Business development, digital marketing and subsidised finance:
how to build the perfect partnership with a leading professional cleaning company
Joining our case studies this month is Comark, a Genoa-based company with more than 40 years’ experience in the professional cleaning sector. From a review of its digital positioning to business development strategies, right through to €70,000 recovered in non-repayable grants.
What will you find in this new case study?
Challenges
01
Identifying
prospects’ pain points
so as to offer solutions that match their needs.
02
Finding prospects willing to change supplier
or not tied to exclusive contracts.
03
Identifying the right contact
responsible for purchasing this type of product.
04
A distinctive geographical area and one target group that is hard to reach
at certain times of the year.
Solution
HOW DID WE ARRIVE AT THE IDEAL SOLUTION?
The strategy combined business development, digital marketing and staff training.
A DATABASE OF
TARGET CONTACTS
More than 3,000 profiled companies validated.
ACTIVITY
Structured contact and engagement by phone, on LinkedIn and through other channels to reach and build relationships with key decision-makers, new prospects and former clients.
blog articles
SEO-optimised content to strengthen the company’s digital presence.
PROFESSIONAL PAGE
Profiles of the CEO and two specialist consultants.
COMPANY PAGE
Greater visibility and credibility in the sector.
training
In-house sessions to turn employees into brand ambassadors.
Combining communication with relationship-building generated new connections, useful contacts and genuine expressions of interest.
Strategy
Over these first two years of working together we have changed and refined the strategy several times, and our relationship with the client is now firmly established.
Unlike on other occasions, the expansion was not global but very much short-range, since the only target areas were Liguria and three provinces in Piedmont. Yet although this time there were no cultural or language barriers or different customs to test us, we still had to tackle several challenges arising from the many objectives agreed with the client, including growing the client portfolio, managing relationships with existing clients, building a solid digital presence and training employees to use LinkedIn.
Comark’s target market is very broad, and during the project we approached industrial companies, hotels, restaurants, schools and health and social care facilities. These are sectors in which our client can guarantee a high level of service thanks to the support of a network of specialist consultants.
The project began in Liguria and was later extended to Piedmont, in the provinces of Alessandria, Asti and Cuneo. To be sure of reaching target markets as distinctive as Liguria and Piedmont, we proposed our most comprehensive business development strategy to the client, comprising:
- LinkedIn communication for the company page and for the professional pages of Comark Italia’s Managing Director, Marco Costaggiu, and of two Comark specialist consultants, Emanuele Cestari and Stefano Galluccio.
- Contact management: a great classic, the phone call, which proved its worth here. We used this channel to reach part of the target market, such as schools and health and social care facilities, that is hard to find on LinkedIn. And we did not only contact new prospects potentially interested in Comark’s services, but also former clients, to offer them new services.
- Social selling on LinkedIn: certainly a new channel for Comark, and one that produced excellent opportunities for the Managing Director’s profile, though not the same results for the profiles of the sales network. The main targets for this activity were industrial companies, hotels and restaurants; for the last two, the activity did not deliver the results we had hoped for, because contacts in those sectors proved hard to find on the social network.
- Digital positioning: building a solid digital presence by writing articles for the blog, working on SEO and creating the website. Why invest in a digital presence? Because, as we always say, it helps you sell, and we now know for certain that the blog and the SEO work attracted a major prospect interested in Comark’s services.
- LinkedIn training course: in-house training sessions to teach Comark’s employees “the tricks of the trade”, turning them into true ambassadors for the company.
Reading how many activities our strategy includes, did you immediately think of the cost? Fortunately, we had a solution for that too. With our support, Comark applied to several funding calls and obtained more than €70,000 in non-repayable grants.
Statistics
CONTACTS
HANDLED
Results
A stronger network of on-target contacts and communication results.
an improved brand reputation
Companies that became aware of the brand
Company page
management
New followers
gained since the start of the project
PROFESSIONAL PAGE
MANAGEMENT
New followers generated by the activity on the Managing Director’s profile
outreach
activity
Expressions of interest
Future interest
Next steps
Our partnership has certainly not been “swept” away.
For the third year running, Comark has chosen us as its partner to continue its business development. While we work on a new strategy, here are the words of Marco Costaggiu, Managing Director of Comark Italia.
Our partnership with Mallei goes back a long way and can be summed up in one word: trust.
We were lucky to meet at a time when our company had been left bruised by previous bad experiences in the world of communication. Mallei rekindled our enthusiasm and brought us back to the importance of communicating with our clients, and finding new ones, through our social networks.