How marketing can work for small business – a case study

My friend Kevin Dulio owns and operates Native Fields Landscaping, a Morris County based Landscape Contractor. They had a website but it was a little difficult to manage and looked a little dated.

Native Fields Landscaping Big Yellow Truck
Native Fields Landscaping Big Yellow Truck

I worked with Kevin on his new website. We constructed the site to highlight all their services and used a central design feature throughout the site. When Kevin asked his clients how they remembered his company the talk always came around to his Big Yellow Trucks! So we built the site around that theme and launched his new site in April 2013.

Native Fields Landscaping Website
Native Fields Landscaping Website

For many small businesses this is unfortunately where their marketing efforts stop. But Kevin had other ideas!

Kevin asked my opinion on participating in a regional trade show aimed towards his target market – Home Owner’s Associations. It was a one day show, it wasn’t too expensive and was relatively local so I told him we should give it a try. We worked on an economical backdrop for the booth that was based on the look of his new website. They day in May was a great success with them collecting info from 50 new potential clients.

Native Fields Landscaping Trade Show Booth
Native Fields Landscaping Trade Show Booth

Again, at this point Kevin could have decided that he’d done enough and could wait for the phone to ring, but he didn’t.

They had previously used Constant Contact for e-mail marketing with mixed results. We re-worked their e-mail template with the good folk at Constant Contact to reflect the look of their website.

Native Fields Landscaping e-mail newsletter
Native Fields Landscaping e-mail newsletter

So for you following along at home: the website matches the look of their trucks and their trade show booth and e-mail campaigns match the website.

The truck influenced the website which matches the trade show booth and the e-mail!
The truck influenced the website which matches the trade show booth and the e-mail!

Kevin told me last week that one of the contacts made at the trade show back in May, had been getting their new e-mails ever since. They called and asked Kevin to quote on work for their association. Kevin quoted and got the job, to the tune of $40,000/year!

My estimate of their total financial outlay is less than $5000. Obviously this doesn’t take into account the time Kevin and his team spent on the program, but that’s still an awesome return on investment.

So can I promise that if you do this that you’ll also sign a $40K contract? No, of course not – there aren’t any guarantees in this type of situation. But I can say that it did work for Native Fields – without Kevin’s commitment to trying different things and his conviction that this was an investment not a cost, he wouldn’t have got this new client.

Could it work for you? Why not! Call me at 973-234-5623 or send me an e-mail today and we can get started on your marketing success story.

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