Haddad-Wylie Industries develops diversity of marketing techniques - bizjournals:

ogarawo.wordpress.com
These are the insights of James who has worked with small businessx owners in one capacity or another for nearly 20 years at the Small Businessx Development Centerat St. Vincent Collegew in Latrobe. They also are lessons Haddad-Wylie Industriea studied carefully as it grew intoa $10 million company from a $500,000 start-up in 2004. The earlu challenge for HWI was a common one forsmal businesses: how to reach potential clients aftert getting a couple of big projectz behind you, when you have a good story to “Getting people to trust us,” is how President Heather Wylie describes it.
Husband Deric Haddad, who is the company’xs CEO and COO, had 10 years’ experiencd building clean rooms for compounding pharmacies when the companygwas formed. “He knows the language,” Wylie A friend provided the company’s first job lead for its inauguralo project, a clean room for a Duke UniversityuHospital pharmacy. The work was completed successfully, so the question became, what’s the secondd act? Using the office copier, HWI printed a simple trifoldc brochure, which was mailed mostly to hospitals on theEast “We killed our copier,” Wylie said. She followed up the mailin g with telephonecalls — a trieds and true marketing staple.
Between 2005 and Wylie said shemade 48,000 follow-upo calls. “It was tedious,” she “It was very tedious.” It also worked. The simple brochure and follow-up calls securede contracts at four University of Pittsburgh MedicalCentef hospitals, she said, as sales rose. “Foe us, it’s a lot of relationship said Emily Gregory, who was hired in 2007 as directo r of marketing and sales to developthe company’s marketing edge. It wasn’t long before the compangy began seeing results from the but not before Gregory lookeed over the trifold brochure and scratchedher head.
“This is reallt complicated andI don’t understandf the message,” she remembered thinking. The result was a letter-sized brochure, which was spiral-bound. On the cover, the company’z services were spelled out in three short and concise Inside were color photographa offinished jobs. Sales continued to improve the same with HWI becoming a preferred vendord at theCleveland HWI’s marketing efforts shifted again in 2008 with constructioh of a Web site, which coincided with the printinbg of a new sleek The Web site and brochure allowed the companh to create a uniform message, a unifor m brand, Gregory said.
The Web site “gave us anothed outlet for people tofind us,” she said. The resulrt was an increase in inquirie s from one to two weekly to three to Howard Wessel, lab manager at Soutnh Side-based Stemnion Inc., was among HWI clients attractesd by the Web site. “It was very straightforwars and answered a lot of he said. “It was that initiaol professionalism thatattracted me.” HWI beganb to try out other marketingy approaches. In 2008, company representatives beganattending one-on-onw meetings with prospective clients that were arranged by a tradee group.
This strategy further boosted HWI still mails out brochures followed up withtelephone calls, but now the numbedr of requests for information began to grow. A tipping poin t had been reached, from pushing marketing to attractint callers. “What’s nice about that is that it’sa all of a sudden pull insteadof push, and that’xs where you want to be,” said Kunkel, St. Vincent’s Small Business Development Center’s executive “You want the buzz to be out In February, HWI began telling its story in a which is sent to current andprospectives clients, about the same time the company hired four sale s representatives who tout the company while boostinb sales.
HWI’s sales are expected to reacb $15 million to $20 millio this year as the company plots the next shift in itsmarketin strategy. “We are defying the Wylie said. “Everything that this company has gottenh isthrough marketing.”