Resource type: Case study

Taking a new product to market

Background

Insight Delivered, based in Herriard, just outside Basingstoke, designs, builds and deploys data analysis and scenario planning products. Established in 2016, Insight Delivered now has a global client base. In 2022, chief executive Vijay Iyer decided to expand the business, introducing a new product stack and connecting with new markets.

Challenges

Recently, Vijay and his team of expert developers created an innovative financial planning and analysis application in response to client need.

Although Insight Delivered already had a high-quality product and have been successful in growing their business organically, they lacked the expertise in-house to take their new software-as-a-service solution to market.

Solutions

Insight Delivered were already working with a freelance strategic marketing consultant, Kara. Kara approached Get Ahead to provide hands-on support to market and sell the new SaaS solution.

Vijay had initially wondered whether to conduct a survey to help them launch the product. However, the Get Ahead marketing experts felt that other approaches were worth considering.

To find an alternative route, we led a commercial strategy workshop and developed a lead generation campaign including telemarketing, social media, and email marketing. The Get Ahead team created a targeted account list, met with their target audience, and set up and tracked the CRM solution.

Armed with this strategic information, we developed the core marketing messaging. Louise, our commercial strategy expert, was instrumental in understanding how Insight Delivered could make the most of their CRM system.

Get Ahead also created online marketing collateral, wrote articles and designed a new website to refine the business messages. The team researched keywords to maximise SEO and enabled tracking across Insight Delivered’s website and through to their CRM solution.

While the website was under construction, we ensured there was a consistent online presence to drive traffic to. We built the company LinkedIn page, making sure the Insight Delivered brand was consistent and professional. This also meant we could increase brand awareness and direct people somewhere while the website was being refreshed.

Over time, the relationship between Insight Delivered and Get Ahead grew, as did the project. To support building the marketing and sales pipeline, Insight Delivered engaged Get Ahead team members with the relevant skills and experience. In addition to commercial strategist Louise, we also brought in copywriter Claire, web developer Jennie and customer relationship manager Helen.

Outcomes

The relationship continues. Helen is nurturing the product pipeline, working closely with clients and prospects.

The new website looks brilliant and has raised the profile of Insight Delivered with new and existing clients alike. During the first six months, we increased their social media followers by 100%, established regular online activity, scheduled five client meetings, and developed a pipeline of eighteen accounts with engagement, and over fifty more still to explore.

It’s been a valuable experience for Get Ahead too. We have embraced the opportunity to work with other expert freelancers like Kara, ultimately delivering a complete marketing and sales approach through a collaborative process. Skill, teamwork, collaboration, and communication have combined with great outcomes for Insight Delivered.

A flexible social media solution

Background

The Wow World Group provides classes for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers. The business is an umbrella brand for a range of programmes including Baby Sensory, Toddler Sense, Mini Professors and Reading Fairy. The classes are delivered by franchisees up and down the UK.

Challenges

Abi is the in-house marketing manager at the Wow World Group. She was becoming overstretched and thought it would be beneficial to outsource some of her workload. She was also aware that social media is both time consuming and essential, as it is an important way to connect with new consumers and potential franchisees.

Solutions

Abi decided to outsource the social media to Get Ahead. Social media content expert Eleanor would create regular Facebook and Instagram posts, and schedule them once Abi had approved the work.

Meanwhile, another Get Ahead social media expert, Angela, would check activity and interactions regularly on the Wow World Group’s accounts.

Both Eleanor and Angela’s work and performance is managed by Get Ahead regional director Sarah, taking pressure off Abi and freeing her up to focus on other important areas.

Sarah’s management does not mean that Abi is completely cut off from the process. Abi still has regular contact with the virtual experts, particularly Eleanor, as Abi needs to brief her and approve the content Eleanor has created.

Outcomes

The working relationship between Wow World Group and Get Ahead is going from strength to strength. Abi recently asked Get Ahead for support with Wow World Group’s branding book – an essential tool for franchisees to help them with their marketing. Virtual assistant Fliss provided a fresh perspective on the branding book and helped Abi to achieve the right tone.

