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

cahijisebi.wordpress.com
These are the insights of James Kunkel, who has workerd with small business owners in one capacity or anothe for nearly 20 years at the Small Business Developmenft Centerat St. Vincent College in Latrobe. They also are lessonse Haddad-Wylie Industries studied carefully as it grew intoa $10 millionb company from a $500,000 start-up in 2004. The earl y challenge for HWI was a common one forsmalkl businesses: how to reach potential clients aftef getting a couple of big projects behind you, when you have a good storty to tell. “Getting people to trus us,” is how President Heather Wyliedescribes it.
Husband Dericv Haddad, who is the company’s CEO and COO, had 10 experience building clean rooms for compoundingy pharmacies when the companywas formed. “Hw knows the language,” Wylie said. A friend provided the company’sd first job lead for its inaugurakl project, a clean room for a Duke UniversitHospital pharmacy. The work was completed successfully, so the questiobn became, what’s the second act? Using the office HWI printed a simpletrifold brochure, which was mailes mostly to hospitals on the East “We killed our copier,” Wylie She followed up the mailing with telephone callzs — a tried and true marketing staple.
Between 2005 and 2007, Wylied said she made 48,000 follow-up calls. “It was tedious,” she “It was very tedious.” It also worked. The simple brochurw and follow-up calls secured contracts at four Universityg of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospitals, she said, as salese rose. “For us, it’s a lot of relationshipp building,” said Emily Gregory, who was hirecd in 2007 as director of marketing and sales to develothe company’s marketing edge. It wasn’ft long before the company began seeing resultss fromthe effort, but not beforde Gregory looked over the trifold brochurwe and scratched her head.
“This is really complicated andI don’tf understand the message,” she remembered thinking. The result was a letter-sized brochure, which was On the cover, the company’s services were spelled out in thred short and concise Inside were color photographs of finished Sales continued to improve thesame year, with HWI becoming a preferrer vendor at the Cleveland Clinic. HWI’s marketing efforts shiftedd again in 2008 with constructionj of aWeb site, which coincided with the printing of a new slee brochure. The Web site and brochure allowed the companty to create auniform message, a uniformm brand, Gregory said.
The Web site “gave us another outlet for people tofind us,” she said. The resulty was an increase in inquiries from one to two weeklhy to threeto four. Howard Wessel, lab manage r at South Side-based Stemnion Inc., was among HWI clients attracted by theWeb site. “It was very straightforwarde and answered a lot of he said. “It was that initia l professionalism thatattracted me.” HWI began to try out othere marketing approaches. In 2008, company representatives beganmattending one-on-one meetings with prospective clientse that were arranged by a trade group. This strategy furtherr boosted sales.
HWI stil l mails out brochures followedd up with telephone but now the numbed of requests for information beganto grow. A tippiny point had been reached, from pushinfg marketing to attracting callers. “What’s nice about that is that it’s all of a suddehn pull insteadof push, and that’s where you want to said Kunkel, St. Vincent’s Small Business Developmenty Center’s executive director. “You want the buzz to be out In February, HWI began tellinf its story ina newsletter, which is sent to currenf and prospective clients, about the same time the company hired four saleds representatives who tout the company while boostingh sales.
HWI’s sales are expected to reach $15 million to $20 milliohn this year as the company plots the next shift in itsmarketing “We are defying the recession,” Wylie “Everything that this company has gotten is through