New Version Kft. with nearly two decades of experience, offers digital solutions to facility management challenges. In the meanwhile they expanded their activities to include design and general construction, thus covering the entire real estate life cycle.
Our journey began in December 2021, when we were entrusted with the task to build their entire online presence. Taking on this project in itself was an exciting professional challenge. Due to the fact that they operate in an industry where most customers are acquired through referrals, the stakes were even higher. The first step of the project was the creation of the New Version website, then using it as the foundation, we consciously built the professional blog, LinkedIn communication, and our social selling and PPC activities.
On the occasion of the anniversary of our cooperation, we recently held a professional discussion with the project managers of the company. During this, the main challenges of their sector were discussed, as well as what motivated them when they – in an innovative way – headed towards online sales. Borbála Magyar, project manager of the facility management department, and Ádám Kovács, partner and project manager of design and general construction shared what changes have taken place in the life of the company since their online presence.
Based on this conversation, we evaluated the achieved results, which we are now proud to present to you.
New Version – a comprehensive solution for the entire real estate life cycle
New Version’s team of architects, mechanics, IT, and process analysis specialists has been providing its customers with comprehensive and customized facility management support services for more than two decades. In addition to their innovative digital facility management solution, they also operate a full-scale design and general construction business. And all this without online marketing and sales, until the end of last year, when our collaboration started.
Challenges in the Hungarian Facility Management industry
Two years ago, we thought that the main goal of the sector was to solve the health and disinfection challenges caused by COVID. Creating neutral offices, home offices and hybrid office systems seemed to be the major difficulty. However, the circumstances changed very quickly, and today the focus is on the topic of conscious energy use. The biggest challenge for facility managers today is finding the right tools and taking measures to reduce and optimize energy consumption.
We had to face specific challenges in the Hungarian market since the role of facility management in the organizational strategy of local companies has not yet reached its full potential.
All in all, it can be said that we are lagging behind Western Europe in terms of the importance of digital facility management in the development of a company’s organizational strategy. The challenges generated by COVID in 2020 changed this situation somewhat, and the sector received significantly more attention in the last 2 – 3 years – we learned from Bori, the project manager of the FM branch.
The main challenges of the design and general construction sector
We were told by Ádám, that design and general construction can be seen as a unit since the two are closely connected and build on each other. Especially in the case of greenfield investments.
Based on this, the biggest challenges of the industry: (without deepening into professional details)
- Ensuring customer satisfaction;
- Applicable use of construction materials;
- Coordination of appropriate professionals at a good pace,
- Keeping deadlines,
- Financial awareness and cost optimization, which does not let the project slip away either in time or financially.
Building online presence and marketing from scratch
New Version operates in industries that are still characterized by customer acquisition through direct referrals. That is why it was a big step for the company to open up toward innovative sales by building an online presence and marketing.
The project managers of both projects agreed that a significant part of sales activity has been transferred to the online space.
“Who is not present online, is not present at all.”
According to them, ignoring this fact is narrow-mindedness, which ultimately results in a competitive disadvantage for the organization. In addition, they find those managers or professionals discredited, who advertise themselves as experts without presenting authentic and relevant professional content to their clientele on professional online channels.
“Increasing our market presence, moving sales online, and proving our professional credibility were our 3 main motivations when we started working with Marketing Astro.”
How did we start the project?
The first step of the work – after the needs assessment – was to help New Version’s professionals systematize their activities for each business sector. This was followed by the layout proposal of the website, taking into account functional, logical, and UX aspects. The next steps were the creation of the web design in parallel with an SEO-friendly copy. Finally, we assembled the pieces of the website and polished it.
During the process, we held weekly status meetings with New Version to work efficiently and quickly. The entire project took us 2 months.
“You played a very big role in the website’s completion for all three sectors of business. With your help, we were able to systematize our activities and display them on our website. That was a significant added value on your part.”
Customer needs and expectations
New Version’s online presence was almost zero before we started working together. Their main expectation – in addition to creating an online presence and dressing it up in appropriate clothing, as well as filling it with authentic professional content – was to make their sales activities and processes more efficient. The latter, of course, with background support provided by them.
During the process, a new expectation emerged: building the New Version brand and introducing it to the market. As a first step, we created and standardized the company’s style guide.
Displaying content on their online channels that address real industry problems and provide effective solutions was important for New Version. Following our suggestion, we started to write for them a professional blog on their website about relevant content. With the launch of the blog, client and reader education also became a motivation for the company.