Eleanor is about to go on maternity leave but is creating and scheduling posts to cover the entire period she will be away. And because Angela will be continuing with her “reactive” social media role, there will still be someone available to troubleshoot and tweak the content if necessary.

Angela’s daily check-ins amount to just a few hours every month. This makes great business sense – we all know how easy it is to get distracted and spend more hours on social media than we need to! Now Abi doesn’t have to look at social media platforms at all on busy days, but she can still feel confident that comments are receiving replies and any issues can quickly be resolved.

Abi is delighted with the outcomes. Having the social media posts scheduled ahead of time frees her up to focus on other areas of marketing. Abi finds working remotely with virtual experts very liberating and is also pleased that she can give honest feedback to the social media managers. Ultimately, this means the work is done as she would like without compromise on either standards or professionalism.

The partnership between Wow World Group and Get Ahead has been a great success, providing a flexible option as well as great online communication

With maintenance and updates

Background

A web design agency based in Leicestershire joined Get Ahead’s business family when they met East Midlands regional director Emma Barratt at a networking event.

Challenges

The business owners love creating websites. It’s their passion and their forte and they’ve built their business around it. However, over the years some of their clients have asked for additional services that the agency didn’t have the capacity to deliver. These additional services included web maintenance, uploading content and social media management. In some cases, projects were held up because clients needed support to create and compile content. However, the business’s priorities are web design and building their portfolio.

This created a problem. The additional requests left the web designers with the choice between taking their business off in a direction they didn’t want, or refusing to help and lowering their standards of client care. As neither of these options align with their ethos, they needed a fresh approach.

Solutions

They asked Emma for help. Emma suggested that the clients worked with some of Get Ahead’s team, who would update web content and make minor changes to keep websites current and projects moving forward.

Now Get Ahead supports the web design agency on a variety of individual web projects, providing a service tailored to the client’s needs. Our virtual experts provide web maintenance, updates, corrections and more, releasing the business owners to concentrate on web design.

Outcomes

A number of successes have emerged from this working relationship.

A fantastic example of how Get Ahead has supported this web agency is a local football club website. The volunteer-run club didn’t have the time or expertise to deliver regular web updates, including fixture lists and team news. Get Ahead’s web expert Carrie stepped in to fulfil this role, keeping the club’s website current while also freeing up the web designers to focus on their core offering.

The football club is delighted with the outcome. The club work directly with Carrie, which keeps communication simple. As a small club, it’s important that work is delivered within budget and is easy to keep track of. Fortunately, as a dedicated outsourcing agency, it’s easy for Get Ahead to support the club in the right way at the right price.

It’s a success for the web agency too. Get Ahead’s proven track record means that they can introduce our services with confidence, knowing they’re providing an excellent standard of client care. Having Carrie and other virtual experts providing remote support also helps keep projects on track.

Above all, the agency has achieved what was previously impossible: by referring their clients to Get Ahead, they’ve met their clients’ needs without compromising on their own business direction.

Here at Get Ahead VA, we are privileged to work with a wide variety of clients who recognise the value of outsourcing. Here’s 60 seconds with one of our clients, Lee Lomas, from Excalibur Healthcare; a supplier of high-quality medical products and services, founded by Professor Sir Christopher Evans OBE.

What situation was your business in when you first came to Get Ahead VA?

We launched XP21 under our parent company, Excalibur Healthcare Services Ltd, an established healthcare business which supplies products to the Government & NHS.

XP21 was launched to provide high quality PPE and medical supplies to organisations and individuals dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

We had an agency who built our website and were using digital channels for growing web traffic, but we needed to reach more businesses and organisations in the UK to tell them about our products and how we could help them survive and continue to operate.

What difference did this make to your business?

Having the Get Ahead team as our partners has allowed us the band width to get on with growing our business.

Starting this new division of the business in a difficult economic period has been a challenge and having a reliable marketing partner with specialist expertise has ensured we have confidence in our marketing plans and that our campaigns are working towards our ambitious targets.

We are continuing to work with Marie and the Get Ahead team to develop our ongoing client communications and grow our customer base with further marketing campaigns.

How did we help solve the problem for you?

