Slater Strategies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Beachdazevillas, and we're a small vacation rental company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Slater Strategies?

They provided SEO and direct mail marketing services. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired them to update and make some changes on our Facebook page, Instagram, and other social media pages. We didn’t have a website, so they used social media. We started writing short blogs with a blog template, which was my idea. It was a little challenging since it was hard to find relevant content. 

They spent a couple of months on our Facebook page. At that time, I didn’t even have a Facebook account, so my wife had to create a business page via her account. Then, we gave Slater Strategies her account for them to access our business page and start posting the blogs. For email marketing, we pulled our previous clients’ email addresses from QuickBooks and contacted them, hoping to turn them into return customers. 

What is the team composition?

I only worked with one person from Slater Strategies.

How did you come to work with Slater Strategies?

I met Slater Strategies through a workshop that was run by the Small Business Administration (SBA). They gave an SEO workshop, so I stayed in contact with them and reached out via LinkedIn. 

We were trying to learn things by ourselves, and we weren’t really looking for marketing companies since we didn’t have a lot of capital. Our business made money, but we still had a lot of expenses. 

At that time, we were figuring out how to do email marketing and export our contact list from QuickBooks. I asked them what the best email marketing services were, and then they got involved and helped automate things for our business. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $600.   

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from August‒December 2019. I'm planning to hopefully start working with them again. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We acquired a few customers through the email marketing campaign. We had around three bookings out of the effort, and we ultimately made money. Slater Strategies was helpful. 

In the end, however, we didn’t pursue the campaign on a consistent basis. We weren’t ready to take the project to the next step, and it didn’t generate results, so we backed off. We did try a number of things, but we didn’t give them enough time. As such, we think it was our fault that the efforts didn’t work as well as it should have. 

How did Slater Strategies perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via emails and phone calls, and it usually worked for us. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very ethical and caring. They seemed to be people with values — not just values as in costs but also values as in ethics — and when we came across somebody with high ethics and integrity, it was actually refreshing. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do what Slater Strategies says and be consistent. In our experience, we tried to follow their advice, but we fell off in terms of consistency when we didn't get immediate results. You have to do a number of things and stay consistent — that’s what I’m learning.