Case Story: AGLX
Getting clear messaging and regular marketing.
Highlights
Build the brand of a new organisation
Create clear messaging - focused on the customer
Focus on lead generation activity (sales)
Regular, consistent marketing and sales activity
Challenge the team and hold them accountable
"Helen struck the perfect balance of being friendly yet challenging, assisting us in developing an effective marketing approach for now and the future"
The Client
AGLX is a strategic consultancy with a difference. They believe that many organisations struggle to succeed, as they create a ‘linear’ strategy that is based on where they want to get to, but when unexpected events occur, such as pandemics, recessions or natural disasters, they often struggle to adapt
AGLX work with organisations to build an adaptive approach to setting and implementing strategy, enabling them to succeed, turning disruption and complexity into a strategic advantage
AGLX as an organisation was created from the merging of existing consulting businesses, bringing together a global team based in NZ, Singapore and the USA
Clients include Visa, Zespri, Watercare, Orion Energy and Lyttleton Port
Helen worked directly with Steve McCrone (founder and MD), Doug Maarschalk (Principal Consultant) and Meg Cummins (Illustrator and Consultant) from the New Zealand Team
The Challenge
The team had identified that they needed help to build their brand in New Zealand. They had great experience and credibility individually, but wanted to build the AGLX brand itself and raise its profile as it was a relatively new and unknown brand in the NZ market
They needed to develop and articulate their positioning to set them apart in the market, especially as many people’s first default seemed to be to stick with big established players
Most of their work had historically come from word of mouth and referrals, so they also wanted help to build a more sustainable lead generation activity beyond that
Supporting this was the need to develop marketing and sales systems and processes
What We Did
Helen’s work with AGLX was a mix of strategic direction-setting, support to deliver and holding to account. Steve and Meg are based in Auckland, Doug is based in Christchurch, so the majority of our work has been through online meetings
The team started with a marketing audit to identify priorities and to give us a benchmark
We developed a marketing strategy to ensure activities aligned with and supported the existing business strategy
We focused on developing clear messaging for AGLX as a company and what they do. This was done through in-house workshops and a number of customer interviews
From these discussions we created clear ‘ideal customer personas’ which meant they had a better understanding of target customers and what they needed
Once we understood the customers more, we created a marketing activity plan to give us visibility of what was coming up, where the opportunities were and to increase the frequency and regularity of activity
One of our priorities was to develop Steve and Doug as thought leaders. We agreed on a small number of themes to focus on; Doug and Steve created blogs, LinkedIn posts, videos and presentations. We repurposed content where possible across their channels to maximise impact and reach
We created a campaign specifically to target a niche market segment and developed a set of messaging and sales activities to support this
Results - Outcomes
As a result of working together, Steve and Doug say:
Having more coherent and customer-focused messaging has helped them to be clear in their positioning and to build their confidence in communicating who they are and what they, without worrying about what competitors are doing
“We now speak in a language people understand. We've come a long way; it is better and clearer"
- Graham Roberts, AGLX Consultant
Identifying a specific segment to target has helped them win business and identify targets that might have been harder had they not been able to tailor their approach so tightly
Regular meetings helped keep the team focused and hold them to account
Having core thought leadership themes has been helpful to keep activity more tightly focused and has helped build credibility and the brand
They have been able to significantly lift their brand presence through having regular, consistent marketing activity and through a focus on thought leadership
They won a significant piece of work following on from an introduction by Helen to her network! This is not something I can promise for every client, but I’ll try!
