Clarksons

The Problem

Clarksons offers property maintenance, electrical services, and fuel services, which they deliver across New Zealand. Year after year, the Clarksons team was all well-versed and knew everything they offered; the problem was few others outside of their existing customers did.

Most of their customer base and the outside world recognised Clarksons’ red vans driving around and immediately associated it with a company that solely worked in the oil and gas industry. At the time, Clarksons wasn’t actively marketing their brand, so there was little awareness around the other services they provided.

Clarksons wanted to grow and were keen to start making some noise around their other services. “We knew what we needed to do, we just needed a kick in the right direction,” says Gary Flynn, Clarksons’ General Manager.

While the initial drive was there, the real push came from something that is now all-too-familiar – the pandemic.

As the world came to a halt, it meant planes stopped flying, cars stopped driving, and businesses started cutting back on their maintenance programmes. Suddenly, Clarksons’ revenue stream took a significant hit.

Clarksons’ next step was to re-energise their marketing. “We considered getting a marketing person on board but then decided against it because it was only one person, with one opinion,” Gary commented. Instead, they decided the best course of action was to choose a company with a mix of people and a diverse range of skillsets that they could tap into.

That’s when we stepped in.

Our Approach

Our first step was to take an initial, holistic view of Clarksons, getting an understanding of where they were at and where they wanted to be.

We identified quickly that there was an issue with the current brand. It was apparent to them and to us that not many people (including their existing clients) knew the extent of services they provided.

Our strategy included a re-brand and deploying key brand awareness tactics, including creating social media content and sending out regular monthly newsletters.

Understanding the value in connecting with an audience that has already demonstrated their trust in the Clarksons brand, engaging with their current customer base was step one. We sent out an EDM making the Clarksons clients aware of the other services they provided. Right off the bat, that got them some quick sales.

We aligned much of their brand awareness campaigns with a similar message, ensuring that everything was being communicated in a way that was easy to understand.

Our team started putting more energy behind their social media platforms, which included creating a LinkedIn page and taking over their Facebook (which, as Gary admits, they forgot they had).

As we continued to give their brand more of a voice, we were also ticking away behind the scenes refreshing their look, re-developing their website, polishing all their written content, creating visual content, and even making videos.

However, marketing and marketing alone isn’t what makes businesses great. While we were delivering quality leads, Clarksons’ sales team needed the tools to turn those leads into sales.

After exploring every corner of their company, their brand, and their team, we developed a thorough understanding of their target markets, their strengths and weaknesses. From there, we created a customised sales programme for them, tailored to improve their skills and guide them to reach their goals.

Overview

The results came through almost immediately with previous Clarksons customers re-connecting with the team via LinkedIn after having been made aware of their other services. Leveraging what they learned in their personalised sales training, these connections then turned into sales.

Even partnering businesses started to comment on how good the branding and awareness campaigns were running.

When it came to the re-brand, Gary says, “I’ve got to be honest, I was one of the people on the side of ‘don’t bother.’” He admits that he didn’t see the value at first and thought their current branding was just fine.

However, when Gary saw the results that were being delivered to Clarksons, he switched sides. “The minute we started, we said, ‘We should have done this ages ago,’ ”. The branding and content produced by Attain has gained more notoriety and more traction, with Gary noting that one of their videos has received over 1,000 views. Seeing the success delivered to them by Attain, we then went on to develop two additional brands for them.

Not only do Clarksons’ customers now know everything available to them, but the team is also receiving new work outside the oil and gas industry, providing them with a more stable income stream that is out of reach from the pandemic.

However, it’s important to note that Attain doesn’t take all the credit for Clarksons’ success. As soon as we connected with Clarksons and got to understand their business, we recognised the quality work they deliver and the professionalism they carry with them. We just needed to get everyone else to see what we were seeing.

Gary says, “[Attain] supports what we’re doing….Our customers are pleased with our physical delivery and they’re pleased that we’re outwardly saying, ‘If we work for you, this is what we’ll deliver’, and we’re actually doing it, so the two things go hand-in-hand.” Gary’s right—we sit behind our clients and support what great work they’re already doing. Our help doesn’t stop there. Attain’s CEO Sharn Piper notes, “We’re their team of people. Strategy is always going to need to pivot and change. In order to achieve results, we’re always going to need to roll out different tactics to make sure it happens.”

We continue to provide this flexibility to Clarksons, monitoring results and maneuvering our strategy when necessary. Most recently, Clarksons approached us with a new problem—they were getting more business than they hoped for, so now they needed more staff to keep up with the work.