Karl James & Company Milwaukee PR + Marketing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner of a business brokerage. We help small to medium sized business owners value, and sell businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Karl James & Company Milwaukee PR + Marketing, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a way to reach new clients during the COVID pandemic. Our most effective way to find new clients was to network and meet business owners in person and find a common thread in our lives. However, it was nearly impossible to network and meet people face to face.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I hired Karl James & Company based on their thoughts and ideas on how to reach out to potential clients thru a PPC and SEO campaign that would drive potential clients to a landing page with videos and other documents sharing my experiences selling my own business.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

They designed a campaign to accomplish the above goals along with developing a landing page, scripts for videos, shooting the videos, editing the videos, and helping develop content to post online and to email to clients. The deliverables were to create leads that would eventually lead to clients working with our firm to sell their business.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

3 different people worked with me on the project. One was in charge of the SEO and PPC portion. One helped with the campaign origination and ideas as well as creating the scripts for the video and email campaigns. The last person shot the videos, edited them, and created the landing pages for the campaign and the drip email campaign.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The program generated a ton of interest in my business, with a few leads generated from the program, but no actual clients were signed up. However, the sales cycle is about 6-18 months (and with the COVID pandemic, I think the cycle was extended even further) in my industry, so as time goes along, we could see a change in those numbers.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Overall their communication was excellent throughout the whole process. We had regular meetings to review and tweak the campaign. The whole team was "on the ball" at all times and answered questions or concerns very quickly.

They would also follow up regularly with information about how the campaign was going, send leads when they came in, and check in to see if the leads amounted to any meetings or other client interaction.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I think that the campaign that they put together was well thought out. All of the content they created was very relevant to what our company does and to what the clients would want to know about how we do business and what they will experience if they sell their business.

I was very impressed by the research they did to prepare the campaign. I have worked with other companies and Karl James & Company was much better at the design and implementation of the whole campaign. They were also very open to tweaking the campaign as it went on to try and drill down to the types of clients we were looking to attract.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I can't think of anything they could have done differently.