Based on the recent report, it can be seen how well the website of New Version, which is not quite one year old, is performing. It has reached the number of visits to the websites of local competitors that have been operating for several years now.
| Company name | Organic traffic (Semrush) | Backlink number | Is there an updated blog? | DR |
| New Version | 87 | 310 | Yes | 8 |
| Kermann BIM | 5 | 418 | Repository of knowledge, no blog | 8 |
| ArchiFM | 16 | 23300 | Videos, modules, whitepapers, documents, monthly update | 18 |
| Plandoc | 745 | 196 | No | 7 |
| Ocuplan | 90 | 476 | No, there is only newsletter | 9 |
| Opteamus | 39 | 236 | Updated in 2020 last | 14 |
| Smartmaster | 0 | 316 | No | 29 |
| Planradar | 68482 (HU 1300) | 109900 | Yes, it is updated 1-2 times a month | 62 |
| Fmsystems | 6771 (HU 29) | 12500 | Yes, it is updated 1-2 times a month | 55 |
Results achieved with conscious (SEO-friendly) blog activity
“You convinced us that we have something to say to the market.”
The blog activity was preceded by comprehensive keyword research, in which we identified the most relevant keywords related to the facility management software. After that, we constantly adjusted the processed topics to current events, such as general design.
Google Search Console
The website’s organic traffic increased from the initial 0 to 99 per month. The Google Search Console account went live shortly after the launch of the website, since then it was able to measure 774 organic clicks on the page, but it reached a lot more people: it had a total of 9,540 impressions on Google. In the first year, with the consciously structured blog activity, we aimed to reach as many people as possible on the website. Besides, our goal was to strengthen the New Version brand and its awareness in accordance with the client’s request.
List of TOP25 best-performing keywords (total clicks, total impressions, click-through rate, and average position in SERP)
New Version’s Google Analytics account has been activated in February 2022. Based on its data the second largest source of traffic for the website after Google Ads is the Google organic channel.
Thanks to our Guest Post activity, we achieved 429 backlinks and 25 referring domains from scratch in the past year.
The quality of backlinks can be seen in the figure below:
The website currently has DA (domain authority) 13 according to Semrush, and DR 9 according to Ahrefs, which has also increased from scratch. These results are outstanding for a website that is less than a year old, considering how narrow a market we are examining.
The quality of a given website also affects the ranking. Semrush’s quality score is based on the number of errors and warnings found on the site, as well as their uniqueness. A high score means a user-friendly website with few problems and proper optimization for search engines. As shown in the figure below, this value is 88% for New Version. An interesting fact is that we have clients whose websites were not created by us and received a score of around 50-60% during the inspection. This also clearly shows how important it is to optimize a website in terms of SEO from the very beginning.
Web page loading time in 3 seconds is considered acceptable. As shown in the figure below, the website created by us for New Version loads in 0.34 seconds. This is important for two reasons: on one hand, because visitors don’t like to wait long seconds for a website to load, they prefer to find another one instead. In addition to the user experience, Google also takes into account the loading speed of the page when ranking – the faster, the better.
Positive effects of online marketing
During our conversation, the project managers of New Version shared their experiences gained during the past year through their active online presence and the activities carried out by Astro.
Regarding the facility management business, we also defined an educational direction at the beginning of the cooperation. Consciously building on this pillar, we presented exactly what this service means and how it provides a solution to today’s challenges. Based on New Version’s experience, many organizations would need facility management support, but they are not aware that the service provided by them is the solution they are looking for. A professional blog provides the perfect platform to achieve these educational goals.
Almost every day since the launch of the website, they have received inquiries about their design-execution service from interested parties.
A recognized professional newspaper published an article on their website, in which Bori gave an interview as an expert on the topic of the digital support of facility management. The magazine’s journalist found New Version on the web, which is a significant step for a company that had virtually no online presence a year ago.
“What you did on Linkedin, with the PPC campaigns, with the blog, and how you coordinated them is brilliant. Basically, everything is possible and can be solved with online marketing.”
The results of our social selling activity
Bori, the project manager of the facility management sector, was happy to share her positive experiences with our LinkedIn social selling activity. In fact, she also highlighted that our ultra-efficient social selling activity indicated the need for a sales support employee to handle their incoming leads.
“Your marketing activity is not a tangible service. Yet it provides a lot of added value that reinforces our professional credibility and supports and strengthens the New Version brand from several sides so that one day its goal can be attained. Without these marketing activities, our aim could never be reached.”
