Managing partner of Shelving Design Systems (SDS), Robert Walthall, Jr. bought the company with his father in 2011. SDS is a specialized retail and healthcare design and installation firm. They serve as a one-stop shop for independent pharmacies and retail stores, including sales, design, manufacturing, and installation of shelving systems.
Before deciding to invest in an inbound marketing strategy, the majority of customers came through referrals. While SDS attended regional and national trade shows throughout the year, they were not seeing a great return on investment. The company also relied on quarterly print publications from pharmacy associations and virtual resources such as RxInsider for new leads. While referrals, trade shows, and publications attracted quality leads in the past, SDS was no longer receiving many quality leads from these sources. In addition, SDS previously developed their website using their own resources, which meant they needed a new website design that could attract and convert more qualified leads for their business.
As a business with a niche market competing with other companies that offered the same products and services, SDS was struggling to differentiate their offering. As a result, many of their leads were not marketing qualified leads.
Ultimately, Walthall wanted to extend the company’s national reach to continue growing the business, but he wasn’t sure of the best course of action and was hesitant to spend more time and energy attending national trade shows that brought little to no results.
Walthall decided to work with Spot On after hearing positive feedback from other Birmingham companies that worked with Spot On. As small business owners, co-founders Rebecca Graves and Susie Kelley were familiar with many of his business challenges. Perhaps most importantly, Walthall said that he trusted Spot On and believed in their determination to deliver the desired results.
SDS started working with Spot On in the fall of 2012 and started with developing an engaging, mobile-friendly website and created an archive of rich content on their blog.
In addition to the development of a new website design, Spot On helped SDS to develop specific personas to target their niche market, allowing them to not only attract more organic traffic to their site, but visitors that would be a better fit to become customers.
Spot On also collaborated with SDS to create a content marketing strategy for a new blog. The blog, titled “Shelf Obsessed”, became a comprehensive resource for leads throughout the buyer’s journey, especially for pharmacies. The content was shared across social channels and repurposed into other offers that attracted additional marketing and sales qualified leads.
Although the inbound marketing strategy was successful on its own, SDS also blended their new inbound marketing savvy with tried and true tactics. While the company’s online presence was becoming more successful, Walthall knew it was important to maintain their in-person presence and reputation through word of mouth, as this was still significant in their industry.
Overall, the new website design and content strategy led to a steady increase in organic traffic that attracted higher quality leads who were a better fit to become customers.
The Spot On team ultimately helped SDS to prioritize their marketing goals and develop a strategy that increased the number of sales qualified leads and revenue. Over the last several years, SDS has achieved an overall conversion rate of 7.02% of contacts who became customers.
Walthall says that working with Spot On has opened new doors and presented opportunities they would not have found otherwise. The comprehensive content on their blog continues to offer a great resource for leads and customers, while their website traffic continues to grow steadily each month. Walthall adds:
We’re doing business with customers who never would have found us if we hadn’t changed our approach by partnering with Spot On.