Marie from Get Ahead took our brief and put together a 3-month plan to support our launch using email marketing and a radio campaign.

They handled every element of the campaign which included:

  • Planning & buying digital radio spots most suited to our budget and target audience
  • An evaluation of tech platforms and recommending the most suitable solution for our email marketing needs and future CRM requirements
  • Sourcing data for business email marketing, producing compelling and engaging content and managing the broadcasts in line with the agreed plans
  • Reporting on results and making recommendations for future optimisations

Marie and the Get Ahead team worked really closely with our web agency in a collaborative way to ensure all of our marketing efforts were aligned and we got the most value from each of our partner agencies through sharing assets and learnings.

Client introduction

Tamson is the founder of Amara Coaching and Training. She is a team and leadership coach, trainer and inspirational speaker. Tamson has a decade of experience in psychological coaching; helping leaders and teams increase self-awareness, improve engagement, and maintain resilience to support wellbeing. Based in Bristol, Tamson started her business in 2017 and has worked with renowned brands Twitter, Hotwire, Spotify and TikTok. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many of Tamson’s clients paused working with her. After realising that she could pivot her business online, Tamson continued to provide an important service to her clients. Tamson runs webinars to support businesses to build resilience, deal with uncertainty and maintain a sense of collaboration and ‘togetherness’ whilst working virtually.

The Outcome

“Kristy really helped my business to grow and I see her as a strategic business partner. She’s very positive and supported me to think more objectively. In the dark months having someone to talk things through during an isolating time has made such a difference.” Tamson has worked with Janette for a month. “She is really reliable, consistent, efficient, professional and friendly.” Tamson continues to have monthly catch-ups with Kristy to provide reassurance and support. “Having Kristy as a sounding board is amazing, particularly with areas that I don’t feel as confident in.”

The Brief

Tamson wanted to rebrand and develop a marketing strategy for her business but it wasn’t an area that she felt confident in. She wasn’t initially looking for support but was contacted by Kristy Roff, Regional Director of Berkshire and North Hampshire for Get Ahead VA, in February 2020. “I needed reassurance around marketing, it’s a massive growth area for me. In my mind I needed help but I didn’t feel ready to commit.”

Working Together

Tamson worked with Kristy for eight months before Get Ahead VA matched her with a Virtual Assistant, Janette. In addition to providing ongoing marketing support, Kristy gathered feedback from the Get Ahead network and set up a KPI tracker to help Tamson with managing capacity and financial targets. Janette has provided assistance with diary management, sending mailouts, promoting webinars and managing her database.

Why Get Ahead?

“Working with Get Ahead has made a significance difference to my outlook and how to think about business. I have built a great rapport with Kristy; it’s fun and we have a good relationship which is really valued.

“It’s one of the best things to come out of 2020.”

Social media & PR for SCE Solicitors, Leeds

Who are SCE Solicitors?

SCE Solicitors are a legal firm specialising in HR and employment law, with a particular focus on mental health in the workplace. Since its foundation in Leeds in 2011, the business has grown dramatically, particularly during the pandemic. SCE has expanded geographically as well, and now supports businesses across the whole of Yorkshire.

Challenges

SCE’s founder, Samira, had been struggling to balance her casework with marketing the firm through social media. She approached us in October 2019 to manage her personal LinkedIn profile, following a recommendation from an existing client. Towards the end of 2020, Samira needed marketing and PR support as the firm prepared to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The SCE team had been managing the business social media pages but as the business grew, they no longer had the capacity. Building on her existing relationship with Get Ahead, Samira asked us to help.

Solutions

Working closely with Samira, we created a dedicated marketing plan around the anniversary. It included updated graphics to use on social media and other platforms and a content plan for themed blogs. The new content aligned with the overall PR and social media campaigns.

Get Ahead’s content experts also identified that SCE’s newsletter would benefit from a refresh. Samira welcomed the idea and the newsletter was included in the updated content strategy.

