance partnerships with firms in complementary sectors of the industry, and set up a blog site and social media presence. Now we appear on the first page of Google for our search terms (and usually in the top 4 results).

The results we achieved

During the past 4 years, there’s been a global financial crisis and now possibly the worst retail recession in decades. Despite all this: we grew 48% last year, and are now 6 times the size we were 5 years ago. Our sales so far this year are up 12% on last year, while many others in the industry are down 20-30% on last year. Without Carolyn’s advice and mentoring, I am sure we would have found it tough as well. Thank you, Carolyn. Duncan Parker, Reformers Bookshop

Lakes Business Park

The Marketing Challenge

Lakes Business Park is Sydney’s premier business park and home to over 50 of the world’s most successful companies such as Telstra, Volkswagen and Sunbeam. The park is uniquely located in a beautiful lake and park setting in Botany, just 5 minutes from the airport. The challenge facing the team at LBP was that while the tenants and their 1500 employees knew what a lovely park they worked in, the business world at large didn’t really know the park existed or why it was a cut above the all the other business parks in Sydney. They needed a plan to get greater awareness and more attention and in turn attract tenants for any arising vacant space. The marketing and sales function and role needed to be embedded into the business.

How it was resolved

One of the directors of the park called on Carolyn to run a marketing planning day with the board and Phillip Barker the GM of the park. The complete plan was established and agreed upon by the board and the action items agreed, with Carolyn as project manager. The plan called for a marketing and sales person to be appointed (Siemone Greig), a complete rebuild of their online presence, a CRM system, a revamp of the parks café – the pivotal point of the LBP community, a suite of new marketing materials and a calendar of events including networking nights and training days.

The results we achieved

The plan is being very successfully implemented in the business and all tenants and employees now receive regular enewsletters and updates from the LBP management office. Their events are well attended and successful – the most recent event being the LBP Golf Day. People are now talking about the park and they know where to find it. It’s number one on Google for ‘business park Sydney’. Marketing is a must-have in the business and all the staff are engaged and on board.

Green Rooms

The Marketing Challenge

Green Rooms is a Sydney based garden and landscape company with a unique difference to many other landscapers in that they combine sustainable features with high-end design in each of their outdoor projects. Hanna Gammon, the director of Green Rooms realised that relying on word-of-mouth referrals alone would never take their business to the level of growth they desired. They had set big targets for the new financial year and therefore faced the challenge of seriously increasing the number of leads to be generated.

How it was resolved

So for the first time, the team at Green Rooms decided to put some real effort into their marketing. They appointed Carolyn to work with them to develop their marketing plan and then support them in the execution of the plan. The planning stage helped them clearly define their points of difference, pricing and packaging models and target markets. They refreshed the website to make it more of a lead generator, gathered testimonials from clients, developed letters of introduction for potential referral partners, a client referral program and produced a whole range of marketing materials for use by staff and for direct mail.

The results we achieved

Green Rooms launched their new marketing program to all staff and contractors to engage everyone in the marketing process. Everyone was given their part to play and set targets for new leads. And without divulging too many trade secrets, they now have four marketing tactics they use day in and day out to generate more leads consistently. They now sleep easy when it comes to marketing because they have a process behind it. It’s now part of everyone’s daily routine.

Monique Field of House About

The Marketing Challenge

I knew this year was going to be a tough one and I didn’t want to lay awake at night wondering what would happen to the business. I knew there was so much more we could do when it comes to marketing, but I didn’t know where to begin. First and foremost, I recognised that we had a large following of repeat customers who supported our business, however we were spending all of our marketing dollars on traditional media (newspaper and radio) and didn’t have a well rounded marketing plan. The business would peak around the planned advertising and trough when we had nothing. We knew that we needed to market directly to these people who already know and love us and to reward them for their loyalty. I had some ideas, but not a plan or the time to implement them. So what I really needed was a plan.

How it was resolved

For the first time we really put some time, effort and focus into it. I decided to work with Carolyn at Connect Marketing and I got Tania on board part-time to help make it happen. In just 6 weeks we rebranded the business, developed new signage and stationary, built and launched our first ever website, launched our first ever newsletter, engaged our staff in marketing and gave them marketing targets, gathered testimonials from clients, attended weekly networking events, developed a ‘refer a friend’ program, collected over 500 email addresses from customers and more. One of the things I am most proud of is that we also launched a Scholarship Education Program for the children of the Indonesian factory workers that supply our furniture.

The results we achieved

After all this we had the best February and March sales months in four years of being open and in April we are expecting to have the highest turnover month ever. We now do one marketing activity every week. It’s non-negotiable. Traffic to the store and new business leads are coming in consistently and steadily increasing every week. There are no peaks and troughs any more.