case study abitibi geophysics palmer (2)

11/12/2013

Market Intelligence MagicCreating more sales with less money

A case study report on the surprisingly efficient results achieved through clever market research.

Kevin J. Palmer, RPM. MCInstM


Market Intelligence MagicCreating more sales with less money pro

The impact that a professional marketer can have on a business in this day and age is, and always has been – enormous. Through research and study over the past 25 years of marketing work, we believe that we have found the magic of market research. Through twinning with target marketing and a great deal of technical experience, we believe we have found market intelligence magic!

Our specific case is the process we implemented with a firm called Abitibi Geophysics. The company has three Canadian offices in a business which is competing world-wide for the attention of three basic target markets – Junior Mining Companies, Producing Mine Companies, and consultants in the geophysics business.

Mining in general is in an economic slump and the company’s president has decided that during this downturn, Abitibi Geophysics will push harder as opposed to battening down the hatches and weathering the economic storm forecasted to last a couple of years.

So, here’s where we were . . .

In the first three months of our relationship, the client needed specific media “things” done – a grand opening, invitations sent to dignitaries, catering and event planning, some signage and invitations sent, the usual tactics of an initial contact with a client that would

be somewhat nervous to share any real information.

The first contact piece would need a certain look – which we and every other company in the business could produce, easily. Superior Image Communications presented the first concept of making significant change; establishing trust with the client, making things perfect at every stage without a detail being missed.A comprehensive list of invitees in the mining business was provided, as well as a researched list of key government officials and dignitaries. Superior Image Communications created

an event which was classy, helping to tell a story about who the company is.

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Superior Image Communications wrote and distributed the news releases on the day of the event that included an overview of the day itself.

A professional photographer captured high quality images like the speeches, the crowd in the background, politicians working the guests. The event concluded seamlessly, and the press gave great coverage.

The event was an outstanding success with a happy client, business contacts, and referrals from third parties in government and industry.

Following the gala event, Superior Image Communications had identified a few areas where it knew that some well-placed, well-targeted media pieces could assist the client in achieving more sales.

Great strategy in marketing comes from great clients…In review, – the gig was finished. Superior Image Communications did what it was hired to do. The client is happy, the work was clean and neat, the attendees to the Grand Opening were pleased, the caterer did a fine job, the band hired for the afternoon did a great job, the consulting marketer’s team functioned at a reasonably high level – the signage sub delivered on time, billboards for the company were placed, signage on the building erected, and media was in attendance resulting in a fair amount of coverage on radio stations television, newspapers, and weekly tabloids. All work to this point for the client was labelled “successful”.

The President of Abitibi Geophysics approached the lead consulting marketer, Kevin Palmer- asking questions about the marketing plan that he’s read about on the Superior Image Communications site. (www.superiorimagecom.com )

In Mr. Palmer’s world, this just doesn’t normally happen. He is in the marketplace selling his survey process to anyone that will listen – and most “executives” that hear the pitch about the focus on the best client and the pareto principle (80/20 rule) of organizing existing clients gently brush him off their office chair and send he and his company packing – almost angry that Palmer had been so bold as to suggest that after a survey, sales would be enhanced by 15% within the first 15 months of activity with Superior Image Communications. Palmer’s survey process eases costs and enhances revenues, surveying over the telephone and actually getting incredible feedback from existing “experts” on a company (their

best clients always know the company best!)

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- Pierre Berube sifting through reports / charts and survey result data!

http://www.superiorimagecom.com/


Pierre Bérubé of Abitibi Geophysics is not your average businessman – he’s very astute, listens to every detail reported to him by clients, employees and managers – and is most impressive by his own client accounts.

Throughout our survey process, we were inundated with positive commentary from clients about his way of treating them – and his sound knowledge of the business.

Bérubé asked about the process and intently listened. Through Palmer’s process, Bérubé’s company, Abitibi Geophysics - reads client feedback in the most intense manner; he’s receiving results and direction produced from his best clients’ commentary; he sees improvement through suggestions made by his best customers; and receives his corporate “report card”. Mr. Bérubé fully understood the value he would gain with the data and information from the survey.

Trust - Without it, drop the client.

After evaluating our performance in his own mind, talking for a couple of hours – and after an amusing dinner with our teams at Giorgio’s in Thunder Bay, Bérubé and Palmer discussed a strategy to attract more best clients for his firm – cherry picking the prime clients and trying not to attract new clients that are, or will be a headache.

It’s important at this point to reiterate that Mr. Bérubé had no idea how Palmer’s team would execute their survey, and Palmer was not clear on the details of Bérubé’s business. All the two businessmen knew were that each was good at what they did.

