Sustainable Design Collective (SDC) is an architecture practice specialising in designing and building timber frame homes that are intrinsically sustainable and made to fit the character and personality of the people they house. We loved founder Donal Brown’s passion for environmentally friendly construction, and both our Catalyst team and sales and marketing consultants have worked alongside SDC since 2017 to help grow his family business.

The Challenge: SDC had a successful method of working with self-builders and converted nearly every enquiry they received about a substantial building project, but they didn’t have enough incoming enquiries. Following an initial consultancy project with our sales and marketing advisors, we had developed a clear idea of customer segmentation for the business. An AdWords campaign was helping to identify customers who fit these core target audiences, but the most successful adverts were only succeeding in attracting relatively low value clients. Donal was also too busy meeting clients and project managing to be involved in time-consuming sales and marketing activity. He asked for our help generating more targeted inbound leads and looking after potential customers from their enquiry through to their first face-to-face consultation.

Our Solution: We recommended using 12 hours of funded consultancy courtesy of the European Regional Development Fund for one of our Catalyst Team to set up a social advertising campaign, with ongoing support to help Donal manage his CRM system. Catalyst business executive Arthur Jones, a Masters graduate in Climate Change, Development and Policy from the University of Sussex, built the campaign using Facebook’s integrated Ad Manager. This approach enabled very specific targeting across Facebook and Instagram based around demographics, location, interests and behaviours. He set a small advertising budget of £100 per month, focused on acquiring potential customers’ contact details at the best value possible.

The Outcome: From launching the campaign in early March 2020, and spending just £3.50 each day, it reached more than 40,000 people in under three months, generating 154 new leads for the business at £1.87 per lead.

“Joseph and Eva were a great team, with a fantastic attitude and a wealth of knowledge and insight! The report was full of valuable recommendations that we are now implementing as part of our digital strategy.” – Habil Ibrahim, founder, Cajuu

What’s Next? The team is eager to continue working with Cajuu, this time on its funding and investment strategy as it plans to raise the finance for developing a range of new and innovative products in 2020/21.

Are you looking for insights into making your social media and content work harder for you? Or can we help with anything else, from market research to business models, investor readiness to bookkeeping? Get in touch here.

Sustainable Design Collective provide award-winning timber frame kit homes for passivhaus and low-carbon projects.