The process – working together to achieve SCE Solicitors’ goals

  • Social media expert Hazel was already managing Samira’s personal LinkedIn profile and had a good understanding of the business. Building on her client knowledge, she seamlessly took over SCE’s business pages too. She managed the increased workload by adapting the existing Trello board to improve communication across the marketing team.
  • Content marketing strategist Claire has a background in professional services and, liaising with the team, she came up with a complete list of blog ideas for the year, which she delivered according to the timescale and uploaded to the website.
  • Caroline worked on the PR campaign, writing the press releases and working with Samira to identify the most appropriate publications to approach.
  • Kate designed the graphics for the ten-year anniversary, to be used on social media and to bring the written content to life.
Outcomes

SCE’s ten-year anniversary was featured in the following publications

  • Growth Yorkshire
  • Business 247
  • Yorkshire Times
  • Yorkshire Business Daily
  • BDaily
  • Business Mondays

SCE are also delighted with the social media results: engagement with Samira’s personal LinkedIn profile has increased by 90% and the company page 4-fold.

Deborah Ogden – your personal branding expert

Background

Deborah Ogden is a personal branding and impact expert based in West Yorkshire. She works with business owners and team members, empowering them and improving their performance and authenticity. Deborah has also established an online members-only offering for her clients, called the Impact Club. Members can access weekly calls and receive regular updates, information and masterclasses to help them develop their personal brand and achieve more. Deborah started working with Get Ahead after a recommendation from a mutual connection.

Challenges

Deborah is very busy. She has many strings to her bow: meetings with individual clients, interviewing industry experts, recording podcasts, delivering workshops, public speaking and more. Working alone, she was not managing her diary and time effectively and often she was over-committing herself, leaving her feeling overwhelmed. In addition, Deborah had had a bad experience with outsourcing in the past. This meant that while she needed some back-office support, gaining her trust posed extra challenges.

“I can’t recommend Fiona Ibbetson and her team at Get Ahead VA Leeds highly enough! I had a tricky project that was making me crazy and creating loads of stress, so knew I needed to get help. Fiona and her team solved the issue on time and on budget, responding with a solution that was better than I expected. The communication was always quick, professional, friendly and ever so helpful. With so much varied talent on her team, I’m sure Fiona can help with most any admin, tech, marketing, or other business support need you have.”

Deborah Ogden, Personal Brand

Solutions

Regional Director Fiona Ibbetson decided that the best way to rekindle Deborah’s trust in outsourcing was to take it slowly. While there were many ways Get Ahead could support Deborah, Fiona and Deborah both felt that the process should start with some basic diary management. Virtual assistant Mel set up a default diary so Deborah could feel confident time was allocated to each month’s regular tasks.

With Deborah’s time management under control, she was able to relax and give focus to growing her business . With the advantages of outsourcing established, Deborah went on to outsource CRM management and automate her email marketing, podcast management and communications. Get Ahead also supports her with social media structuring and the setting up of project management software. Altogether, Deborah works with three different virtual experts from Get Ahead.

Outcomes

Deborah now has more flexibility because her administration is under control. Her huge bank of content is now rolling out on social media in a coherent, informative way that gives real value to her followers. The podcasts tie into Deborah’s overall strategy and feed into other areas of her marketing. Best of all, she is no longer fire-fighting; instead, she can choose where to direct her energy. This helps her give a great service to her clients and take her business in the direction she wants it to go.

Strong collaborations enable business expansion

Background

The Consort Group is a luxury carpentry and joinery firm that deliver high quality bespoke solutions. Based in Reading, Berkshire, the business was founded in 2016 by Darren Saunders who quickly started working with Get Ahead. He was familiar with the outsourcing model because he used contractors himself to deliver his own projects. He understood that outsourcing is a great way to get a skilled team in place quickly and cost-effectively.

Challenges

Darren knew he needed some back-office support. The business had to deliver the practical side of carpentry projects while also staying on top of invoicing, orders and customer service.

He also had a plan to expand the business. Darren could see the possibilities of other markets and was keen to take the business beyond its original carpentry offering.

Solutions

Outsourcing the admin enabled Darren to concentrate on delivering his core business, confident that the operational back-office activities were being taken care of behind the scenes. Virtual Assistant Gwen was able to bring her experience and skills to Consort. Her role quickly evolved within the growing business and she became Darren’s virtual PA.

