OUR RESULTS
When you work with MASSolutions, we help you Get Where You Want To Go through customer solutions, brand building, selling solutions and PR & story telling.
We’ve helped B2B, B2C, nonprofit, not-for-profit, regional and global businesses in many industries when they were ready to market for real results.
Want to learn more? Read a few of our client success stories. Then call us at 412.201.2401 to discuss how our integrated marketing approach can help you to reach your goals.
Carson Long Military Academy
Challenge: Despite a long history as one of the nation’s first military boarding schools, Carson Long Military Academy needed an integrated marketing plan to help with its story telling and brand building. The school needed to increase awareness to help boost student enrollment.
Solutions: Our integrated brand building approach for the school included Customer Positioning System (CPS)™ sessions with leadership at Carson Long to help assess the school’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We focused on accurately defining their target audience and creating the Ideal Cadet Profile. This led to developing and implementing an Integrated Marketing and PR Program to reach and influence Carson Long’s key target audiences of parents, current and potential cadets and alumni.
The Integrated Marketing and PR Program included a new slogan and messaging, a redesigned website, and creation of a marketing touches campaign. Carson Long’s messaging focused on “Building Character for Life” and “Knowledge Today, College Tomorrow” featured in direct mail, online advertising, print and outdoor advertising. A Content Calendar for Social Media and PR was created and utilized to tell the Carson Story.
Result: Carson Long continues to provide a quality educational and character building experience for young men despite the tough economic and enrollment challenges facing military boarding schools today. The school has enhanced the makeup of the student body from an academic talent perspective and is perceived as a highly respected and honorable military training school.
Community LIFE
Challenge: Community LIFE’s mission is to enable older adults to remain at home while preserving their dignity, independence and quality of life.
The non profit organization wanted to increase awareness of services among the community and with referral sources such as physicians, hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. MASSolutions was engaged to help with brand building, selling solutions, PR & story telling, and customer solutions.
Solutions: Our Customer Positioning System (CPS)™ sessions focused on clearly defining Community LIFE’s key target markets and enhancing the customer experience. We uncovered the need for internal operational changes to help staff members, regardless of position, support the agency’s sales and marketing efforts.
The sessions led us to build Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for the center—and provide one-on-one training to staff—as part of a Referral Source Marketing Process Improvement Plan. We also performed a Marketing Audit, taking a hard look at all of their marketing materials and making suggestions for improvement. The Marketing Audit recommendations led to cost savings while improving the overall marketing “look and feel” for the organization.
Result: With our help in customer positioning and sales training, the nonprofit healthcare agency was able to develop and implement a systematic Referral Source Marketing Program that has led to increased referrals and awareness in the community.
IntegraCare Corporation
Challenge: IntegraCare’s mission is to improve the quality of life for its employees, residents, and their families. The senior living provider wanted to increase the number of inquiries, on-site tours and, ultimately, new resident move-ins for their communities. They asked MASSolutions for selling solutions built around improving their marketing processes. In addition, our customer solutions focused on helping IntegraCare see and hear what prospective customers see and hear.
Solutions: From staff interviews to mystery shopping, our integrated marketing solutions included researching and examining IntegraCare’s selling process step-by-step. We focused on three important areas: 1) generating inquiries, 2) scheduling tours/visits and 3) converting tours/visits into sales.
To generate more inquiries, we integrated their marketing and advertising spending to focus on only high-value media buys, including billboard advertising and direct mail. We also recommended a telephone selling system that gave potential customers a more consistent message. Finally, we trained the marketing and sales staff in specific selling behaviors that would convert more tours into sales.
Result: Our integrated marketing and selling solution process resulted in a dramatic increase in inquiries and closes. IntegraCare’s inquiry-to-tour ratio improved dramatically and the tour/visit to move in numbers also grew by leaps and bounds.
Presbyterian Senior Care
Challenge: Presbyterian SeniorCare is a non-profit regional network of living and care options for older adults and/or persons with disabilities. Founded in 1928, the organization was respected for its commitment to quality.
Solutions: Using mystery shopping research, we learned that—instead of being answered by a receptionist—calls were typically routed to voice mail or to a nurse’s station, where they were forwarded to yet more voice mail. This was the exact opposite of the quality experience Presbyterian SeniorCare wanted to offer its customers.
To correct these operational issues and provide customer solutions, we developed an incoming call protocol to assure that calls are answered and transferred by people to people. We reduced the “call paths” from six to three. Including detail such as how to properly record and respond to messages, this protocol is part of a wider culture change we helped the Presbyterian SeniorCare implement.
Result: Today, callers are greeted by a friendly voice, not a voice mail recording. More importantly, this positive first impression is continued in other interactions customers have with employees throughout the Presbyterian SeniorCare system.
Valley Hospice
Challenge: Valley Hospice has been the largest hospice provider in the Ohio Valley since 1985 with offices in Steubenville, OH and Wheeling, WVA. However, the community lacked a complete understanding of all the organization’s services. Plus, Valley Hospice’s referral sources–physicians and their staffs, social services organizations, other healthcare providers–did not completely understand how the organization could help their patients and families.
