Richard C Pendry, security consultant and author contacted us through twitter to enquire whether we could look at his sales and marketing and provide advice as to why his point of sale material wasn’t returning more client enquiries for the type of business he wants. He has also written his second book and is keen to raise his author profile to become a best selling author in his field of historical action adventure fiction. Richard has a website and all the relevant social media channels and has been blogging. He has a rudimentary knowledge of sales and marketing having worked for himself for many years as a consultant. He has an excellent attitude, which is resilient, enthusiastic and positive.

We conducted a 1 hour business review over the phone with Richard and demonstrated extensive experience in the field of sales and marketing support for security consultants and brand positioning help and advice for authors.

We found on investigation that Richard has not had proactive marketing support and turn around of website updates have been slow. Richard has an attractive WordPress website and his web company had given him basic access. As suppliers we must strive to ascertain what Richard is trying to achieve and take time, care and attention to understand his goals and our responsibility in helping him towards them to avoid long term support fragmenting, a story we come across all too often when piece meal work has taken place with no long term agreement and a lack of client knowledge. A service level agreement has been put in place with the idea buro, in part to stop this happening, to bring any other suppliers or prospects to the table and push business forward in a s.m.a.r.t direction. We are not just web designers or marketeers at the idea buro, we pride ourselves on our business growth experience.

Richard told us he had dealt with many marketing companies who offered the world and returned little. We understood his anxiety having dealt with lots of business owners in the same position and will communicate as effectively as possible what needs to happen in terms of tidying up his current marketing vehicles (website, social media, point of sale, email signatures etc), then ‘tweeking’ them so that they were fit for purpose and developing them further so that they are aligned and became a more effective joined up purposeful lead generation and business growth tool.

An International Security Consultant and Author

Case Details

The Idea Buro are commissioned to investigate what has gone amiss and arm the business owner with information to improve his sales and marketing. Analysis of the google analytics, website and social media is being undertaken and reported on in the first month.

We have been given the go ahead to suggest a way forward. Work is agreed in the short term on a service level agreement of £500 pcm for 5 hours work. Daily contact is encouraged where necessary to work closely with the business owner to bring their marketing and web knowledge up a notch. We call this the pincer movement.

On commission, the current website was proven out of date, flawed and not fit for purpose as a lead generator. It’s content needed to be brought up to date and improved. The business owner will be coached in digital marketing essentials and will be producing blogs so that regular content was released from the business in line with a rudimentary idea of a handful of marketing campaigns he wanted to launch and progress. It was explained that moving to organic marketing will give a higher return on investment over time. We are starting on the exciting journey of developing a referral marketing system. We are making changes to the website and marketing touch points where the client feels they lack the necessary skill or knowledge to make the change.

Considerable time will be spent gaining access to old and current social media accounts, business directories and analytics accounts. On accessing old accounts information found to be out of date or misaligned information will be corrected. Login details listed and stored in an online project management area. Blogs will be pushed out through the business’ social media automatically saving time, fully optimised for online search and with a contact form for easy enquiries. This it was explained was a process of up skilling and putting the business owner in control of their own sales and marketing. Showing Richard where and and how to realign his current online content at prospective clients and develop the business’ sales and marketing in a focused and measurable manner in the long term. A ‘showing by doing’ approach. His interesting profile as an author will provide a spring board to develop an online story, following the age old BNI mantra “Tales tell, stories sell”.

After 3 months efforts will be analysed and further support offered. We suggest clients need marketing support for 6-9 months to start seeing real ROI, but a lot can be done in terms of reaching out for the low hanging fruit in the first 3 months.

• Client: Richard C Pendry, Security Consultant and Author.
• Client Requirements: Business Review, Coaching, Marketing Training, WordPress website improvement, WordPress Website Training, Social Media Training, Linkedin Profile Optimisation, Blogging Training, Search Engine Optimisation Training, Email Marketing Training, (Mail Chimp)Sales & Marketing Support.
• Website: www.richardcpendry.com