Ray – From firm foundations to exciting opportunities
“In most cases I find that the people who use the internet to search are educated people and they’re the type of people I want to talk to because they know what they want, they’re open to ideas and that really opens it up for me.”
Ramalco Roofing had been going 25 years with a solid reputation and steady workload when owner and manager, Ray, decided it was time to try something different for more personal satisfaction.
“Commercial roofing has been my main business for 25 years but I’m moving into a more niche, designer patio market. It’s actually a huge, billion dollar industry and people appreciate more what you are doing than in the roofing industry. They are more inclined to spend money on something they use for entertainment than whatever is simply above them. So it’s more pleasurable than the roofing industry.”
For Ray, the question was how to break into the designer patio market? Previously, solid contacts and job referrals had produced a continuous flow of jobs, but how could Ramalco successfully grow a new business and turn it into something serious?
It became obvious that marketing was the key and Ray contacted Turnbull Design for ideas.
“In the past we didn’t worry about our website because we had a steady flow of work but we realised that we would have to look at this for our new venture. I’m not a very computer literate person, though I do have definite ideas, so I needed someone who understood online marketing.”
“Aaron, from Turnbull Design, showed me statistics on keywords people would use to find our patio company. He really had the finger on the pulse and gave me the best optimisation results for my site.”
For Ray it’s now a problem of too many enquiries, but it’s a satisfying problem as he finds he gets to choose the jobs he really wants to do.
“In the last three months contacts from our website have actually got a little bit scary because I really don’t have enough time being still engaged in the roofing industry. Aaron’s optimisation has placed our website be in the top 5 of any search using our keywords, and when people get to our site it’s done well and we have something to say, so we seem to always get an enquiry.
“In most cases I find that the clients who use the internet to search are educated people and they’re the type of people I want to talk to because they know what they want, they’re open to design ideas and that really opens it up for me.”
When Ray did a marketing price comparison he was absolutely amazed.
“I was so surprised that it cost so little compared to my normal advertising costs and what they had cost me over the last 20 years. All forms of advertising, newspaper and radio are so expensive. It used to cost me between $3-500 a job, allowing for advertising against the ratio of enquiries and closing and so on to get the job. I have found that now it’s more like $60-80 per client which is just ridiculous and you reach a much bigger market.”
For Ray, Turnbull Design has led his company into a new area using the latest online marketing techniques for the greatest success.
“Aaron certainly got me results. He hit my target market and has given me a lot more of the type of enquiries I wanted. I don’t want to compete with the ‘cowboys’ anymore and our new website has placed Ramalco Patios at a more exclusive level. Turnbull Design basically came up with the goods, we’re really happy.”
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