An evolving relationship

Darren had a clear vision for his business and Gwen has been able to grow with him and help support his aspirations. When Darren needed expertise beyond Gwen’s field, regional directors Kristy and Suzanne were able to connect him with the right virtual experts for his requirements.

This process built a strong relationship between Darren and the regional directors. Get Ahead is now his first port of call when he needs either an ad hoc support or an ongoing solution.

Gwen continues in her role as Darren’s virtual PA, but Get Ahead also now manages the Consort Group’s social media activity and provides its HR Support. We have recently created a promotional video and written and managed an award submission for the Construction News Awards 2022.

Outcomes

Outsourcing has been a real success for Darren. His expansion plans are on track and he’s recently moved to a modern state-of-the-art office.

We’re delighted that his business is the success he’s been reaching for and we’re able to proudly say we’ve been a positive part of that journey.

Fiona Ibbetson, Leeds

Becoming a Regional Director for Get Ahead VA means having the freedom to run your own business with support from an established brand – so you’re going into business for yourself, not by yourself. But what is it actually like to be a Regional Director, day to day? We spoke to Fiona, the head of our Leeds branch, to find out more about how she spends a typical working day, and how she balances her work life with family commitments.

My morning routine

I like to get up early because I have a great morning routine that helps to get me in the right mindset for the day. I do half an hour of exercise, followed by ten minutes of daily gratitude. Then it’s time to get my daughter up for school, make her breakfast and get ready myself.

I usually eat breakfast at around 8am and check my emails to get an idea of the jobs I’ll need to tackle first. Then I wake my son up, make him breakfast and a packed lunch, and take him to school.

At my desk

The first thing I do when I sit down to start work is check over the tasks I’ve planned for myself the day before. These typically include responding to emails, posting and engaging on social media (I set aside dedicated time for this each day to make sure it gets done), connecting with people I met at networking events, and making any introductions that people have requested.

After that, I call the Get Ahead VA team to get a client update – it’s always reassuring to know that I have that support there when I need it – and I follow up with clients to ensure they’re getting everything they need. A big part of my job is pairing clients with virtual assistants, and I have a growing team of really great VAs on hand, who cover a wide range of services. This is also a good time to make contact with prospective clients: following up with anyone who’s expressed an interest in our services, and emailing out contracts and terms of agreement.

Out and about

The beauty of being a Regional Director is that you aren’t bound to your desk all day, every day. A big part of the job is networking, and I tend to do most of my networking at lunchtimes in order to fit my work within school hours. So, at around 11am I get in the car to go to a networking meeting. Sometimes I make use of that driving time to have a quick one-to-one call with a prospective client, or to listen to an audiobook. Currently I’m working my way through The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins. Lunchtime networking sessions tend to last two hours, and I eat while I’m there. If I’m not networking, I’ll use this time to review my business and marketing plan, think about what is working well for me, and hone my pitch for future networking events. I’ll take about half an hour for lunch and eat it at the table (not at my desk!).

Afternoon commitments

When my daughter gets home from school, I take a break to catch up with her and find out what homework she has to do. Then I walk to my son’s school to pick him up, and when we come home I give both kids a snack. This isn’t the end of the working day for me, but it’s great that I can be around when my kids finish school, to ask them how their day was.

My afternoon jobs include checking my emails and social media again, and responding to anything pressing, like sending a client proposal. As the working day comes to an end, I review what I’ve done and plan my tasks and set goals for the next day. I might also draft some emails, ready to send out the next morning. Then at around 5pm it’s time to stop work and take the kids to Tae Kwon Do!

A varied routine

All in all, I’m usually in the office around 4 hours a day, and out of the office for 4 hours. I always make time during my office hours for phone calls, emails, marketing and reaching out to any prospects and networking connections. Every week I follow up with my clients and the Get Ahead VA team, update my accounts, check my progress against the plan for the week and make a plan for the following week, so I’m always thinking ahead. Each month I send out invoices and schedule content to post to social media.

