Fractional CMO Services for Sunshine Home Services

Sunshine Home Services is a premier home service provider offering plumbing, heating, AC, and duct cleaning services to Commerce City and the greater Denver area. One thing that makes Sunshine unique is how they provide a high-touch boutique experience, giving the client outrageous customer service and user experience. The other differentiator is Sunshine is woman-owned and operated by CEO Susan Frew. Susan is an excellent marketer and serial entrepreneur running multiple enterprises. Oh, she's also a nationally known keynote speaker!

Problem

As any entrepreneur knows, running a successful business often requires wearing many hats. Whether it's human resources, accounting, sales, operations, or marketing, entrepreneurs often carry the burden of performing all these distinct disciplines. Although Susan has more than her fair share of marketing experience, providing a clear, cohesive marketing strategy and all other CEO obligations takes time and resources. In order to free up her time to focus on overall business growth, she contacted Bryt•Idea to provide Fractional CMO (chief marketing officer) services for Sunshine.

Sunshine's marketing efforts were light years ahead of most small businesses, thanks to Susan's marketing mojo. They use best-of-class marketing platforms and methodologies, giving them an edge over the competition. The issue was these efforts needed focus, accountability, and a cohesive overall strategy. In addition, tracking and measuring results were not happening consistently. My primary goal as Fractional CMO for Sunshine was to provide professional guidance, accountability and streamline these activities.

Approach

Marketing Audit

To provide an in-depth look at Sunshine's current marketing channels and vendor effectiveness, I created a comprehensive audit to discern which strategies were working, needed improvement, or should be dropped altogether. This provided the framework for creating a unified and detailed plan of marketing tasks that could be tracked and measured, setting the stage for a cohesive marketing strategy – not just one-off initiatives.

Vendor Harmony

Sunshine works with some of the best marketing providers in the country, delivering excellent search engine optimization, paid advertising, and social media marketing services. The challenge was these vendors often didn't know what the others were doing, creating duplication of efforts with competing strategies. The chief marketing officer role allowed me to identify these issues. Working closely with the various vendors, we were able to eliminate redundant services (and cost!) and create alignment of marketing activities provided to Sunshine through them.

Lead Attribution Mayhem

One of the most challenging obstacles to truly understanding return on investment is the identification of lead attribution for all the various marketing channels a business may have. I can say, without hesitation, that this is the holy grail of any truly successful digital marketing strategy. Accurately assigning leads to a campaign or channel, understanding the cost of acquisition, and ultimately return on investment are all components of this complex pandora's box. 

Sunshine is not alone in this challenge, especially with the plethora of marketing channels and platforms it utilizes daily. To accomplish this requires sophisticated marketing tools and a great deal of planning and foresight. Fortunately, Sunshine uses ServiceTitan, the industry standard for running trade-related businesses. It gets companies closer to that ROI holy grail, but much more is needed. To create greater visibility of what leads were captured correctly and where the leaky channel "buckets" were, a deep dive into all of Sunshine's channels (and there are ALOT of them!) was needed. A detailed visual diagram was created to reveal how leads entered, moved through, and ultimately were captured or not. This allowed us to clean up and optimize lead flow and minimize misidentified lead attribution. Sunshine is now better equipped to understand marketing spend ROI, allocate resources towards performing channels, and move monies away from underperforming ones. Things are not perfect yet but were much closer to that ROI holy grail giving Sunshine the edge needed to rise above the competition.

Brand Consistency

The year prior, Sunshine went through a much-needed name and logo change. As expected, this created some challenges for its brand. Although most print and online platforms were successfully transitioned, many lesser channels still used the old name and logo. In addition, Sunshine never went through an in-depth branding identity process. As employees and vendors came and went, different colors, logo versions, and design aesthetics were used, creating an inconsistent look and hazy messaging. Working with Susan and her team, we created a focused marketing message and established specific brand colors and esthetics detailed in a brand guide. We also identified specific buyer personas so we could more effectively target their ideal audience in advertising campaigns. Moving forward, the brand guide can be used to educate future employees and vendors, assuring Susnshine's brand identity and messaging are consistent across all media and online channels.

Marketing Platform Cleanup

Managing the ever-increasing online marketing platforms available to us as business owners can be a daunting challenge, especially with different employees and marketing vendors over time. For example, Sunshine had multiple duplicate accounts with various marketing platforms, even a stray second website! Going through and cleaning this up was a priority to create brand continuity. Now the chance of someone being introduced to an "alternate" Sunshine has been eliminated, creating a unified and singular brand.

Marketing Dashboard

Now that the foundation for an effective marketing strategy is formed and brand identity consistent, success needs to be accurately measured by tracking the performance of our efforts. To remain competitive in today's market, it is essential for CEOs to have a keen eye when assessing the success of their Marketing strategies. By delving into performance data and making crucial decisions based on these insights, they can ensure that their business remains a step ahead of its rivals. Using business dashboard software, I created a marketing dashboard that tracked leads, bookings, sales, and channel ROI along with other metrics giving Susan's team the ability to act as opposed to reacting to changes in business performance and trends. 

Trusted Guidance

Lastly, the most beneficial part of Fractional CMO services, I believe, is providing business owners with trusted professional guidance and reliable advice, ensuring they are not only supported but also have assistance in navigating the complexities that come with modern marketing demands.



The Result

Sunshine Home Services' use of Fractional CMO services helped the company address multiple problems, such as vendor management, lead attribution optimization, and marketing platform cleanup. The team created a brand guide with focused messaging and identified buyer personas helping them speak to their ideal audience with greater empathy. Sophisticated marketing tools were used to gain greater insight into Sunshine's channels and ROI. With the help of Fractional CMO services by Bryt•Idea, Sunshine was able to benefit from professional guidance and support, helping them succeed and stand out in a crowded and competitive landscape.