“With April kicking off a new financial year for many, it almost feels like a new year and fresh start again, with lots of confirmed work ahead which is always a positive!
We’ve got lots of high volume, smaller jobs at the moment, plus our usual influx of vehicle wraps. Lots of site boards, banners and health & safety signage keeping us busy alongside an exciting rebrand project for Sharp, requiring an abundance of external signage. With vehicle graphics being one of our specialities, this also sees us turning around several completed vehicles per week. We were also delighted to win the Signs Express network’s Best Picture of the Month in March for one of our vehicle wraps, which was great to see the teams fantastic work being recognised!”
With a focus on his long-term goals of building out his team and optimising skills within the business for future potential growth, we hear from Kris about another exciting new addition to his team, “We’re excited to have a new apprentice (via the Walsall College apprenticeship scheme) joining us and completing our team at the beginning of May. He’s a great candidate with a positive attitude and will fit in well with our team dynamic for sure. With Adam and Sid currently leading the production team, their experience and wide-ranging skills will be essential in training and mentoring our new recruit. We’re keen for him to get involved in all aspects of the business to ensure he has a well-rounded view of all areas and will be getting involved in design, installation and hands-on training in sign making, to eventually allow him to become a skilled sign technician and ultimately help us drive the business forwards.”
We often talk a lot about types of projects, sales targets, the state of the economy etc., however another huge element responsible for the success of the business is obviously marketing. We caught up with Kris to see how his marketing plans are progressing, “Marketing is always at the forefront of my mind, however I would say my perspective of marketing has changed since being in this business, as I’ve learnt just how different your approaches need to be for each industry. You don’t wake up one day thinking I need a sign, it’s a very need driven business which requires a targeted, bespoke and strategic approach along with an educational steer too.
We’re lucky enough that the Franchise Support Centre lead our digital marketing requirements taking care of our email marketing and Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns for us, which I see as a great benefit to the business. In terms of what we do as a centre, we’re very active on social media, trying to demonstrate the varying nature of signage and educate our customers on the options available; we put a lot of time into our website too, ensuring new and up-to-date content is always available, along with updates for google my business to ensure we’re always in the search results in our area!
Lots of business in this industry, however, is also relationship driven and occurs from word-of-mouth recommendations and repeat business, so customer service, reputation, building relationships and reconnecting with existing customers is an ongoing priority for us. Plus, although it may seem old school, we also travel to local industrial areas to introduce ourselves and leave leaflets which works well for us, as we still find those face-to-face interactions are vital to the business.”
Overall, it certainly seems like Kris has got a good hold on the business despite entering a new business, location, new industry and new market only months ago! We’ll catch up with Kris for his last diary entry next month before we leave him to focus on the business for a while!