Solutions: The most effective brand building strategies allow you to send the right message to the right audience at the right time…for the right price.
Brand building for a hospice facility is a unique challenge. For most people, choosing hospice care is perhaps the most emotionally charged health care decision they will make for themselves or loved ones. We wanted the brand identity of Valley Hospice to convey comfort and compassion and most of all, a life-affirming approach.
We began by updating the logo and created a new tagline: “Caring. Living. Healing.” We also created three television commercials—one for each element of their tagline.
Result: Valley Hospice’s Brand Building and Referral Source Marketing Programs increased awareness and referrals for the non profit.For those already aware of the agency, the brand building helped to position the organization in a more positive, more authentic light. Others learned how Valley Hospice makes a difference in the community and better understood the services offered.
Kane Regional Centers
Challenge: Kane Regional Centers, one the largest skilled nursing organizations in the country, wanted to generate positive media exposure as it continued to expand and improve services at four regional skilled nursing centers.
Solutions: Healthcare storytelling has many angles—from patient and resident case studies to treatment innovations to facility upgrades. Our public relations efforts for Kane encompassed all of the above, and more.
Successfully pitching stories to online, print and broadcast media, we were able to inform the public about the quality care the centers provide to residents. Because they are located in various locations within a large county, we highlighted the distinctive features of each facility. Once the PR campaign showed an impact on inquiries and admissions, we were asked to produce advertising and marketing collaterals to integrate all marketing efforts.
Result: The clinical and support staff employees at the four Kane Regional Centers have always focused on giving residents the wonderful medical attention they deserve. Today, more and more of their target audience know about it.
Greater Johnstown School District
Challenge: Greater Johnstown School District was not receiving its fair share of positive media coverage. The real story about the good things going on in the district was not being told. Negative word of mouth, often exaggerated or completely untrue, spread more than it should have.
Solutions: Storytelling is easy when there are plenty of good stories to tell. We started with an external newsletter we named “The Trojan Times.” Focusing on academic and athletic achievements, the newsletter is mailed to more than 18,000 students and households.
Social media is very cost-effective tool for storytelling. It is also a powerful tool that must be used correctly to prevent damage. We were concerned that the district had no social media strategy or guidelines to let them maximize the good and minimize the risk. We worked with them to institute sound social media policies and to develop content calendars that spell out what should be posted, when and by whom.
Result: The storytelling campaign—via The Trojan Times and social media—has been extremely successful in changing the school district’s reputation. As always, the “packaging” itself helps to convey the message. In both 2009 and 2011, we were pleased to learn that the newsletter earned the print newsletter/newspaper award of excellence from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and an award of excellence from the Pennsylvania School Public Relations Association.
LV Tech
Challenge: A small business that provides information technology support and services to other small businesses, LVTech calls itself the “one-stop IT support system.” The firm called MASSolutions for brand building strategy to better promote their strong customer service skills and willingness to help customers with a variety of computing needs.
Solutions: Small businesses need smart branding to generate credibility. Nothing says “amateur” like an unpolished or forgettable logo and tagline. We worked with LV Tech to fully understand their target audience and competitive environment. Then, we created a new logo featuring the tagline, “Realize your computing potential.” The design emphasizes the word “your” to communicate their customized approach to each of their clients’ computing needs.
An upgraded website design was next, furthering the professional, customer-focused tone that LV Tech wanted to promote.
Result: With their new brand, LV Tech positions themselves as a credible service provider that places a high value on customer service.
Acme Machine & Welding
Challenge: Using advanced technology and manufacturing processes, Acme Machine & Welding serves clients around the world. However, this very modern, ever-growing manufacturing plant had an old-fashioned corporate identity and website that no longer met its needs.
Solutions: For certain businesses, a homespun logo is perfect. For others, like Acme Machine & Welding, it is not the right positioning for global clients. Because the company was founded in the hometown of “Punxsutawney Phil,” they chose a logo that featured a groundhog drawn in comic-book style. Our BrandBuilding focused on a redesigned logo, replacing the groundhog with a graphical gear, updating the color palette and adding the year the company was founded—1946—to enhance credibility. As a circle, the new logo offers greater flexibility for use on company-branded products and advertising specialties.
The Acme Machine &Welding website was a static “brochure.” We recommended several upgrades that would allow the site to market the company and reinforce the brand while supporting operations. For example, the new site allows users to upload CAD drawings and process quotes online.
When we talk to clients about integrated marketing and selling, we mean looking at their entire business—including operations and the customer experience. Our customer solutions for Acme Machine & Welding included focusing their quoting process, internal communications and sales messaging.
Result: Acme Machine & Welding now has an online presence that looks current and functions as expected in a global, 24/7 environment. By implementing savvy Brand Building strategies and Integrated Marketing and Customer Solutions, this established business has the tools in place to position it for continued success.