Control Yours

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing for all of our banks; we have several branches in Nebraska and Kansas.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Control Yours?

We had multi-faceted business challenges. The initial challenge that I was asked to address was our online presence—improving it not only through our web presence but also by working on increasing our SEO and our social media presence.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Specifically, our goal was to make everything on our website look a little more modern and intuitive for our customers. Our motto is “build relationships you can bank on.” Our idea was to combine the digital world with what we feel is most important to us: relationships. While your customers are only a couple of taps away, we also wanted them to know they could still stop in at one of our branches and have that personal relationship.

One of the first things we did with Control Yours was redesign our entire website to meet specific goals we had set for them. We wanted to make it easier for our customers to contact us, we wanted landing pages that would make it easier for customers to gain access to the information they needed, and we wanted to help our customers troubleshoot their online banking problems. We also wanted to figure out good keywords to have on all of our pages.

Control Yours specifically worked with us using a WordPress site. The beautiful thing about working with Control Yours is, as their name indicates, we have the ability to have several users control the content of our website at will. In the banking world, regulations change all the time, so it’s great to have that flexibility. If something has to be done at midnight, I can get onto my computer and change it myself without having to call or pay someone to do it for me. The accessibility that they give us to their team is also great, because whenever we need something, they’re able to do it.

Control Yours also created content and branding materials for us when they redesigned our website. They helped recreate our logo and update our colors. We kind of wanted to start from scratch, and they helped us rebrand ourselves. In addition to our new logo and colors, they also built new marketing materials for us, such as digital ads and graphics that we ended up using for our printed projects. They also worked with us on organizing and creating campaigns for Google AdWords and tracking conversions on our website.

Control Yours’ work for us has been pretty in-depth. There are so many different things that we’ve done to build our brand and gain customers. We’ve learned a lot in the 2 years we’ve been working with them.

How did you come to work with Control Yours?

Before my life at the bank, I did a lot of marketing and publication work at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and I had known the owner of Control Yours for some time. When he started Control Yours, I worked on some smaller projects with him through it. About 4 years ago, I delved into a massive project with the university, and it was a thing of beauty. It was nice to know that I could share my ideas with them and feel confident that everything I communicated was done exactly the way I wanted, without me having to babysit them.

We continued our relationship from there with occasional small projects. Obviously when I got to the bank, I knew exactly who to hire to rebrand and help us delve into the digital world a little bit. Control Yours was my first choice for the bank’s project, but I had vetted other companies in the past. I knew Control Yours was right for us because of the vetting I had done previously. I also knew that their price tag was good for us, and we liked that they’re homegrown in Kearney.

How much have you invested with them?

I would say we’ve invested anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 over 2 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Control Yours in July 2015, and our work together is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was talking with our IT person a few weeks ago, and it’s been evident that, since the launch of our redesigned website, which was in March 2016, our online banking numbers have steadily increased month to month. Every month we have new highs in terms of online banking enrollment.

In recent months, we implemented services that allow customers to chat with our representatives, and through mobile and desktop, we average about 2-3 customers contacting us a day, which had never been done before via the online services. Before, our customers would either call or stop in our offices. As far as actual customer acquisitions go based on the work we’re doing with Control Yours, I want to say that we’ve had at least 20 conversions in the last 2 or 3 months, meaning we’ve had 20 people actually contact our lenders about our home loans and other mortgage products.

We just started tracking conversions through Google AdWords and a few other programs this year. I can get more raw data, but we’ve definitely seen the needle move, and we’ve seen a positive reaction from customers on what we’re doing.

How did Control Yours perform from a project management standpoint?

Control Yours is excellent from a project management standpoint. I feel like I'm one of the team, and I have access to them. They work with Basecamp, a project management app, and they use Slack to instant message and communicate with me on a regular basis. Their response time is quick, and I feel like I can get in touch with them any time of the day, pretty much. They jump on things almost immediately.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I would say the difference between Control Yours and other providers would be their willingness to make you, the customer, a part of their team. They are just as invested in your business as you are. It never comes across as though they are just doing an 8 to 5 job. They genuinely care about seeing growth within your business with the work they’re doing with you.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the beginning, some of the projects that we were working on were pretty big, and at times they weren't happening as quickly as I would have liked. I think they’ve addressed some of that. But I knew what I was getting into when I chose to work with a smaller company. They’re operating with a team of 10-12 people, whereas an ad agency would have a lot more people on staff. That’s also indicative with the price tag.