"We are very impressed with TsuluWerks ability to understand our business needs and translate it into an effective marketing strategy."

— Brooke Best, Apex Facility Resources

Simplification and focus: New marketing plan poises Seattle company for reaching new markets, new growth

• Company: Apex Facility Resources
• Location: Seattle, Washington
• Industry: Sustainable Office Solutions Provider (B2B)
• Annual revenue: Confidential
• Number of employees: 34

The Challenge

Apex Facility Resources, a sustainable office solutions provider in Seattle, was a young business that was undergoing tremendous growth and was increasingly aware of its need for a focused marketing plan and compelling sales materials.

Apex hired TsuluWerks to strengthen the Apex brand, consolidate its message, clearly define its service areas, and integrate its marketing and sales efforts.

The Strategy

The first project we tackled for Apex involved designing a series of ads for Washington CEO magazine. During the content development, design and production stages, Apex leadership became more strategically focused and aware of how different they were from their competition. On our end, we realized that the Apex messages, services and processes deserved focus and simplification. It’s tough to effectively sell without having integrated marketing plan with sales kit, web site, and customer relationship management (CRM) system in place.

At that point, TsuluWerks and Apex took a step back to create a full strategic marketing plan. We analyzed existing marketing efforts and offered new incentives. We did a market analysis and made suggestions on marketing activities for 2008. We created the tagline “Integrating people, places and products to deliver workplaces that work for you” to focus on the high level of customization and the impressive list of manufacturers the company works with to create unique and effective office solutions.

We then worked closely with Apex to bring together some of the pieces needed to carry out that plan. These included:

1. Writing key brand messages and building a message deck — a series of flash cards for sales teams that allows them to quickly address key customer concerns, objections and questions — to help the sales staff carry those messages to target audiences
2. Clarifying the company’s visual brand by standardizing colors, typefaces and graphics and applying those standards to letterhead, business cards, direct mail, web site and sales templates
3. Creating an ad campaign that highlight Apex’s offerings in sustainable office solutions, including illustrating a cartoon character for ad campaigns and other audience-specific promotions
4. Crafting a tri-fold brochure for one of the target audiences that talks about Apex services and how effectively they solve certain client challenges

The Result

TsuluWerks took what had been a somewhat fragmented marketing effort and focused it with a new marketing plan with clear target markets, and strategies for reaching those targets, identified. Marketing and sales processes, messages and service areas were simplified. And the best structure for handling CRM was proposed.

Other strategies and tactics that TsuluWerks has proposed to Apex to further solidify its market presence and improve performance include redesigning its web site, further segmenting of target audiences, and establishing a return on investments system to measure marketing and sales performance.

Named to Inc. magazine’s 2007 List of America’s 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in 2007, Apex has the marketing plan and tools it needs to manage and nurture its continued growth.

See an example project

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