Hawes Construction Group

About the client

Hawes Construction Group is a respected and fully accredited family-run construction firm, offering commercial and residential building services throughout Sussex and its surrounding borders.

Our client, Sarra Hawes, co-director of Hawes Construction Group, had recently been appointed Chairperson of the Constructing Excellence Sussex Group.

Overview

The objectives of this work are:

• To attract new members to the group
• To build relationships with existing members of the group
• By extension, to build her own network with the aim of generating new business for Hawes Construction Group.

The success of this campaign to date has increased dramatically as the engagement has built over time. There were at least 16 qualified prospects who requested a meeting or conversation with Sarra.

How we helped

LinkedIn prospecting for the construction sector

Using our LinkedIn Prospector service, our initial work consisted of a targeted business development and LinkedIn prospecting campaign in which we connected manually on Sarra’s behalf to a range of relevant contacts, including:

• Existing members of the Constructing Excellence Sussex club
• Prospective members of the club
• Identified people who Sarra had met or heard of and would like to build a relationship with
• Local architects, structural engineers, and surveyors

Optimising LinkedIn for business growth

First, we undertook desk research to create a spreadsheet of highly targeted potential contacts to target for business development. We then sent connection requests manually and started conversations to build relationships. This included regular meetings with Sarra to craft tailored follow-up messages and arrange meetings with qualified prospects.

Prior to starting this work, we optimised Sarra’s LinkedIn profile, including a new banner and ‘About’ section. Optimising your personal LinkedIn profile forms a particularly important part of ensuring the best possible success as part of the campaign itself, and representing your professional image in the best possible way, while optimising your profile’s ranking in the search algorithm.

Results of the LinkedIn Prospector campaign

The result of this work was that Sarra had regular meetings with new prospects and contacts and raised the profile of both Constructing Excellence Sussex and Hawes Construction Group.

Once the initial connection campaign had been completed, we then began an automated business development campaign. This involved using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify the target market segment, and then sending connection requests on an automated basis to construction and engineering professionals in Sussex and the surrounding areas. This has been very successful and has generated lots of interest in Constructing Excellence, as well as regular meetings.

Increasing connections and engagement in the construction industry

In the first two months of the automated campaign, the results were as follows:

Measure	Result
Opening connection level	2,018
New connection requests	665
Connections accepted	261
Connection rate	39.25%
Profile views	561
Best post views of the month	3,749
Closing connection level	2,279

In the LinkedIn Prospector Programme, any connection rate above 25% is considered to be very good.

Additional marketing support

Over the course of the project, we were asked to take on extra marketing work for the company more broadly, including:

• Posting content on LinkedIn three times per week
• Writing case studies and other copy for the website
• Creating graphics for the Constructing Excellence Sussex Club
• Supporting Sarra for magazine interviews and newspaper articles
• Assisting in promoting events for local women in construction
• Writing blogs for the Hawes website
• Completing an SEO report for the Hawes website

Enhancing online presence through content

The content creation and publication on LinkedIn has been very successful in raising the profile of Hawes Construction Group, as evidenced by the growth in impressions over the past year. There have also been a number of very successful posts which have received a large number of impressions and engagements.

Our work is ongoing, and we are continuing to see a steady increase in engagement, which is very encouraging.

In the client’s words

I have always been very wary of cold calling potential clients, I don’t like a hard sell. With Sharon and Jessica’s help via LinkedIn, I have built up a substantial following (targeted in areas and professions that I wanted to pursue) and now have the confidence myself to start conversations and also actively target people myself. Since working with Brolly Marketing, I have about 2 meetings a week with qualified leads, all as a result of the work utilising the LinkedIn Prospector Programme.

Last week we actually had a potential client contact us via one of our posts directly to ask if we would price some work for them. I now move in a bigger networking circle, and I am constantly being told by people I meet that they see “I am very active on LinkedIn” and “we must be busy” and “we didn’t realise you did that” and also “can we catch up over a coffee soon?”

My own confidence has grown exponentially since working with Sharon and Jessica as they nurture me and they know my pain when I am busy and take the initiative, which then encourages me to keep going as it is hard when you are running a business to take a step back and keep the content coming.

Sarra Hawes, Director, Hawes Construction Group