Deliverable: Website

Our Work

Equipping Success: Banner Fire Website

About Banner Fire Equipment

INDUSTRY: Fire Equipment Distribution

Banner Fire has been equipping firefighters and emergency responders across the Midwest with best-in-class fire and rescue apparatus, gear, and tools for nearly four decades. Their modern 39,000-square-foot facility ensures they have what emergency responders need to protect their communities.

Results

Updated website and e-commerce experience that helps emergency responders get what they need quickly.

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Manual Hours Saved

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Cost Savings

Equipping for Success

Banner Fire has been equipping first responders and firefighters with the tools they need to protect their communities for nearly four decades. Their 39,000-square-foot facility houses everything an emergency responder needs to get the job done safely, from parts and service to testing and inspections.

The team at Banner Fire had a vision: to be the Amazon for firefighters and first responders to make it as fast and easy for these community heroes to access the equipment they need to stay safe while saving lives. In order to do this, they sought to improve the e-commerce functionality on their website to better integrate with their ERP system. This would make their large inventory and newly expanded product offerings available to customers online, providing an easier buying experience and better access to their full suite of products.

The Project

Improving Automation to Save Time and Reduce Error Risk

Banner Fire warehouses approximately 8,000 products on any given day. To be effective, they needed to bring more automation to the integration between their ERP system and the e-commerce functionality on the website. Prior to this project, Banner Fire team members worked daily with the ERP to pull any information that had changed (prices, descriptions, titles, SKU numbers, manufacturer updates, etc.), and manually entered changes into the e-commerce platform, a time-consuming and error-prone process.

Enhancing Experiences

To reflect Banner Fire’s position as a market leader and align with their vision of becoming the Amazon for first responders, the UI/UX of the e-commerce functionality needed to be simplified and streamlined. We also saw the opportunity to enhance Banner Fire’s brand to better tell the story of the problems they solved every day for firefighters and first responders so that they could build deeper connections with their audience.

Understanding the Market

After leading our Winning Zone and persona workshops with Banner Fire and conducting independent research, we learned how decision-makers in the fire industry shop for equipment. Understanding this buyer’s journey allowed us to make better decisions in shaping the user flows and UI/UX of the Banner Fire website.

On the marketing side of the website, we also worked to flesh out the parts and services content and online experience. While parts and services were once viewed at Banner Fire as a separate branch, they have since been integrated with the organization as a whole, and we brought that integration to life with the website redesign and restructure.

Automating Processes for Accurate Lead Times

Working directly with Banner Fire’s ERP provider, we set up a system that would check for updates every night, and then push those changes to the e-commerce portion of the site. Now, any time a price, product description, SKU, or other product information changes, the site automatically shows the most up-to-date information for more accurate lead times. Some equipment used by first responders comes with long lead times, so having accurate lead times on the site helps Banner Fire customers make informed decisions and understand expectations for when products will arrive.

Updating the Look and Feel

Automated processes? Check. An easier, more navigable user experience? Check. From a back-end perspective, Banner Fire’s site saw an elevated presence that not only streamlined processes but presented information in a way that makes sense. But first impressions count, and we wanted to ensure their site’s look and feel complimented the functionality.

Banner Fire has always been a team that’s proud to serve those who serve their communities during emergency situations. With the website redesign, we incorporated cinematic imagery that captures the bravery and dedication of the firefights and first responders that Banner Fire supports. We also introduced a refreshed color palette that modernized the brand and allowed us to draw more attention to strategic calls to action.

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Bounce Rate Decline

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Page Session Increase

Results

Before the launch of the new e-commerce-ERP integration, creating or updating a single product would take as long as 10 minutes for a Banner Fire team member. The more than 8,000 products Banner Fire offers would add up to nearly 1,300 hours of manual work! By creating an automated inventory process, Banner Fire’s website has provided approximately $200k in labor cost efficiencies, with that number growing as new products are added and updated.

Since the launch of the site, we’ve seen more meaningful user engagement. Pages per Session has increased by 4.08% and the Bounce Rate has declined by 10.53%.

“We want to be the Amazon of fire equipment.”

Our Work

A Brand Electrified

About Holt Electrical Supplies

INDUSTRY: Full-line electrical distribution

Founded in 1960 in a drugstore basement, HOLT has grown into a regional powerhouse with seven locations and over 200,000 square feet of distribution space.

Results

Refreshed branding and a cohesive go-to-market messaging celebrating the “middle man”

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Increase in Website Users

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Increase in Website Sessions

A Brand Electrified

HOLT has always done things a little bit differently than their competitors in the industry. In a sea of giant competitors with about as much of a personal touch as Amazon.com, HOLT has managed to grow and go the extra mile to help their customers win.

We met Ryan Holtzman (CEO) and Shane McCorkle (VP of Business Development) at a leadership training event, and in getting to know them, it became clear that HOLT’s brand image wasn’t doing justice to the passion and capabilities of the company. And with more and more potential customers in the industry buying products directly from manufacturers, we needed to demonstrate the value of a distributor—a middle man—that cares about its customers.

Not only did we want to take Ryan and Shane out for beers immediately, but we wanted to help their business even more—we knew that our team could help refresh HOLT’s brand and get the message out with a marketing and communications strategy to match.

Shedding Light on HOLT’s Competitive Advantage

Our goal was to capture and communicate the energy that HOLT’s team and customers knew and turn it into a results-generating asset. We began by constructing the strategic building blocks of HOLT’s brand platform—conducting research on their competitors, interviewing customers, and learning their business inside and out. While the fuller picture was coming together, we dove right into tactical deliverables like press releases and promotional communications.

