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This is a story about how to achieve success… by turning down a client. This is how the story of our cooperation began and continued with the company’s entry into the Western market through the development of the owner’s brand and obtaining financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The project is the trading company “AMBASSADOR TRADE”, which distributes wines from the brands TIZIANO, CHATEAU GRONA, and KUB WINE.
The CMO of the project is Serhii Soloviov.
Service — marketing department: landing page development, SMM promotion, creation of advertising creatives and texts, setting up and launching Facebook & Google ADS.
Navigating the case study:
- Solve Marketing team members
- Expectations and reality
- The process of work
- Recommendation to Ukrainian businesses
- Client feedback
The approximate time to study the case is 10 minutes
Solve Marketing team members
The project marketing team consists of the following specialists.
We continue to cooperate with the client so that the case study will be updated.
Expectations and reality
“AMBASSADOR TRADE” is a distributor of wines of the TIZIANO, CHATEAU GRONA, and KUB WINE brands. The company is engaged in wholesale sales for HoReCa establishments and retail chains.
Problem. When we first met, the client started developing a mobile application that would be used to sell wine through dealers to the end consumer.
From Solve Marketing, the client wanted to get a calculation of the advertising budget for the promotion of the application.
Our offer. Instead of the calculated budget, the client received research that showed that it would be better to abandon the app altogether.
We analyzed the market and realized that this method of promotion is not cost-effective, even in the long run. Here’s why:
- there was no well-thought-out sales funnel through the app;
- the model we built showed that the first stage of stimulating mobile app downloads would be too expensive.
Explanation. Unlike promoting a website or landing page, where one of the first steps is to attract visitors, to promote a mobile app, you must first get downloads. Let’s start counting:
- the cost of one app download in this area is between $1 and $2;
- at best, you can get 100 app downloads for $100;
- the average conversion from app visitors to customers is only 1%;
- if you believe in a miracle and decide that the conversion to sales will be three times better than the average, the cost of sales will be more than $30 with a margin of up to $5.
So, using a mobile app as the main tool for driving sales is often not cost-effective.
One of the most important values in the work of our agency is the value of the result. That’s why we always warn our clients about all the risks that can hinder effective promotion. Working in marketing for 15 years allows our CEO to see the main ones.
Clients appreciate this approach. Here is a comment we have from the CEO of AMBASSADOR TRADE, Vitaliy Ukrainets:
“I am grateful to Serhii and his team for their honesty. He could have kept silent and won the contract. Instead, he pointed out the problematic aspects of the project, and thanks to him, I didn’t waste €60,000 on developing the app and advertising it. I like this approach, so I recommend the SOLVE MARKETING team if you’re looking for marketers you can trust in this day and age.”
After researching the idea of a mobile app, the client stopped working in this direction, and our dialog was also paused. But later, Vitaliy returned to discussing the possibilities of cooperation. After a series of meetings, we decided to move towards Europe.
Now, given the war in Ukraine, we can assess whether this decision was strategically appropriate for the project.
Areas where we decided to focus our efforts:
Step 1. Prepare all the necessary project documentation and obtain funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Step 2. Develop a comprehensive long-term project promotion strategy to expand sales in Ukraine and other European countries.
Step 3. Conduct a study of the European market and identify countries with high demand for the company’s products to focus marketing activities on these countries in the future.
The process of work
Obtaining financing from the EBRD
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is an international financial institution that can finance businesses without the need to repay the funds provided to stimulate the country’s economy.
The EBRD finances the development of small and medium-sized businesses under its programs if the project submitted for consideration is approved by the bank’s experts. Read more about the EBRD here.
For a client to receive a grant, it is necessary to develop comprehensive project documentation. It should include:
After submitting all the necessary documents, the EBRD approved the project and signed a grant agreement. In this way, the client was able to reimburse 50% of the costs of our marketing department for the project.
The EBRD recorded an interview with Vitaliy, our client, owner, and manager of the trading company Ambassadors Trade.
We are pleased that the EBRD has singled out our project.
A better, more hopeful future for Ukraine and our regions
Strategy for promoting the project through personal branding and advertising in Europe
Solve Marketing’s long-term integrated strategy was to create and launch a landing page for European countries. Through it, people were supposed to buy wines in bulk for HoReCa establishments and retail chains.
The strategy consists of the following aspects:
Below, we describe the implementation of each stage of the strategy.
Creating social media pages and promoting your brand
We often come across situations where a company owner does not have time to manage their social media pages and misses out on opportunities to find new clients and partners. This was exactly the case this time.
An active presence on social media helps to build the very personal brand that has been the talk of the town for several years. But why is a personal brand so important? In our opinion, it helps answer the questions that people ask themselves when looking for opportunities for cooperation.
- What kind of person is this?
- What are the company owner’s principles?
- Can I trust this partner?
- How will I benefit from this cooperation?
Business owners work on their social media presence to:
- more people learned about their personality;
- part of the audience wanted to become clients and partners;
- simply express their opinion.
So, we took over the management of the company owner’s pages on social media and showed his openness, integrity, and high professional competencies.
Personal brand promotion in Solve Marketing
Personal brand promotion in Solve Marketing consists of three areas:
How do we work on creating publications?
Business owners are usually short on time. That’s why we organize the process in such a way as to take on as much work as possible. To actively manage social media, an entrepreneur only needs to give us an interview once a month. We do the rest ourselves.
The interview is transcribed into a text, is edited, and the client has to read the finished post to agree on its placement on the page.
We add photos to the posts. Any photos won’t do, so we organize a photo shoot in advance to have material for posts for several months. It is optimal to hold a photo shoot once a season.
Examples of posts on the Facebook page for Ukraine:
The target audience of the page:
- owners of small and medium-sized businesses;
- employees of the HoReCa sphere;
- purchasing managers and category managers;
- employees of grocery stores and retail chains.
Examples of posts on the Facebook page for Europe:
We engage professional translators who specialize in working with works of fiction to translate our posts. This allows us to preserve the meaning and emphasis of the texts.
English-language posts are viewed by readers from Europe, mainly from such countries as Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Luxembourg.
Since the pages were launched, the client has achieved the following results:
Creating a landing page
To get orders from potential customers, we developed a landing page.
A landing page is a one-page website designed for a specific commercial offer. The main task of the landing page is to get the visitor’s contact information, which the sales department will work with in the future.
On the page we have placed:
- product range and its characteristics;
- a request form for a price list;
- brief information about the company and its owner.
Link to the landing page: https://ticciano-frizano.tiziano.com.ua/ua/
English version of the page:
How to get more leads from a landing page?
To do this, you need to design it in such a way that the user is interested in finding out certain information in exchange for contact details.
What we did:
- used graphics to hint at low prices to motivate the visitor to provide their phone number;
- set up automatic data collection in a Google spreadsheet that could be integrated with a CRM system.
Setting up and launching an advertising campaign
To get contacts from interested page visitors, you need to introduce them to your company and make them interested in your product or service. To do this, we set up advertising in Google Ads.
The goal of the advertising campaign is to attract leads.
What we consider to be a lead: a phone number where a manager can contact a potential buyer and send a price list in the messenger.
Regions of the advertising campaign:
Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Estonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Romania.
We have collected English-language search queries related to the wholesale purchase of wine:
This advertising campaign is currently working and yielding results in the form of requests from potential customers.
Recommendation to Ukrainian businesses
Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of Ukraine’s economy. Unfortunately, this sector has suffered significantly due to the Russian invasion. We urge businesses to resume operations to stimulate the economy.
One solution is to enter the European market. If you are still thinking about it, don’t hesitate to contact us. We have relevant experience and are ready to share it.
Client feedback