The social selling activity started with 2 avatars. We continuously measured the performance of the campaigns and refined their textual content and target groups in order to achieve the highest possible number of leads. Currently, there are 4 active avatars on LinkedIn, covering all of New Version’s services: design, general construction, and facility management digital support.
A total of 8490 connection requests were sent and almost 10,000 profiles were visited by the avatars up till now. So far, a total of 1,475 people have accepted our invitations.
As the avatars became stronger, the number of site visitors increased. This was due to the Page Invite campaign, and the fact that we inserted a link to the subpage of the business branch at the end of the messages. As a result of our social selling activity – up to the time of writing this article -, we have handed over 45 leads to New Version’s FM department.
The figures below show the results achieved with our 2 most active avatars.
Zsolt
Connections sent during the activity and their acceptance rate
The ratio of sent messages and responses to them (there are 4-5 messages in a campaign and sometimes only the last one is answered)
Gábor
Connections sent during the activity and their acceptance rate
The ratio of sent messages and responses to them (a campaign consists of 4-5 messages and sometimes only the last one is answered)
The results of our LinkedIn communication activities
We started the LinkedIn communication activity from scratch in February 2022 with posting about the company’s activities.This was followed by sharing the new blog articles, as well as polls (voting).
The posts were written about the following topics:
- Facility management
- Investment
- General design
- Energy management
- BIM modeling (FM software solution)
Since the start of the activity, we have gained 608 followers for New Version, and our posts have received 673 reactions and 24 reposts. We achieved 420 impressions right away with the first introductory post.
The results of our PPC activity
Ádám, the project manager of the design and construction department, said that the PPC campaigns launched specifically for the design and general construction services were a success.
He highlighted the inquiry received from the Mercedes factory in Kecskemét, Hungary, which is seen as a resounding success. The factory found New Version thanks to one of the PPC campaigns we launched. They asked them – following the on-site visit – to make an offer for the construction and furnishing of a nearly 500 square meter steel gallery.
New Version’s proposal was favorably evaluated, so they are currently waiting for the parent company’s approval to start the work. This is considered a significant success and they are confident about receiving more business opportunities like this in the future.
“I think that the growth and effectiveness of our online activity can be conclusively measured in these inquiries.”
The main focus of our PPC activity in this project is advertising New Version’s design and general construction services on Google for obtaining leads. Due to the ad many people initiated calls and filled out the form on the website, this was considered a lead acquisition.
This was their first advertising campaign, and a significant part of the competition had not previously advertised for the selected keywords, which made the task highly challenging. For this reason, it was uncertain whether we could reach corporate decision-makers or private individuals interested in larger projects with our search ads.
Due to the specifics of the industry, important questions arose: Do Google ads matter at all in the search for large external partner companies like New Version? Or is it decided solely on the basis of the network of contacts with whom the clients negotiate in connection with a given project work?
New Version – conversions
The positive results of the PPC campaign were already visible during the first month. It made us clear that corporate decision-makers also use Google when they need an external partner for their building design and construction and real estate development projects.
Our PPC campaigns for general design and general construction services appeared at the top of the search results list for related terms and generated a total of 18 inquiries for New Version between August 1st and October 31st, 2022.
The above-mentioned Mercedes factory was among these inquiries. Besides we also managed to direct several potential clients to New Version that are planning large-scale projects.
New Version – click
Cue
Throughout our work with New Version, we carved out our own way in the mostly unexplored field of facility management consulting. The term itself is full of stereotypes in Hungary since many people identify facility management with cleaning and maintenance services. This was one of the main challenges we had to come through as we designed and built the company’s marketing communication and strategy. In addition, it is not a physical product or software, but a complex support service, in a market where neither the BIM model nor FM is treated as it should be.
The joint work started in a time of crisis, which was unfortunate considering how cautious companies were about any kind of investments, including IT systems. Nowadays, almost all companies are waiting out and are not willing to invest, which of course significantly limits New Version’s sales opportunities. This is a controversial situation since due to the current challenging economic conditions and the energy crisis, the digital support of facility management would be highly beneficial for companies.
We are proud to meet our customer’s expectations and support their company’s growth regardless of the challenging economic and business situation.
“The Astro team does a great job overall. In addition to your patience and flexibility when working together, you also demonstrated great problem-solving skills that we greatly appreciate. Thank you on behalf of the entire company.”
