GALTON Brands

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a full-scope turnkey provider of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) solutions. We focus on installing and delivering total solutions of mechanical systems for buildings, such as shopping malls or hospitals. Our systems help ventilate, cool, or heat indoor environments. 

Our group’s scope is divided into companies, and each has a separate division with their own marketing and client communications. We have companies for production, installation, maintenance, distribution, and our B2C platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with GALTON Brands?

As we were growing, we needed to communicate in terms of marketing. Although we’re primarily focused on B2B clients, where some might say marketing isn’t necessary, our company had grown to a point where we needed to have a corporate identity and to deliver a message with case studies. We were looking for a company that could give us a full package of services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

GALTON Brands provides us with branding and marketing services. We give them our ideas and opinions on what we should do and ask them to validate them. For example, we’ve told them we want to expand to our neighboring market. From there, the team gives us a SWOT analysis and feedback. For our expansion project, they’ve told us how we could mimic our success in the local market and our weaknesses when moving into another market.

They use different metrics and give us graphical scales indicating the position of our brand and how we can communicate, where our clients are, and what our approach to reach them could be. They’ve also determined the size of our market. Then, we work together to decide where to go and how. They bring the strategy and select the channels we use to communicate, such as social media accounts or B2B events and activities. 

Every quarter, we organize events for our B2B clients and promote these events. For example, we’ve had conferences covering up to 200 participants. GALTON Brands prepares all activities necessary for covering these events, all tailored-made for each one.

We also have a B2C platform dedicated to retail for small clients. Typically, our clients are homeowners, and we target them to sell conditioning or heat pump systems. For this side of our business, GALTON Brands is active in social media and runs a monthly campaign based on weather conditions, mostly using Facebook. For example, they focus on air conditioning during the hot summer and heat pump systems from autumn to spring. 

The team also helps us promote certain services during some periods or different price levels, like sales. GALTON Brands prepares the logic behind the campaign, the graphics, and the strategies. They also help us run promotions. For example, they’re now running a promotion where users can win air conditioning units. They boost this campaign so it can reach as many leads as possible. 

Additionally, GALTON Brands provides us with employer marketing. First, we asked them to prove that employer branding works, giving them some data. We needed the campaign to get more people on board our company. They started running campaigns a couple of months ago, and it’s an ongoing process. 

What is the team composition?

About 7–8 people from GALTON Brands participate in the project, though we only communicate with one key contact. 

How did you come to work with GALTON Brands?

We’re from a small city where everyone knows each other, and GALTON Brands’ owner is in my age group, so we knew each other. I saw the company’s growth; they started small and grew to have 25–30 employees. I also saw that their activity went beyond the local scene. Our own way of thinking is European rather than local, so we needed a partner who could think locally and act globally, and their approach fit ours. We hired them because they had local prices and an understanding that our budget wasn’t unlimited, and at the same time, they could also give us a global output. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend around €60,000 (approximately $61,000 USD) annually with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around January 2007, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Since working with GALTON Brands, we’ve been steadily growing, and our website traffic has increased annually. Our followers on Facebook and LinkedIn have also increased consistently. Their success is most visible in our B2C platform, where our followers and engagement in social media have also grown. When we started these campaigns, we didn’t imagine many people would participate in promotions on social media. Now, our summer campaigns have up to 7,000 participants. 

How did GALTON Brands perform from a project management standpoint?

We put the schedule and budget on the table as part of our communication and log both. Our marketing team and the key contact from GALTON Brands follow up with the schedule, and they mostly deliver on time. When we’ve had delays, they’ve been a maximum of a couple of days, so there haven’t been any significant delays. We use Google Workspace for project management to share documents on both sides and track the schedule. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

GALTON Brands is more of a friend than a supplier. They’ve worked with us for 15 years, so our partnership is like a marriage. We’re not looking for mistakes; instead, we’re trying to find ways to meet our challenges together. If there’s a mistake, misunderstanding, delay, or the output isn’t reaching our expectations, we just sit together and discuss changing the approach. 

Our company doesn’t jump to a different supplier every month. We understand that communication has to be sustainable and complex in marketing, so it’s necessary to have one stable partner. So far, we haven’t identified any reason to change agencies. Our teams know each other and cooperate as colleagues rather than as supplier and client, and we prefer it that way. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had different key contacts over the years. Some of them have given us solutions quickly, and some have had a different approach, and there has always been room for improvement with the key contact. I understand that there’s a big pressure on them, but they could always improve. 

Additionally, GALTON Brands could always be cheaper and faster. However, if I compare them with our other providers, they’re the ones most able to deliver concepts that can work worldwide. We could hire a smaller agency and get cheaper and faster work, but it would only be a partial solution. We need a complex solution, so, ultimately, GALTON Brands is a good partner for us. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to become friends with GALTON Brands rather than business partners. You could try them for a small job and then give them more engagements for bigger and bigger things. The team prefers cooperation on a long-term basis, which has been very important for my company. 

Treat your partnership with them like a marriage. That way, if there are storms or misunderstandings, you always know you’re both on the same side and that they want to help you improve. If you let them in your house, they’ll be able to understand your problems and find what can be improved.