Principle Co, Ltd.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We offer WiFi hotspot rental to over 200 countries and regions. We are one of the largest WiFi rental companies in Asia with offices in over 12 countries. I was relocated to the LA office as an Operations Manager from 2016 to 2018.

For what projects/services did your company hire Principle Co, Ltd.?

Our service is very popular in Asia but very little known in N. America market. We hired Principle Co. as a consultant who advised us which payment system we should use, As well as, they helped us operate CJ (affiliate networks).

Since they were very effective, we also asked them to do google listing advertising and our website analysis.

What were your goals for this project?

For CJ, we started with almost no order to up to 80 order per month. Google listing was also effective. We are Japanse company so we wanted to comunicate in Japanese, but most company who speak Japanese are based outside of the US and Principle Co, is based in the US with staff with knowledge of US market so it helped us renew our website suited for the US market.

How did you select Principle Co, Ltd.?

We selected Principle Co. because they are able to communicate in Japanese and they are also based in LA.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

They had a lot of experience in all the areas including website design and advertising. They knew what the US market wanted. With their advice, we changed the application form which increased our orders.

They have helped us from the beginning. For Google listing, they helped us choose the right keyword to effective get the order with minimal amount of cost.

What was the team composition?

They always had between 3 to 4 people in the team to help us.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

As mentioned earlier, with website redesign, the conversation increased between 2% to 5%. We used to have a lot of phone calls but with the new design, the phone call dropped about 30%. They always had suggestions for new methods to improve the website.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We communicated mostly with email and they were quick on replying. At times, we had bi-weekly online meetings to speed up the project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a team of people who had knowledge in different areas. We had our own web marketing team in Japan but their advice was very original which probably was suited for the US market.

Are there any areas for improvement?

So far, we are very happy with their service.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a digital marketing specialist for Annex Brands. We’re a pack and ship franchisor. We own seven different pack and ship franchises across the country.

What challenge were you trying to address with Principle Co, Ltd.?

We engaged Principle Co, Ltd. for our commercial locations, which are our Navis Pack & Ship system and our Handle With Care, as well as our large freight shipments. We wanted a way to give our franchise owners access to reporting on how their Google campaigns are working.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Principle Co, Ltd. put together a dashboard that hooks up to our POS system for us that has all of the pertinent information and categories that we need for our Google Ads campaigns. This makes it relevant and easy to read and understand for our franchisees, which are not marketers at heart. We actually manage the data and PPC.

At the start of the process, we send them data or quote request forms that potential customers fill out on our website. Then, they come up with ways to attribute all of the different leads that were submitted to specific stores so stores know exactly how many leads and phone calls they got from their PPC campaign each month, along with basic data from it such as cost per click and cost per lead. They also implemented a way for clients to see their ROI.

What is the team composition?

We mostly work with Kris (Director, Analytics) and one other person.

How did you come to work with Principle Co, Ltd.?

I wasn’t specifically part of the decision-making process when finding them, but I believe it was just for a need for ease of reporting and not necessarily cookie-cutter reporting like from Google Ads. Our company just did a web search on companies that could do something like that and I think my old boss may have worked with them on a previous job. Once we got into the weeds with them on the proposal, then we determined that this was definitely the route we wanted to go.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably invested between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The collaboration started around February 2019 and we’re still working together.

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

A lot of people don’t understand even the basics of marketing, and that goes for the small business owners we work with as well. That’s why we work with these small business owners. They have a lot going on in their daily lives to be worrying about being some marketing professional that they’re not. Principle Co, Ltd. has made it really easy to understand. The system is really efficient because it’s easy to pull the reports, whereas before it took a lot of clicking around and waiting for pages to load. 

It’s also very educational and valuable for the franchisee who can take 30–45 minutes and look over a report and still have a good understanding of how their PPC campaign is running, rather than figure it out over a week or something like that. So, it has really been a valuable tool, not only for us but also for our franchisee. We’ve gotten feedback from our franchisees that they like getting this data.

How did Principle Co, Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a great job. They’re very detail-oriented and don’t miss anything. If there are any questions or numbers I’m not sure about, they’re able to find the answer within some Excel sheet that I sent or our mapping file in a very short amount of time. We’re never left hanging and they’re very reliable. Even being in different time zones, they always get back to me quickly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their customer service is what really stood out to me. Kris is very attentive to his clients. I think the quality of work speaks for itself. However, I think a lot of people can do good work, but when high-quality customer service and customer care are added, I think that really is what sets them apart.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there is none. Every experience I’ve had with them has always been high-quality.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront about what you want and what you’re looking for so they can devise the best plan and everyone understands what their responsibilities are. Chances are they can find a solution for you. Make sure you’re laying it all out there and that every bit of information or reporting is out there so you don’t have to go back and try to rework anything.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company is a full service digital agency, and I am a Digital Consultant (main point of contact for client)

For what projects/services did your company hire Principle Co, Ltd.?

To support on a Web Transformation project for a global leader in the IT industry

What were your goals for this project?

The full project goals are to design and deliver a world class website experience with optimal technology and processes behind it

How did you select Principle Co, Ltd.?

We had worked with Principle C in another capacity previously, and knew they would be well placed to support with this project

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Principle's responsibility was to capture the key web requirements and current pain points of Japan-based stakeholders through a series of workshops, as well as general stakeholder management

What was the team composition?

Principle assigned a team of 4 to support the project, which comprised of specialist consultants and project management

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Whilst the longer term project is still ongoing, the initial phase is complete and Principle did a very good job of maintaining engagement of the Japan-based stakeholders and ensuring their voices were heard in the project.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective. We used instant messaging as well as regular calls to align on findings and to raise any key discussion points.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Flexibility and commitment to support our delivery. The team were very willing even at short notice to join sessions which at local time started very early or ended very late, and found ways to make things work

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the chief strategy officer for a global e-commerce business.

What challenge were you trying to address with Principle Co, Ltd.?

I engaged them to work on a marketing strategy project for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Principle Co, Ltd. provided a marketing strategy for our very specific marketing challenge. They explored social as a separate channel. We were marketing heavy B2C work, so we really had to get our analytics in a row and they put together a comprehensive report. They dug into our existing marketing tools, set up reporting layers, and added attribution and methodologies for us as we looked to add additional marketing channels.

What is the team composition?

We had one project manager and at least three or four people working on the backend.

How did you come to work with Principle Co, Ltd.?

I’ve known Max (President) professionally for a little while now and engaged with him in the past, so I asked him to pitch. I started looking at other agencies as well that had specific expertise on the analytics side of the business because we wanted to track and attribute everything before we poured millions of dollars down new unexplored channels. We ended up picking Principle Co, Ltd. because of their domain expertise in analytics and attribution.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $10,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July–August 2019.

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

The comprehensive report was probably one of their best deliverables. They laid everything out for us which made it easy.

How did Principle Co, Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated primarily through email and we had weekly informal check-ins and calls as well as monthly formal check-ins. They all jumped in as a team and asked plenty of questions to make sure they got all of the information. The team was very on top of it and I never felt ignored.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very good at what they do and we were completely pleased with their price, speed of delivery, and general demand expertise. Other agencies are creative but generally struggle in analytics and don’t have the tools or the radar.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t have any areas for improvement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear and specific on what you’re asking because I think generic asks will lead to generic outputs. Make sure you have all the underlying data that you need to be analyzed or at least have it in order if it’s access to tech tools. The cleaner and faster you are, the faster the outcome and the less messy it is on your end.

If you want, engage them to help you with the definition stage because I see projects go south just because people don’t know what they want. Then there’s the scope creep that happens, price and timing go up and this could have all been avoided.