Media Resources Case Study

Media Resources is Canada’s largest manufacturing company that specializes in sign installation, digital LED billboards, large format digital printing, and custom 3D fabrication. Their work can be seen throughout the city of Toronto and in other major Canadian cities, U.S.A. and South America. Their clients include Pattison Outdoor, CBS (now Outfront), McDonalds, Tim Hortons, Cadillac Fairview, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and more.

Rebranding and Increasing Sales

While working for Media Resources, Linda was their Marketing Manager and was responsible for developing their strategic marketing plan for 2013 and 2014. She helped increase their sales by 20% within one year. This effort was supported by the new development of an integrated marketing plan using digital marketing, rebranding of trade shows, and case study work with testimonials. All of which helped equip the sales team with powerful marketing tools to help their presentations and increase sales.

With the new marketing efforts, the company saw an increase in request for proposals and project bids in sign installation and LED manufacturing projects in North and South America. This included a bid that Linda put together with the executive team for the Fallsview Casino project that Media Resources won and recently completed construction on for a three-face digital LED display, a project worth over $2.5 million.

Research was performed on business development opportunities in North America to find that there needed to be a marketing budget increase in scoreboards specifically for sports, high school and college arenas. There was an opportunity to own a larger market share in this category because wasn’t yet a major player who owned it. This meant showing up at more athletic trade shows and strategically advertising in the most effective publications.

Trade Shows

Media Resources’ largest marketing investments are annual trade shows for digital LED and sports scoreboards. Linda was responsible for project managing all logistics and branding related to these shows. As well as working alongside with engineers for the custom building of the LED billboards. The show budgets ranged from $35,000 to $120,000. It was critical to maintain their brand integrity and increase awareness of their services though consistent marketing of the various platforms before, during and after the shows.

Trade shows can become quite costly especially for shipping and manufacturing large digital LED billboards, and since Media Resources had been in business for a number of years, they were qualified to apply for an export market development government funding for international trade shows. Through the successful application of a detailed proposal, they were granted $20,000.

Aside from project managing the shows, a wide range of marketing materials, including print advertising, digital campaigns, website and content development were part of Linda’s role as Marketing Manager. She also managed a contact list of over 12,000 email subscribers organized in segments to help track potential sale leads.

Challenge

• Increase sales by overcoming the recession. Clients’ marketing budgets were being cut creating fewer orders in large format printing for the company
• Social media and online advertising taking place of print media, which is their core business
• Prospects and current customers don’t have anything to remind them of Media Resources services because of the lack of consistent delivery of marketing communication tools. Visibility is not strong enough or established in the US and Canadian market

Strategy Plan

Results