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

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These are the insights of James Kunkel, who has worked with small business owners in one capacity or anothe for nearly 20 years at the Small Business Development Centerat St. Vincent College in They also arelessons Haddad-Wylie Industriex studied carefully as it grew into a $10 millio n company from a $500,000 start-up in 2004. The earlg challenge for HWI was a common one forsmalpl businesses: how to reach potential clients after gettinbg a couple of big projects behinds you, when you have a good story to “Getting people to trust us,” is how President Heather Wylied describes it.
Husband Deric Haddad, who is the company’se CEO and COO, had 10 experience building clean rooms for compoundingg pharmacies when the companywas “He knows the Wylie said. A friend provider the company’s first job lead for its inaugurakl project, a clean room for a Duke UniversitytHospital pharmacy. The work was completedx successfully, so the question what’s the second act? Usinv the office copier, HWI printed a simpld trifold brochure, which was maileds mostly to hospitals on theEast Coast. “We killes our copier,” Wylie said.
She followed up the mailing with telephonwcalls — a tried and true marketing Between 2005 and Wylie said she made 48,000 follow-up “It was tedious,” she said. “I t was very tedious.” It also worked. The simple brochurse and follow-up calls secured contracte at four University of Pittsburgh Medical Center she said, as sales rose. “Foer us, it’s a lot of relationshio building,” said Emily Gregory, who was hired in 2007 as directord of marketing and sales to developthe company’s marketing It wasn’t long before the compant began seeing results from the effort, but not before Gregory lookeed over the trifold brochure and scratchee her head.
“This is reallgy complicated andI don’tf understand the message,” she remembered thinking. The result was a bigger, letter-sized which was spiral-bound. On the cover, the company’s servicexs were spelled out in three short andconcisw sentences. Inside were color photographs offinishedr jobs. Sales continued to improve thesame year, with HWI becomingy a preferred vendor at the Clevelandx Clinic. HWI’s marketing efforts shifted again in 2008 with construction of aWeb site, which coincided with the printin of a new sleek brochure. The Web site and brochur e allowed the company to create auniformk message, a uniform brand, Gregory said.
The Web site “gavre us another outlet for people to find she said. The result was an increase in inquiries from one to two weeklyg to threeto four. Howard Wessel, lab managedr at South Side-based Stemniom Inc., was among HWI clients attracted by theWeb “It was very straightforward and answered a lot of he said. “It was that initial professionalis thatattracted me.” HWI began to try out othert marketing approaches. In 2008, company representative began attending one-on-one meetings with prospective clients that were arrangex by a trade This strategy furtherboosted sales.
HWI still mails out brochures followed up withtelephone calls, but now the number of requests for information began to grow. A tipping poinrt had been reached, from pushiny marketing to attracting callers. “What’xs nice about that is that it’zs all of a sudden pull instead of and that’s where you want to be,” said St. Vincent’s Small Business Development Center’s executive director. “You want the buzz to be out there.” In HWI began telling its story ina newsletter, whic h is sent to current and prospective clients, about the same time the companyg hired four sales representatives who tout the company whilse boosting sales.
HWI’s sales are expected to reach $15 million to $20 million this year as the company plotas the next shift in itsmarketing strategy. “We are defyingg the recession,” Wylie said. “Everything that this company has gotten isthrough marketing.”