Mr. Bérubé eventually got around to asking for Palmer’s marketing plan template– the ace-in-the-hole that no one else has that has kept us busier than most marketing companies; has produced higher partnership sales faster in government agencies; has increased sales for a Province’s operators year over year ahead of the rest of the Provinces; – the template that Palmer had developed for 20 years, taking every great marketing idea he had ever heard and documenting it. All was captured into a book of strategies for guerilla marketing, survey techniques, media strategies to save money by tactical purpose - the very book that is Palmer’s business life! Palmer gave it to him without hesitation. It is all about trust.

Two days turned into a week, and no response.

Your gut never lies

Bérubé called... He’s busy and apologized for the delay. Running a multi-million dollar geophysics company is time-consuming. Palmer carefully asked for his template book to be returned, and it is the next day– along with an order for five identical blank books!

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Mr. Bérubé wanted to buy the empty pages in the book. He thought it to be exactly what his people needed to make progressive, positive marketing change.

Now what? Palmer can’t give away his proprietary “trade secrets” for $49.95 a book, and did not want to annoy his client, as they have great rapport!

In response, Palmer emailed a polite little message to Bérubé’s executive assistant telling her that she can have as many copies as she’d like once it was filled in with the proper information. Palmer informed her that only after the client research was completed, could his team develop the strategy which would work best. That meant that presenting material without Abitibi Geophysics’ client input, that marketing plan bookwould be nothing more

than most companies have today – a bunch of media produced to great expense which normally misses the mark and rarely resounds positively with the client.

It’s no secret that marketing campaigns rarely provide enough cash to pay for themselves. Twenty percent of all campaigns produce positive net revenue results over their total cost to create, design, produce and run on media.

Building business on Strong Foundations!Abitibi Geophysics is a company that is continually on the lookout for innovative ways to maintain their competitive edge. Copycat competition had been offering similar services to their low-end service at a greatly reduced price – mainly to keep themselves afloat. Some would call this “market commoditization” whereby lack of differentiation in the opinions of the clients led to a decision that these copycat firms could indeed do the work at the lower price, and that this work was not “rocket science”. This was a big problem for Abitibi.

Abitibi furnished Superior Image Communications with a list of 30 of their best clients. Working with the management group, the Superior Image Communications team formulated 20 questions to ask these clients which would reveal key market differentiation for Abitibi and provide the path to restoring uniqueness factors in the minds of the key prospects for Abitibi.

Superior Image Communications wanted to use the existing client information to derive new strategies to reach other, similar “best client types” as defined by higher dollar spend, better word-of-mouth generators, less headaches while doing the work, great rapport, easy to deal with, pay their bills right away and so forth.

Superior Image Communications would take all the responses to the questions, group them into three or four folders of similar best clients, then analyze the data producing an “average attitude” from the responses. In this manner, the consultant team has good data. They will tell exactly what is needed, including but not limited to: media clients read, watch, and listen to; things they like about Abitibi; things they dislike; things that others do

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that they wish Abitibi would do; issues that they may have had in the past; hobbies that the CEO may enjoy; stats on their lifestyle that are relevant; and much more of other interesting information which would never be revealed in regular conversation, and information that would be impossible to collect first hand. From here, Superior Image Communications takes the exact scenes clients describe in their answer of the “ideal scenes in your mind’s eye at the point of purchase”.

These scenes include the exact work that they see Abitibi doing better than others, the attributes of the management at Abitibi that these clients love and continue to deal with year after year because of all the key selling points as outlined by the most important person to that business, “the best client”.

This formulates the media-exactly mimicking those specific details in the news media that reaches other best client types. The new prospects have the same values and same quality!

But here is the potential big snag in the survey process. Palmer does not speak French.

Best client surveys complete – 96% responseIt turned out that Abitibi’s best clients spoke very good English, and had much to say about Abitibi Geophysics. They provided incredible commentary on the state of the business, their future purchasing needs, things they love about Abitibi Geophysics, things that they admire about Pierre Bérubé and his management team, some recommendations for the future with respect to operations, and a wonderful list of media that they read, watch, and listen to –

headlines they’d click and read from an email and more!

Figure 1 - Key sales motivators are taken from survey responses and transferred seamlessly into creative. Here's a website revealing one attribute after another that best customers thought relevant

Palmer’s team summarized the data into the marketing plan book, captured creative ideas that they suggested and began the process of filling in the blank pages with relevant, market intelligence data.

Many of the clients called Mr. Bérubé following Palmer’s initial call to ensure that the call was legit – and most clients maximized their responses. In one or two cases, the telephone survey lasted more than two hours, as these best clients were passionate about the work that Abitibi has done for them, the innovation that Bérubé insists on providing through his laboratory, his constant improvement of technology, and his leadership in the field.

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The survey was unquestionably a success – producing exactly the paths that the firm was seeking, utilizing the best customers to attract new best customers.

