Red C Marketing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm Global Head of Marketing for Ashfield Engage. We partner with life sciences companies on strategic engagement and commercialisation services e.g. sales teams, medical science liaisons and patient engagement programmes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Red C Marketing, and what were your goals?

We hired Red C to manage our monthly PPC spend across various areas of our business to drive traffic and business enquiries. We also use Red C to manage all our sponsored LinkedIn activity and multichannel lead gen campaigns.

SOLUTION

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

This process was led by our Ashfield Divisional Web Manager (Ashfield Engage is a business unit of Ashfield).

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

To set our Google Ads PPC we had detailed conversations with the Red C team on the goals and key words for each area of our business. Red C also reviewed our website and competitor websites. They set up all the ad groups and manage our spend and optimisation on an ongoing basis.

Red C also manage our sponsored LinkedIn activity. We provide the creative as we have an in-house team but Red C manage all the targeting and spend. We work with Red C on bespoke campaigns where Red C manage our budget across paid media placements, Google Ads and LinkedIn.

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

We work with account managers, PPC leads, LinkedIn leads and analysts. We work with a team of around 8.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our web traffic has increased by up to 500% in some areas. We've also received our highest ever number of business enquiries and business wins through the website.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Outstanding - the Red C team are incredibly responsive and organised.

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

They genuinely act like an extension of your own marketing team - you can trust them to take on projects with focus and attention to detail. They also regularly communicate areas we can improve what we're doing.

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

No - we are very happy with everything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a direct-to-consumer product developer and marketer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Red C Marketing?

We needed help with digital strategy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our first project was to look at email marketing and how we could improve it. Then, Red C Marketing took over our PPC marketing and extended it to broader aspects. They’ve enhanced our ideas and improved our landing pages and product websites. They’ve also supported us with the blog and done some direct mailing trials.

We give them access to the data that teams have and what they’re working on. Basically, they work as an extension of our internal team. They usually provide recommendations and sign-off documents for us to go through on each project.

Additionally, Red C Marketing handles our SEO and social media. We’ve tried direct advertising and some influencer campaigns with them.

What is the team composition?

We regularly work with about five people. We have Adrian (Chairman) and Shitha (Account Director). Lauren (Account Manager) helps us with the content and oversees our blog, while Andrew (Online Marketing Specialist) is responsible for all the paid digital media campaigns, such as PPC and SEO.

There are a few other people who come in to help us with content and ideas. For example, Katharine (Strategy & Planning Director) is generally on our weekly calls, and she supports some of those proposal ideas and how we pull those together.

How did you come to work with Red C Marketing?

I had the fortune of working and being introduced to them in a previous role. Therefore, when we were looking for a marketing partner, I reached out to Red C Marketing to be one of the companies that pitched for us. After their pitch, they seemed the most suitable fit for our company.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s been more than £100,000 (approximately $139,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in March 2019, and we still work with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We weren’t delivering before because we didn’t have resources assigned to digital marketing. With Red C Marketing, we have a clear vision for our strategy, and we’re delivering profitable results every week through those pay channels.

Moreover, our primary success has been getting our core products set up in good, ongoing campaigns that drive new traffic. Also, email has been another huge turnaround for us. We used to move from customer to customer, but now, we have great retargeting campaigns and a fantastic engagement email series that encourage people to spend.

Overall, Red C Marketing has established a wider product awareness. They’ve worked with SEO and our blog strategy, which has also successfully gotten our content higher up the search ratings.

How did Red C Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We have good engagement and communication with them. They put together clear proposals and feedback, and their team is very responsive. We’re a challenging customer because we’re exceptionally fast-paced and quite tactical. We always want to turn things around, and they’ve adopted our pace and requirements, which isn’t an easy thing to do.

