Pugh & Tiller PR’s Megan Bozman spoke with Sarah Berkowski, VP of Marketing, Tradify, about Tradify’s impressive efforts to support their customers while improving internal marketing operations during the pandemic.
Sarah Berkowski, VP of Marketing, Tradify
“Tradify is job management software that helps independent contractors build better lives and businesses. The SaaS app helps them to create quotes, schedule jobs, generate invoices, record notes, manage contacts, timesheets, and more. Many of Tradify’s customers are small trade businesses, usually going out to their clients’ homes and businesses, and most were at least temporarily impacted by COVID, particularly during lock downs.
Moving Quickly to Help Customers and Prospects
In addition to our primary markets of New Zealand, Australia, and the UK, Tradify also has customers in numerous countries all throughout the world. When the pandemic first hit, we immediately began tracking what was going on where for our customers. This was particularly important, since the timing of outbreaks and lockdowns was staggered and there were different restrictions by country, so our customers were impacted in different ways and at different times.
Tradify worked to quickly figure out how we could help customers and prospects. In a matter of days, we built a COVID portal, “Safe and Sound,” dedicated to the ongoing safety of tradespeople and their businesses. Visitors can get country-specific info on the current status in key markets including current restrictions, and their impact on trade businesses along with guidelines around health and safety protocols. The portal also includes mental health resources with recommendations to help trade business owners manage COVID-19 induced stress.
Tradify COVID portal
Helping Users with Contact Tracing
Our product team reached out to Tradify customers so that we could understand exactly what impact COVID-19 was having on their business, new challenges they were now dealing with and we then explored how the Tradify app could help address some of these new challenges and requirements. Our product team was able to turn around new features very quickly. Tradify can already track staff locations and schedules, so we were able to make it easy for our customers to generate contact tracing reports. If any member of staff has been exposed to someone who tests positive, Tradify customers can now easily determine with whom they’ve been in contact at work in order to contain the spread. Without contact tracing, affected businesses would potentially have to shut down entirely for days or weeks. The Tradify contact tracing functionality can make a big difference to businesses.
Tradify was there for our customers. We offered support, new functionality, and payment relief for those who needed it. We’re very flexible and supportive, and our customers love us for that.
Importance of Robust Marketing Analytics
Another thing we did was to place even more emphasis than usual on really clear marketing analytics and metrics. We had a strong start – using internally built custom reports and Hubspot, we were already tracking the source of software free trials, the cost, and conversion rate. Our analytics enable us to track pretty much in real time what happens to conversion rates, specifically which trials convert to paid accounts and which don’t due to external forces like country-specific lockdowns. These capabilities allowed us to make the right marketing adjustments quickly. For example, we saw which channels were continuing to perform in which regions, and where we needed to temporarily adjust our spend.
While that info is always important, it’s been particularly beneficial during COVID. If we hadn’t had the ability to track trials on a daily basis down to the country and channel level, we wouldn’t have seen that the impact was greater in New Zealand and the UK versus Australia. This enabled us to make quick adjustments to the levels and mix of our marketing spend.
A Push to Improve Marketing & Heighten Localization
COVID enabled us to test the relevance of our value proposition and it has driven a heightened need for relevance. As we look at what we did, COVID forced us to be better marketers and build a better brand relationship. We should always have an awareness of what’s going on with customers, their circumstances and differentiate our approach based on different segments and regions. Like analytics, this is something you should really always be doing, but it’s even more important now.
Wisely Choosing What to Communicate
Our value proposition is that we help trade professionals get their lives back, since they no longer need to spend their weekends and evenings doing admin work. Previously, the images we used to convey this message included images of people hugging each other or going on holiday, but no one is going to a tropical island for a while now, so some of these needed to be modified.
As part of building a better brand relationship, it’s important to be wise about what you choose to communicate and when. It’s important to double check that your value prop is relevant considering what people are going through. We found that, in some cases, people had more time to work on their businesses while in lock down. It can be difficult to dedicate time to look at business improvements while busy with day to day operations. Because some trade businesses had a bit more time on their hands, we extended product trials, giving more time for evaluations, and provided marketing toolkits so business owners could spend time making sure their businesses were ready for the post-lock down boom we’re seeing in some countries.
Insights into Consumer Spending
Since Tradify is a SaaS app, we have insights into our users’ volume of quotes, jobs, and invoices. We saw that decreased demand was mirrored by the usage trends in the app. This has helped us maintain a pulse on what’s going on in our key markets.
As we’re coming out of lockdown in most countries, we’re again looking at what has changed for our customers. Some small businesses won’t survive, but many trade businesses have bounced right back to pre-COVID work volumes. And there are conflicts in terms of consumer spending. For example, we’re trying to understand the broader recessionary impact, and the flow on impact of job losses for our customers’ customers. But on the flipside, people are not currently spending money on international vacations. As a result, we’re seeing some increases in renovation and remodeling spend levels, perhaps to add home offices, or build an outdoor oasis at home which is increasing demand for trade businesses. Long may that continue!
Sarah Berkowski
Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Sarah is the Vice President of Marketing at Tradify, a global provider of job management software for trade businesses. Sarah leads the global sales and marketing efforts at Tradify. She has extensive experience developing and implementing business-to-business sales and marketing plans that grow revenue and build brand equity and has held a number of senior sales and marketing roles in New Zealand and Canada across telecommunications, marketing and software industries.
