Marketing support for a commercial equipment supplier

Introduction

Inter-Fridge supply commercial refrigeration to businesses around NZ. Being a small, kiwi business they have that can-do attitude helping many business owners with their storage and display requirements. No job is too big or small for this team.

Owner, James has been in the commercial refrigeration industry for over 40 years and the team have a good reputation with their customers and with those in the industry.

They have a range of customers spanning the length of NZ and manage all sales and service from their base in Auckland. They engaged our marketing support services in 2019 after being one of our bookkeeping clients.  

The Challenge

When their sales and marketing coordinator was leaving, Inter-Fridge knew they had to replace her quickly to ensure their efforts to date remained current and relevant. The cost and effort of employing someone full-time again in this role was too much at the time for this business to consider. 

They needed immediate help with preparing sales quotes and proposals, updating the website, providing general sales support, and keeping their online channels updated. There was a lot of marketing collateral missing that the team required for sales visits and a lot of products to catalogue and display online in an easy to digest manner that it became very overwhelming and stressful for the team when they couldn’t find what they wanted quickly and easily.

They wanted to have support in the form of being able to find what they needed when they needed it, as well as being able to have a support person available to help with small things like sales admin, editing, help with using their CRM and answering their queries.

The Solution

With a working relationship established with our senior bookkeeper, James explored the option of outsourcing the marketing side of his business to us. The value for money and cost savings became obvious.  

We put together a scope of work to cover the absence of the sales and marketing coordinator, starting with 13hours per month that included a monthly meeting at their location.  Initially our brief was for ‘upkeep’ of the current work, maintaining their digital channels,  CRM, and sending email campaigns with new promotions and offers to their database.

James saw the benefits of nurturing his existing customers but also wanted to grow and increase his sales.

The team had sales collateral created for them, including templates for quotes and proposals that were easy to update and use, and slowly we started to build a cohesive brand and establish a larger presence in the industry.

New projects were introduced including a website overhaul, a focus on regular social media management, using those platforms in the right way and being able to provide leads to the sales team. Later we introduced the addition of blogs and new product catalogues. Once the website was complete, we were able to engage an external SEO agency for further optimisation and growth opportunities.

Results & Benefits

James has seen the value gained from keeping his marketing top of mind and ensuring adequate budget remains each year. The sales team have their large quotes and proposals prepared for them to provide a consistent look and feel which removed the admin burden from them, and there is marketing collateral available for their sales trips, The CRM and admin side is managed without the sales team having to worry about this.

By not having to employ anyone in-house, the cost savings were able to be applied to digital marketing initiatives:

• A website update and redesign to sort products by category
• The addition of monthly blogs
• SEO focus to utilise the website and drive traffic
• Google Ads and Facebook remarketing campaigns

With the combination of paid advertising and keeping on top of online channels, Inter-Fridge has had an increase in product enquiries, leads, and sales, plus a huge shift in an increase in visibility of the Inter-Fridge brand.  They have been involved in large client pitches and tenders, and have grown their reputation within the industry.