Published by olivia.wright@dontpanicprojects.com
Published Date 02.11.2023 
Specialist SME marketing agency, Growth by Design, are delighted to be finalists in two categories at the 2023 UK Search Awards: Best Local Campaign SEO and Best Low Budget Campaign PPC!
Practical and business result-focused approach to marketing SMEs
Business owners of SMEs have a whole host of different roles to undertake in their business, and rarely will they be trained experts in marketing, or have the time to dedicate to it. But equally they need to be consistently generating high-quality leads, achieving a strong conversion rate, maximising sales levels, and achieving the highest levels of lifetime value, referrals, and introductions.
With many of the marketing models available not relevant to the realities and priorities of SMEs, the founders of Growth by Design created an SME specific model called The Common 10.
The Common 10 marketing model is based on the 10 most common objectives of SMEs and provides a structure and relevant model for them. The model is explored in more detail in the book – Growing by Design. Covering everything from brand, lead generation, data capture, enquiry progression, sales conversion, sales value, customer lifetime value, referencing, reactivation, and introducers.
Depending on the business objective, our clients receive:
- Powerful brand development and creative logo design
- Awareness raising, influential print design for business cards, stationery, brochures, presentation folders, exhibition banners and much more
- Regular, effective marketing support services – tailored and flexible as your outsourced marketing department
- Modern and expert digital marketing support for social media, content, blogging, search engine findability (SEO), and search engine marketing (PPC) including Google and Facebook Ads
- Websites: design, development, and performance advancement
- Video production and editing for many purposes (testimonials, explainers etc).
The nominations: Changing the business and life of the business owner with SEO
The first of our nominations is for our work with Sussex Floor Restoration on their local SEO campaign.
The foundation of the SEO strategy was the building and prioritising of their audiences – to really get under the skin of who they were to be able to compile a comprehensive, consistent, and targeted SEO-content plan. Combining this with backlinks and technical SEO website optimisations, they have received a highly tailored local SEO campaign.
In our view, this approach sets the standard and benchmark for other SMEs to aspire to… the results prove it too!
The business has achieved significant growth leading to the creation of new jobs, helped with the financial security of the business, and improved the life of the business owner. Traffic to the website was 33% above target, and their largest ever commercial client was secured through the SEO campaign.
“We’ve got a really nice steady rolling rate of inquiry from domestic clients. It’s almost becoming a backbone to what we need each month.
It means I can sleep at night a bit easier, knowing that that’s in the background working away and I don’t have to worry about it.” – Adam Bateup, Owner.
The nominations: Achieving real business results with PPC
The second nomination is for Worksmart, who are a regulatory technology solutions provider for the global financial services industry.
The objective of this PPC campaign was to drive efficiency and improve their effectiveness in generating leads from prospective customers. Many of the keywords in these campaigns are very broad, so we needed to refine them, apply filters, and bid adjustments. We worked closely with the client team, and jointly monitored the quality and conversion of the leads.
This was alongside, reducing the cost per conversion, generating more traffic to the site and being able to launch a new product within the existing media budget. It needed to be the definition of an efficient campaign to make the budget stretch as far as it could.
The results…well media spend was reduced by 10%, cost per conversion down 28%, number of quality leads maintained, and a new product successfully launched! With a return on investment of every £1 spent, an opportunity pipeline of over £6,000 being generated – that is a real business changing result!
You can see more great case studies and results for SMEs on our website.
What this means to Growth by Design and the SME community
The whole team are incredibly proud to be finalists in these two categories. They are areas that really matter to SMEs: local and low budget (but still effective!)
It is a testament to our team’s hard work, unique approach, and the strong relationships we have with our clients.
We want to inspire the SME community to demand more and achieve greater things from their marketing, and we sincerely hope these two nominations do just that. If you’d like us to do a complementary review of your marketing, we’d be very happy to do so. We can tell you more about The Common 10 model, show how it relates to your business and give you ideas to deliver even better business results! You can book yourself a time here: https://calendly.com/henrylaker
