Listener Profile: Kelly Exeter from Swish Design

This is the first post in an irregular series of Small Business Big Marketing podcast listener profiles. We asked Kelly Exeter from Swish Design in Perth, a couple of poignant questions about here marketing activities and successes. What we didn’t expect, or request for that matter, was a testimonial for one of the services we provided Kelly last year.

Tell us about your biggest marketing success.

Our biggest marketing success story is our website. It has always been our best marketing tool but we felt it could work even harder for us … and we were right!

What made you consider this marketing method?

We already knew that our website did a good job but we felt we could get more out of it. We purchased a Spotlight podcast from the guys at Small Business Big Marketing and as part of that podcast, they critiqued our core message and also our website.

How did you implement it?

The Spotlight podcast highlighted two things:

1. First, we had to stop trying to appeal to everyone. We needed to identify who our most ideal client was and hone our core message for them
2. We then re-wrote all the site content to speak to and attract that ideal client
3. Finally we re-designed the website to incorporate the tweaks Tim and Luke suggested

What were the outcomes?

When I first started Swish Design, it was just me in a 4x4m office and my overheads were tiny. I worked mostly with brand new businesses who had limited budgets for design. Over the years Swish Design grew into a team of three designers plus myself. This significant increase in overheads meant an increase in our pricing and new businesses/start-ups generally couldn’t afford us any more – but we were still pitching our marketing to this cohort.

The Spotlight segment with Tim and Luke really clarified for us the fact that our ideal client was more the medium enterprise/established small business. After re-writing all our website content for this niche, we have consistently attracted new enquiries from this group. We also have an excellent conversion rate with new enquiries as our website does a great job of making the client feel comfortable with the people behind Swish Design before they even meet us.

Since making all these changes we have been able to increase our turnover to such a significant degree that I have been able to bring a manager in to run the business which frees me to up to work on the business rather than in the business.

We have never run a single advertisement or placed a single ad in the Yellow Pages in the six years of our business and we have our website to thank for this!

About Kelly

Kelly Exeter is the owner of Swish Design, Perth’s friendliest design team. Swish Design loves to work with established small and medium enterprises who realise how much beautiful and consistent design is worth to their business! You can find Swish Design on facebook and if you are a twitter addict, you can find Kelly here.