The beauty of being a Regional Director is the freedom it affords. For me, I like to spend time on selfdevelopment, whether that’s listening to an audiobook, reading an article, watching a webinar or working on my Beyond 2030 by Toni Eastwood ‘6 Secrets to Success’ model, which I highly recommend.

With Get Ahead VA you are not just buying into a proven business model, but you also have access to franchise advice and support services. You really feel part of the team. Once a month, there’s a regular Zoom call with all the Regional Directors, and this is a great forum for us to share what’s going well, where we need support, and just to bounce ideas around. Also, I know that Rebecca (the founder of Get Ahead VA) is always at the end of the phone if I need any help; she’s super supportive, and she even came up to Leeds when I was delivering a presentation at one of my networking meetings!

Being a Regional Director for Get Ahead VA is a hugely rewarding job, and I love the flexibility of the working hours and the variety of every day. I also love the ability to really scale the business by adding new regional team members as I need them. I would recommend it to anyone who’s thinking of taking the plunge.

Marketing Services

Who are Crest Coaching?

Crest Coaching & HR are an independent Surrey business. They provide expert HR services, personalised executive coaching and career coaching services for SME’s. They are passionate about helping companies create engaged and successful teams. In addition, they offer group leadership coaching for managers as well as group change management sessions. 

Challenges 

Crest Coaching’s lead coach, Desiree, had outsourced to us before, and we had created some branded e-books for her on the topics of burnout and resilience. However, lockdown heightened these issues, so additional marketing was needed to bring her expertise to new audiences. She was also launching a new programme called Winning Teams so it seemed a good time to re-evaluate some of her marketing materials and content.

With these goals in mind, Desiree wanted to expand upon the e-books but also ensure her followers used the existing content. She also wanted to improve her general visibility on her marketing channels and re-assess her content strategy, to reach more people who might connect with her work. 

Solutions 

We worked with Desiree to provide guidance on a social media strategy, and a content plan for her to deliver herself over the summer months. We gathered information through a client questionnaire and online consultation.

Our marketing experts evaluated both the content and resources already available and made a clear, section-by-section strategy. This meant that Desiree always knows what to post, the ways she can post it and how she can boost this with an interaction plan too.

The new content plan brought about some other changes for Crest Coaching and HR. Once she started to use the new plan, Desiree was able to see further content marketing opportunities. She decided to invest in some designed templates on Canva which she could edit with fresh content whilst still maintaining her brand.  She created a new e-book for a specific event and outsourced the design element to Get Ahead. Desiree also wanted to develop her email marketing, including automating newsletter sign-up and creating a template for future newsletter content. The assistant working on this set up a linktr.ee account to make it easier to direct people to all the valuable content Crest HR has to offer. 

The process – working together to achieve Crest HR’s goals

When Desiree originally approached Get Ahead, she was looking for some help with visibility on social media. However, Joanne, the Regional Director for Surrey, felt Desiree’s business deserved a more strategic approach, and guided her to services that were going to be of most value to her ongoing. This included solving some niggling automation set-up issues and introducing some new tools that will make her marketing processes flow more easily now and in the future. 

The Regional Director put together the portfolio of services required, which included design, strategy and planning, marketing automation and technical VA services, delivered by three separate VAs. 

On this project the Regional Director took the client’s requests and produced a comprehensive brief for the team.  That meant we could offer a co-ordinated response, while the client received all the benefits of a single point of contact. Each VA slotted into their role in the project quickly and efficiently, ultimately saving the client time and money.

Outcomes 

We love it when a client comes back to utilise our services again and even better when we can quickly spot several things we can implement quickly and efficiently into their business.  After working with virtual experts from Get Ahead, Desiree can now organise her ongoing email marketing without having to worry about automation.  She has a stock of beautifully designed templates and resources which can be utilised in many different ways. Desiree also has a robust social media content plan and strategy that will be useful way beyond the initial few months it covered.  

 Our work for Crest Coaching and HR is a great example of how Get Ahead can combine services all under one roof to make it easier for the client and give them great value of money. The whole project came to less than £550 but it will benefit Desiree and her business far into the future.

If you’re considering outsourcing your marketing support, read our marketing page here, or get in touch on 01483 332 220 to find out more.