Logo, Visual Identity, & Brand Voice Overhaul

With a firm grip on HOLT’s value proposition, target audience, and brand personality, we created a new logo that conveyed the energy of the company and signaled the launch of a new phase of growth. We then developed an entirely new visual system and brand voice that did what Ryan, Shane, and the whole organization had done so well from the beginning—cut the B.S. and make a real difference.

Website Launch

A keystone of the new brand launch was a completely new website, featuring more robust services and careers sections and the HOLT Toolbox—a collection of resources including a new blog, videos, and more.

Ongoing Content Strategy & Email Marketing

We also launched a regular company email newsletter that keeps subscribers informed of new product promotions, learning content, and industry news, in addition to activating social media channels to broaden HOLT’s reach. Finally, our team consistently supports HOLT’s sales outreach efforts with highly targeted email campaigns to engage various customer segments.

Measures of Success

At every level, team members at HOLT have embraced the new brand by proudly sporting new swag and speaking the language of the middle man who cuts the B.S. The HOLT website has garnered significantly more attention since the refresh, more than doubling organic traffic and total website sessions. HOLT has also seen terrific results in attracting qualified candidates for career opportunities in the company. Prior to the new website launch, the company had faced challenges in garnering applications for open positions. Since launch, Ryan and his team have told us that they now struggle to keep up with the interest!

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Increase in Facebook Impressions

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Increase in Organic Traffic

“They’re adaptable. There’s been a lot of changes…and they’ve kept up with it. goBRANDgo! not only keeps up…they stay out in front of it.”

Our Work

Plastic Distribution and Fabrication Company

About Cope Plastics

Industry: Plastic Distribution and Fabrication
The Transformation: Revitalized Branding and Digital Presence

Cope Plastics, one of the largest plastic distribution & fabrication companies in the country partnered with goBRANDgo! to redefine its market presence through new messaging, branding, and the launch of a new website. These foundational enhancements were designed to not only modernize the company’s brand to accurately represent the sophistication of their operations but also to optimize its digital footprint in a competitive landscape. Following this launch, the focus shifted towards maximizing the effectiveness of Cope Plastics’ full-funnel marketing program through improved data collection and analysis.

Results

An increase in web sessions of 19%, and that leads increased to 58% and sales-qualified leads were up 67%

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New Customers

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Reactivated New Customers Generated from Web Forms

The Challenge: Leveraging Data to Fuel Growth

Despite these advancements, the challenge of collecting and making meaningful insights of marketing data remained. Antidotally we knew the refreshed brand and website were making an impact but we set out on a mission to provide tools for their internal marketing team to help prioritize strategic activities and support the sales team on a more integrated level than was traditionally possible. This couldn’t mean stopping at the increased website traffic and engagement.  It meant truly understanding their customers’ digital buying journey, what strategies were making the most impact and how marketing conversions translated to sales conversations and ultimately closed won business.

The Solution: Customized Marketing Dashboard by goBRANDgo!

To bridge the gap between marketing efforts and sales outcomes, goBRANDgo! developed a bespoke marketing dashboard. This tool was tailored to foster seamless collaboration between the sales and marketing teams, ensuring alignment towards common goals and enabling strategic, data-driven decisions.

Working closely with Cope Plastics, we pinpointed essential metrics and streamlined the reporting process. Like many manufacturers a sophisticated tech stack is not always readily available to provide the data sets in the exact way to achieve meaningful insights . The solution needed to be a mix of easy to access data – like Google Analytics, the integration of website data, and spreadsheets fed from internal systems. The result was a user-friendly digital data visualization dashboard that provided real-time insights into marketing activity from top of the funnel through conversion to active and won sales pipeline.

The Impact: Data-Driven Success and Enhanced ROI

The introduction of the marketing dashboard signified a turning point for Cope Plastics. Armed with detailed insights and a clear understanding of marketing performance, the company could strategically allocate resources, resulting in a marked increase in ROI and the achievement of marketing and sales objectives.

Notable achievements included:

  • Comprehensive Sales Insights: The dashboard illuminated the journey from initial engagement to qualified lead, highlighting the impact of various marketing efforts.
  • Optimized Online Engagement: Detailed analysis of website traffic and content effectiveness allowed for targeted improvements, enhancing lead generation capabilities.
  • Campaign Performance Analysis: The success of targeted marketing initiatives, including email, paid search, and social media campaigns, was meticulously tracked, informing future strategy with actionable data.
  • An increase in web sales of 67% and profits of 71% YOY

The collaborative effort to centralize and leverage marketing data not only streamlined Cope Plastics’ approach to lead generation but also established a scalable model for achieving growth objectives efficiently and effectively.

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In web sales

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Profits YOY

This knowledge set presents immediate insights into not just where to spend, but how and when to spend. We never thought we’d have a tool like this with our resources.

Our Work

WorkForge Website

Previously known as Valor Manufacturing Training and 180Skills, WorkForge is the culmination of two powerhouse workforce development solutions. WorkForge provides manufacturers with configurable employee development and retention solutions that are designed to keep employees engaged while growing their skillset. Working with experts and industry leaders in various applications and niches, WorkForge offers over 800 unique courses and pathways to train employees faster and more effectively. We partnered with WorkForge to provide them with a new website, fully designed and written, to accurately reflect their robust development solutions and their dedication to strengthening American manufacturing.

Objective

To create a website that accurately reflects the mission and values of WorkForge as well as the cutting-edge workforce development solutions they offer to employers.