Figure 2 - A tough, smart field technician leans over his ATV in the rain on a job site - exactly the visualization brought forward by many during the best customer surveys.

Utilizing the data constructively The survey uncovered specific market approaches and treatments that Superior Image Communications created to resolve the issues in the areas identified:

a) The best clients want to know who’s doing the field crew work / turnover causes issues with the best clients / proper safety gear in the field is extremely important to one segment of best clients.

Crew chief images were taken and placed on a new website focused on the three target segments that Palmer grouped responses into. The write-ups on the profiles mimic the

information that the best clients shared that is relevant to them. The proprietary equipment which differentiates Abitibi from its competition is clearly being shown in the material – along with a higher quality theme that will now permeate through the creative - silently delivering a message which is pinpoint accurate to the target market.

This will mean less advertising costs to deliver new revenues to the client; exactly what Palmer started out with as a major goal. While Superior Image Communications can’t reveal any real “earth-shattering” results in this case study, reviewing the above media shows that the new media takes into account every single facet of the comments outlined by research with the best clients.

Note: Future clients will read this single piece of media – in conjunction with the rest of the issues / treatments on a web, newsletter, ad – and will understand our commitment to resolving their issues before they become an issue.

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Carrying out the rest of the plan

The impact of creating more relevant media utilizing information received from the best clients produces consistently higher results for the client, 100% of the time. When

combined with all media and a sound plan that encompasses all areas reported as read/watched/listened to/belonging to this group/liking this message, prospects see this in their mind’s eye.The plan defines the best of the best from Palmer’s perspective and is continually changing as more knowledge is accumulated from more situations that Superior Image Communications encountered doing this type of work. Having the ability to create the scenes and the media on the spot gives Superior Image Communications the

advantage of bringing great ideas to creative in record time – free from the usual approval process, and budgetary constraints of hiring creative people. This competitive advantage for Superior Image Communications has been huge in creating the biggest impact faster than its competition.

Palmer completed the competitive analysis on Abitibi’s competition, studies of their best clients, studies of their work, learned much about the business, and continues to produce new creative which is perfectly in-line with the needs of the best client. Palmer introduced GOLDMINE CRM into their lineup which is helping reach out to more best client potentials on a daily basis.

Superior Image Communications has been busy creating the images of typical scenes which it knows are what sets Abitibi apart from its competition, and will continue to work this system until the client is #1 in the marketplace. With the talent found within the client’s operations, this should not be a great deal of time to completion!

More work completed Yielding results! Study of the top keyword phrases in the business of Geophysics revealed some weakness with the competition. So, the team set out to work to capture relevant keyword phrasing then build content around those phrases to aid in google placement.

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Figure 3 Goldmine CRM was installed to better track performance of the sales and marketing departments


The result? In a matter of a week following writing and submission to the key areas online – we’re also pleased to report that the site created for Abitibi intended to be a softer, less technical sell – is now ranking #1 on several keyword phrases. We’ve optimized our website to capture as many typical keyword search terms as possible – utilizing the specialties of the company (innovation, strong field crews, incredible data collection, state of the art technologies, OreVision, Armit, etc) to write the content.

What is next for Abitibi Geophysics? Abitibi Geophysics can expect to be front and center in the mind’s eye of quality prospective clients, predicated on a sound knowledge of their existing best customer. They can expect increases in sales within a fifteen month period, reduction in stray marketing expenditures, and a full complement of guerilla marketing tactics designed to not outspend the competition, but out-think them based on a solid ever-changing marketing and media plan.

In terms of client contact, Abitibi will have a system of sustained presence in the marketplace. Newsletters will be available on a quarterly basis – filled with helpful and money saving tips, tricks and techniques. Warming and friendly emails outlining new innovations will release to all prospects and clients through CRM – and a follow-up call with each email will ensure constant contact. Sales forces will be handed over leads once warm – and traditional face to face meetings will replace the email at some point as well.

They are already the leader in their best clients’ minds – The job of Superior Image Communications is to deliver that message across a multi-media platform to ensure that the message resounds loudly in the prospective clients that mimic best clients, thereby lowering attraction costs and increasing revenues.

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In terms of existing strengths – Abitibi Geophysics has it all; with highly skilled communicators across the board in English and French – people like Tom Loader, Pierre Berube, Pam Coles, Chris Brown and Roman Wasylechko all having a tremendous handle on their clients and the business of geophysics. In this case, we didn`t bring a solution – we are simply helping to carry out their vision, one step at a time.

Kevin Palmer,

Registered Professional Marketer | Council Chair – Canadian Institute of Marketing

President, Superior Image Communications 807 473 3648

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case study abitibi geophysics palmer (2)

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