Real Estate Advisory
Case Studies
Mandated to act for a EU based real estate group seeking to formalise their marketing activity with the aim of supporting its brand alignment & globalisation strategy whilst expanding into new business areas. Hamilton PR devised a marketing strategy implemented in-house with our guidance through ongoing mentoring
Objectives
- Ensure value for stakeholders. Tell the transformation story of the business since 2005.
- Describe intrinsic financial strength of business and long term growth potential
- Good management of media coverage. Achieve a solid understanding amongst stakeholders of the group’s management team, strategic direction, brands and business model
Strategy
There was a dual strategic marketing objective: to create the portfolio of choice and the investment of choice, underpinned by three tactical stages to create a distinctive identity.
- Strong positioning – Who we are and why we’re different – Operational excellence and performance track record.
- Strategic vision – What we’re trying to achieve – Growth through financial discipline and exploiting pockets of real estate market growth
- Measure of Delivery – How we demonstrate success – Sustainable returns to shareholders and improvement of ROE
Our focus was to secure support for the brand alignment in general. Key was maintaining the foundation of the story: brands, transformation plan, portfolio investment approach, balance sheet strength.
Meeting the needs of all audiences
- Media – Preparing for broad media scrutiny; the business was covered not only by retail sector reporters, but business editors, market specialists and real estate journalists. The decision to include a retail element meant that the nature of the commentary changed with journalists taking a clear view. Conflicting media agendas were successfully managed.
- Analysts / investors – It was vital that we maintained a close and open relationship with stakeholders. Key was the use of leveraged materials and events such as management discussions, teach-ins and site visit.
The group received positive coverage. - Employees – Employee communications were essential. We assisted in the launch of drafted straightforward messaging. Employee communications architecture was in place through email, intranet and employee website. All channels were leveraged to ensure employees remained informed and updated on the alignment progress and felt engaged in the process.
Financial PR
Mandated by an integrated EU regulated asset manager working with auditors, CPAs, family office consultants, wealth advisers and corporate advisers. Hamilton PR acts as lead PR consultant with the launch of a new boutique investment fund.
PROJECT
Hamilton PR is mandated with providing public relations services in order to better positioning the investment fund brand in both current and targeted markets, as well as increase awareness in prioritized niche and vertical industries.
TACTICS
- We targeted industry publications through trade editorial calendar research
- Monitored for financial trends and timely topics in the fund management industry
- Continually communicated with project leaders to identify topics, trends and other opportunities to generate story opportunities and build visibility
- Interviewed practice and industry leads to story mine and build topic angles
RESULTS
- Positioned the new investment fund boutique to generate widespread media exposure throughout its home and target markets.
- Positioned key supporters and corporate sponsors as thought leaders in categories including family office, accounting, fiduciary & legal functions.
Oil & Gas
Working with one of the world’s leading industrial gases companies. We supported the client in various roles, both in the UK and beyond
The Mandate – With a focus on application technologies, our objective is to engage a mainly technical audience of engineers and engineering managers, raising awareness of advanced application products and services.
The Campaign – Hamilton PR provided writing, media relations and event management support to the firm’s Advanced Products and Systems divisions in the UK as well as other business units worldwide.
Our objective is always to communicate complex messages clearly, create truly compelling content and come up with creative marketing ideas that are both exciting and technically accurate to support the client to achieve media outreach & generate regular to coverage in top industry trade titles
Ongoing support – We have also directly marketed and produced quarterly customer development reviews to keep customers in the UK informed about the range of its services, advanced engineering solutions and major projects
Business to Business Marketing Campaign
Working for the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting over six million customers in 24 countries around the world. It now employs over 13,000 people globally, including operations in the UK and Ireland, mainland Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, Asia and Brazil.
Strategy
Whilst recognised as a leading brand yet other non – core products as a whole had low awareness in some global regions. The client needed to raise its global profile – and specifically raise awareness of its cloud over desktop HR and payroll products.
An additional challenge was the company’s broad range of potential customers, from start-ups to enterprise, across verticals and job function, with different needs and varying knowledge of the technology that can help them grow their business.
Objectives
- Raise awareness and drive demand for cloud based HR and payroll products across regions.
- Position the client as global leaders for HR and payroll solutions for start-ups through to enterprise.
- Increase marketing qualified leads (MQL) by 25%.
- Achieve campaign adoption across 75% of markets.
Target audience
Preference to target decision-makers in HR, payroll and finance with a company size of one to 1000 employees. This meant focusing on engaging with those from the c-suite and HR assistant to small-business owners. Although diverse, initial research revealed a strong emotional driver across the audience: HR and Payroll professionals felt over-burdened and under-valued for the work they do. Rational drivers of accuracy, people skills and compliance also came into play.
Our strategy – Media, channels or techniques used:
- Engaging with target audience to promote highly engaging and responsive online devices to contribute to the client’s core umbrella campaign to become its highest converting campaign asset.
- Promoted via email, paid digital media, social media and PR, to achieve an astonishing response rate (50% response in just four weeks in the US).
- Campaign format ensured participants engaged positively with the no matter what their sector, role, size of organisation, geography, or buying stage.
- Developed the campaign in conjunction with a business psychologist, participants could discover their work style, assess their key skills and receive a tailored self-improvement toolkit all within one online environment.
Outcome – The campaign brought prospects into the funnel at all stages, irrespective of where they were on the path to purchase – and in many cases before they had even begun. Priceless in today’s B2B environment.
Ongoing Support – To widen reach and maximise interactions, we assisted the client to develop a high-impact video working with a 3rd party provider. Promoted via the same combination of channels, the video engaged audiences with a warm, human approach, more often associated with B2C.
The campaign, which was translated into three languages, was devised to attract and guide prospects into and through the marketing funnel with original, targeted content, directly relevant to their identified challenges. Emotive campaign content and gated assets engaged prospects and delivered them to the top of the marketing funnel.
Data captured when prospects entered the nurture programme and where, depending on the action taken, they received ever more in-depth content on their topic of choice, via their preferred channel. Assets at the top of the funnel consisted of light subject matter such as blogs and infographics, while the mid-funnel offered papers, reports and webinars, and the bottom of the funnel directed prospects towards the most appropriate HR and payroll products