In 2020, the world is facing a global challenge – the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, few people understood how to behave in this situation and what needs to be done to stop the spread of the virus and save thousands of lives.
The United States was among those countries that endured this period very hard. Not surprisingly, unprecedented measures have been taken across the United States to combat the coronavirus. Contacts with other states were practically cut off, and severe restrictions were imposed inside the country. In particular, the authorities issued stay-at-home orders, banned mass gatherings of people, and even staying in restaurants and cafes was banned.
As a result, many public institutions and recreational facilities went bankrupt. It was extremely difficult for the business to stay afloat. Companies that provide related services also began to close. Our longtime client Fortuna Visual Group was also at risk.
For more than fifteen years, this company has been successfully engaged in large-format printing and specialized in signage. Fortuna’s main office is located in New York, which has always been characterized by active life and rapid development. Companies and their branches, shops, banks, and cafes were regularly opened here – and each of them needed new signs. Therefore, Fortuna Visual Group has always had enough customers. Moreover, the company provided services outside of New York, which expanded the circle of customers.
However, the pandemic has dramatically changed the situation. Why do shops and offices need new signs if they can’t work for months on end? It became obvious that the company must either develop the business in a new direction or close it.
To find the right solution, the owners of Fortuna Visual Group turned to Lasting Trend. After brainstorming together, we found two solutions at once that helped save the business.
The rules and conditions for doing business during the pandemic were changing in the United States before our eyes, but the trend was obvious – concern for the safety of staff and customers came to the fore.
Various types of protective equipment, such as sneeze guards or various types of restaurant patios, became one of the prerequisites for work. In general, these are all kinds of transparent barriers that do not interfere with communication but prevent the spread of infections transmitted by airborne droplets. The COVID virus is also spread in this way, and protective equipment is an effective tool against this. Therefore, many organizations and companies that constantly work with a large number of clients need such protective screens.
That is, it was obvious to us that Fortuna Visual Group could have a large number of potential customers if it started manufacturing such products.
However, we conducted a deep analysis to assess the prospects of a new undertaking in more detail.
The Lasting Trend team conducted a study and found out that this niche is not occupied, and there is practically no competition here. Some companies that were also able to provide such services did not have time to promote their brand on the Internet.
In addition to its primary function – protecting people from infection – such equipment can perform additional tasks depending on the wishes of the client. For example, protective screens can be branded (this will increase company recognition) or have any other information useful to the client on their surface.
Everything necessary for the production of protective screens, Fortuna Visual Group already had at that time, including equipment, materials and experienced personnel. The owners of the company did not have to make additional financial investments to develop a new line of business.
In general, Fortuna can produce a large number of protective screens for a wide variety of customers, such as private banks, grocery stores, pharmacies, retail outlets, optical stores, gas stations, etc. The customer market can be very broad if Fortuna gets their advertising campaign right.
The main difficulty that we encountered during the research was the almost complete lack of information about this market. As we said above, almost no one worked in this niche. This direction was new, so we could not find the analytics and statistics we needed.
We realized that when launching new services and developing an advertising campaign, we would have to trust only our own experience and intuition. Nevertheless, we decided to take these difficulties to our advantage and become pioneers. And we succeeded!
Step 1: Get the priorities right
Fortuna Visual Group is capable of producing a huge number of products, including protective equipment of various configurations. However, we decided to direct all our efforts and resources to the promotion of only two types of products – sneeze guards and restaurant enclosed patios. Our research has shown that this will be the most in-demand among customers.
In addition, we concluded that it is better to sell fewer services, but to a wider audience. Therefore, we offered our customers two service options:
Turnkey work. The Fortuna team comes to the site, takes measurements, develops the project, manufactures the protective screen, brings it to the site and installs it.
Self-service. Clients themselves take all the measurements and send them to us, receive the finished product by mail and install it themselves.
Thanks to this approach, Fortuna Visual Group was able to serve customers throughout the country.
Step 2. Create useful content
The landing pages that we created for the two types of services differ from traditional ones and have special semantic content.
Usually, when creating landing pages, the emphasis is on the benefits of a particular service, product or company, and contact information is an important part of the page. But in this case, we understood that potential customers have little information about protective equipment. At that time, few people understood how to act during a pandemic.
That is why we have given a detailed description of each service on the landing pages. We answered many of the common questions that people were worried about at the time. Thanks to this, the audience perceived our landing pages not so much as advertising, but as useful content, very relevant at the moment.
We used the same approach to write feature articles in Blogs on the company’s website.
Step 3. Distribution of the advertising budget
The Lasting Trend team did not have the necessary statistics on the promotion of such services on the Internet, so our marketers focused on their experience when allocating the budget.
We directed the bulk of the finances to SEO promotion, as we understood that the economy would continue to feel the consequences of the pandemic for a long time to come. Our task was to make sure that people who are looking for ways to save their business find information about us and our protective equipment on the Internet.
Also, we directed part of the funds to PPC and Facebook advertising. Thanks to this solution, Fortuna Visual Group quickly gained its first customers, and it used the revenue generated to pay staff salaries and pay urgent payments.
So, in the fall of 2020, we created and promoted two landing pages on the Internet. To do this, we have performed a large amount of work on SEO optimization, such as:
In just a few weeks of fruitful work, we got an excellent result:
However, the main achievement of Lasting Trend was that our client not only did not stop during the crisis but received new ways of development.
