DMG Delta

Why buy a website when you’ve already got a website?

“For double the new business and a return of 17:1”

James Fulton, DMG Delta

The Challenge

DMG Delta maintains buildings in London and the Home Counties and they do a fine job of keeping buildings comfortable, safe and productive. Back in 2008, the business was running smoothly. But as an ambitious company that simply wasn’t good enough. Pay per click (PPC) advertising was critical for sales, but the competitive nature of online advertising meant the company had to spend more and more for the same level of enquiries. What’s more when enquirers got to the DMG Delta website, it reflected who they used to be, not the organisation they are today and will be tomorrow.

About DMG Delta

DMG Delta takes away the dangers of owning, living or working in a poorly managed building. It’s a well established, medium-sized business which maintains large commercial developments, offices and luxury residential complexes. The facilities management services the company provides include the maintenance of air conditioning systems, heating and boiler plant, power, electrical testing, water treatment and sanitation – all critical to the proper functioning of a building.

Objectives and solution

DMG Delta‘s website was already good so the challenge was to create a new website and online approach which would be altogether better – with more leads, of better quality and higher value. And not only did the website need to welcome new customers, it also had to show existing clients the breadth of their services, to encourage add-on sales.

Having analysed the situation, Marketing Zone proposed a dramatic cut in the PPC budget. The saving in advertising was used to pay for the new hard-working website. Improvements to the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy and fine-tuning of PPC advertising were both recommended to shift the balance from paid for advertising to leads generated through organic (unpaid) search listings. Now DMG Delta is found more often and listed more prominently, with less reliance on online advertising. And because the website is welcoming and easy to use, the company is enjoying more and better sales leads. All resulting in a sustainable online model for the business.

Mind your language – keywords are key!

Before we designed or wrote anything we analysed keywords. Because when a facilities manager in London searches online for a plumbing maintenance service for their 5-site property estate, they don’t want to be put in touch with a one-man band in Liverpool. So we worked with DMG Delta to identify the terms their customers would use, using a variety of tools to balance relevance with popularity and competitiveness. Then we put these keywords at the heart of everything we did next.

1. In the information presented to customers on the website so they could recognise that their search had led them to the right kind of company.

2. Within the website’s technical structure so that search engine spider – robots in effect – would index the DMG Delta website as the right destination for information on these search terms

3. In the Search Engine Optimisation activity to provide relevant content and links to the DMG Delta site

4. In the Pay per click advertising campaigns used to generate sales leads for the business. So anyone looking for ‘commercial boiler maintenance’, or any other ‘building management service’ for that matter, would find themselves in the right place.

A website that works

Marketing Zone developed a new navigation and homepage for the DMG Delta website, focusing on what the customer would want when they visited the site. We reorganised the site into four elements – the individual services, the way services are delivered – such as mobile or on-site – and the types of potential customers from facilities managers to residential property managers, plus next steps to encourage action. The friendly, professional design with four key jumping in points meant customers could clearly see what was relevant to them, so the bounce rate of visits to each page reduced. It also gave the customer the visibility to choose more than one service and choose the way the service was provided to them. To encourage the positive responses we wanted, we made it clear what action we’d ideally like the web visitor to take next, with quick links to both a free site survey and to making an appointment.

Our ongoing key metrics analysis shows improvements across all quality measures. Potential and existing customers click on more pages, spend more time on each page and get in touch more often.

Making robots happy

It’s all very well creating a website that people like to use. But if they can’t find your website it’s a waste of time. Search engines do their best to provide the most appropriate search results when people look for a particular keyword or phrase. But they look at a website a little differently to how you or I might. Marketing Zone understand this and used our web building expertise to embed the agreed holy grail of search terms (our keywords), into the DMG Delta website. This means clearly organising and labelling every element of the website in a way that the search engines can understand, from the main text to the page folders to the meta-tags used to explain the content of pictures. There’s a lot to it, but the results make it worthwhile.

Previously DMG Delta had to pay for the majority of its leads with PPC advertising. Now, a whopping 50% of DMG Delta’s new business is from organic (unpaid) search engine enquiries.

Getting online ads right

DMG Delta found that many of the enquiries they got were out of their territory. Some potential contracts were too small, too big, or overly domestic, rather than the large-scale residential landlords, and commercial and public buildings they specialise in.

To solve this Marketing Zone re-aligned the keywords that DMG Delta should pay for. This resulted in a good deal of analysis, testing and refining– and because the cost of ad words goes up and down, its an ongoing job to run the PPC advertising programme. We also determined the negative keywords to use to prevent irrelevant enquiries. This halved the amount DMG Delta had to spend on paid for advertising during 2009-2010.

Now DMG Delta receives high quality, relevant enquiries each month that meet selection criteria. The sales team don’t waste time responding to poor quality and irrelevant leads, so their motivation and efficiency has improved.

New business contracts

With high quality leads coming in, the team at DMG Delta has been putting together bespoke maintenance proposals to reflect the needs of potential new clients.

In the last twelve months, DMG Delta has won new contracts with high profile clients, doubling its new business sales.

Developing existing clients

One of the issues that DMG Delta highlighted was that existing clients weren’t aware of all of the services available to them, they only knew about the service they were using. Now the new website clearly shows the full range of services available. What’s more case studies illustrate how clients can use a combination of services to satisfy their building maintenance needs.

Marketing Zone also helped DMG Delta develop an e-marketing programme with a branded e-news template. It’s proving to be an effective way for them to keep in touch and promote all their specialist services, as well as sharing industry news.

Now clients that had only ever bought one service such as water treatment or air conditioning are asking DMG Delta to quote for other services too.

What’s next

Our performance dashboard shows how we’re doing against all key measures at a glance – so we can make sure we keep DMG Delta ahead of the game. PPC advertising is delivering good quality leads at an acceptable cost to the business while off-page optimisation through our link building strategy, is continuing to position DMG Delta above its competition.