Blind Guys is a household name, a supplier of quality blinds, awnings, shutters, security screens and more.
They have over 25 franchises across South Africa, each owned and operated independently,
which presented a unique and exciting challenge to our team, across the entirety of our strategy for them.
The Objective:
1. Increased Brand Awareness Month-on-Month
2. Increased lead generation
3. Increase online presence and visitors.
Strategy & Approach:
As the website rebuild was seen as an essential cornerstone of the strategy and its objectives, we looked at it
as the foundation for all of our efforts to follow. This meant that it needed to perform admirably, be highly
visible on search engines, create a positive customer experience, and drive visitors to build trust with the
brand while interacting with its services.
Implementation & Execution
The first step was to collate the various channels and websites that Blind Guys were using, in many cases there were smaller websites that had gone abandoned in the past or significant errors on the official pages. These needed to be gathered, identified, and worked into a strategy that benefitted all the franchisees at once.
We worked closely with each franchise to ensure that they were correctly represented in terms of CI while still maintaining uniformity with the main branch. This balance of uniformity and recognisability was a difficult set of plates to balance, but was by no means the biggest challenge we faced.
An incredibly strict timeline, whereby we had to onboard, audit, strategise for, and develop for each and every franchise in less than a month, tested our mettle, but we came out on top.
Each franchise was given their own ‘mini-website’ under the umbrella of the Blind Guys domain, each distinct, targetted to their specific areas, and the ideal foundation for other channels in the strategy, while also setting up foundation for future developments whenever new franchisees come into the fold.
Everything from brand CI and User-Journey, right through to the careful implementation of SEO was painstakingly and methodically
to ensure we had a solid foundation to build on.
Below are examples of the main site, and some of the franchisee subdomains:
This was done for the main site, as well as for subdomains for 22 franchises initially. As time has gone on, and new franchisees have joined the group, this number has increased.
Results
The results of the website’s redevelopment and segmenting franchises into their own subdomains, significantly enhanced all areas of the strategy. The cost and effectiveness of ads have improved substantially, brand recognition has increased, leads for all franchises have significantly improved in quality and quantity, and the websites themselves have generated plenty of visitors, lead submissions, calls, and emails.
Here are some examples of the amount of visitors these mini sites generated between their launch, and the five months following their launch:
Testimonials & Feedback
By and large, each of the Blind Guys franchisees have been happy with the results of the website performance.
The real impact has come from the effect it had on the quality of ads, and their cost. By enhancing the quality of
the website substantially, and creating subdomains instead of links for each Franchise, we have seen all areas of
the marketing strategy significantly improve.
Looking for Results like These?
Results like these come from hard work, experimentation, and an understanding of works for our clients’ industries. If you’re looking for industry-leading website development and SEO services, get in touch with a representative from ATKASA today.