Surrey Board Of Trade: Building Membership & Maximizing ROI Through Targeted Digital Marketing
The Surrey Board of Trade (SBOT) attracts businesses to Surrey while also supporting those companies already located there. Economic opportunity, workplace development and education, international trade, government advocacy and business connections are their primary service offerings.
With connections to a network of over 6,000 business contacts and over 60,000 local, regional and international professionals, SBOT supports business growth, expansions of brands and help businesses accomplish their government advocacy objectives. They believe transportation and education are the two economic foundations for building the city.
Historically speaking, SBOT has been successful in executing multi-faceted marketing campaigns aimed at attracting new members. More recently, however, they recognized the potential to further maximize their ROI through targeted digital marketing.
“The Surrey Board of Trade is already a leader in our approach to marketing and member engagement. However, we recognized the opportunity to enhance our reach and better communicate the value we bring to businesses through a targeted digital marketing strategy,” said Anita Huberman, CEO of SBOT.
Following an initial review of the marketing activities that were underway at the time, Blue Meta recognized that a focused approach was required to generate new members and provide the best return on the Surrey Board of Trade’s advertising investment.
The Blue Meta team then performed an in-depth analysis comparing businesses who were current SBOT members against all of the business licenses that were issued within the City of Surrey. From there, the businesses were split into categories to determine penetration by industry. This allowed our strategists to determine which industries were already saturated and which industries presented the most opportunity to grow membership. Based on this information, we also performed an audit of SBOT’s online assets along with existing digital marketing activities – and their respective KPIs – to determine where there were opportunities to pivot messaging and tactics in order to market more effectively to these specific industries.
Blue Meta recommended that the Surrey Board of Trade conduct focus groups with businesses who were already members as well as with those who had yet to join to better understand their reasons for becoming a member and gain insight into what type of messaging would resonate best with them. We also provided a strategic digital marketing plan and budget that was focused on increasing awareness of the value and benefits current members were receiving as part of their membership which would then encourage new members to join.
Providing a blueprint for success – and future growth opportunities – proved valuable for SBOT. Blue Meta has continued to engage with them on subsequent campaigns based on the results of the internal audit and digital marketing strategy that we were able to provide them.
“We all need help when it comes to marketing in order to take it to the next level and support business growth,” said Anita Huberman. “Blue Meta was able to explore every facet of our organization to ensure they were recommending and using the right digital marketing tactics to realize our competitive advantage.”