Before the pandemic, we had quarterly reviews, and we would meet up in person and have weekly calls. Since we started working remotely, we’ve had weekly Zoom calls as our main form of communication. However, my team is more directly in liaison with them through phone calls and emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s their personal touch and the fact that we don’t feel we’re working with an agency. They’re knowledgeable about our business, and they treat it as their own. Our relationship with Red C Marketing works particularly well because they act as an extension of our marketing team. They’re really invested.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re both very vibrant businesses with tons of ideas, so sometimes we aren’t efficient at locking down and closing them in a timely fashion. Therefore, we both try to take on board and push ourselves to hone in on real opportunities.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be honest about where the challenges and opportunities lie and specific about what you’re looking to achieve. Also, make sure they understand it clearly, or otherwise, it can be difficult to follow the path forward.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing manager at a manufacturing company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Red C Marketing?

Initially, we needed support with email marketing because we weren’t getting very good results with the provider we had at that time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They currently provide us with all of our email marketing content activity, and they’ve also just started supporting us with our digital content strategy as well. On top of that, they do local marketing activities, such as support with the point of sale and with our customer relationship.

What is the team composition?

We have five people that are assigned to our project, but the team is split because they are now looking after our social. We have an account director and an account executive who looks after email, and then we have the same on social; an account director and an account executive. There is another lady who is the strategic project manager, and she oversees the four people.

How did you come to work with Red C Marketing?

It was about three years ago when Red C started with us. We were experiencing issues with our current provider, so we started looking at agencies that would be relevant within the locality as well.

It was a recommendation from somebody who had worked with them in the past at a different company. To be able to use them as an agency within our business, they needed to go on our agency roster — procurement then got involved and after that, we got them on our roster.

How much have you invested in them?

I would say it’s roughly between £50,000–£75,000 GBP (approximately $68,800–$103,200 USD) a year, but they also do some ad hoc projects with us so it can even be close to £100,000 GBP (approximately $137, 600 USD) per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

It started around May 2018, and we’re still working together. Our company is quite a big business, and we introduced them there. Due to the success that we were having with them, the rest of the UK and Ireland teams within our company use them now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Some of our email open rates were about 22% before we started working with Red C. They have doubled email open rates while we have been working with them, and we now tend to see between 50% to 60% email open rates.

How did Red C Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

There are only two of us that are working on our team. One of the requirements was that I wanted a team that could be like an extension of our own, just to help with the support of projects. I think they have done a great job because they support myself and my assistant marketing manager in the delivery of projects. I would say they’re like an extension of our own team, and they’ve helped fill the resource gap that we have within our team. 

We have relied on them to undertake projects and help deliver them for our business — they have been an important part of our marketing team.

In addition, it helped that they are located close by. We had organized for one of their teams to come into our office once a week, so that someone is there in the office to help with resources. That lessened the need for all the different emails going back and forth, so it’s good that they provided that service for us as well.

We predominantly use email for communication. Through COVID-19, no one has been in the offices, and we have all been at home working. We use Google Analytics because a lot of the activity they do is on email, and we obviously track clickthrough rates on our website. We also tend to use quite a lot of Google Docs as well for statuses on projects. We are about to start using Trello as well to manage the projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think they are very creative and very transparent as well. I like their honesty in terms of looking at a particular project. If they have any issues on their side, or if they say they can’t do it in a certain amount of time, they are honest and upfront about it with us as well — they don’t commit unless they know that they can deliver. 

They’re now looking after all of our social content in terms of content development and the creative. It’s really good which is why we moved our social to them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They do a report every month for us and we look at competitors. I suppose one thing they could potentially do is make us aware earlier of competitor activity, just so that we can react to it. We tend to get a monthly report, and maybe they could be just a bit more proactive when they see things — they do that with certain things, but they could do it more for any other opportunity they think would work for us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be really clear in terms of what the strategy is, what the objectives are, what you are trying to achieve, and who your key target customers are. They seem to really understand that, and they like to get under the skin of key segments to deliver the best activity. It’s just passing that information on in terms of what the strategy is and what the key objectives are.