Spitfire Inbound made it through the second round of the Impact awards with our work on Suzuki’s inbound marketing.
As a small, South African marketing agency, just over a year old, we didn’t expect to make it through one of the largest international inbound marketing competitions.
The Impact Awards are run by international giant, HubSpot, and we made it through the second round, competing against 3400 global agency partners. These awards, according to HubSpot, “celebrate our global agency partners that have demonstrated exceptional growth with inbound marketing over the past year.” Winners of 2017 are awarded in two rounds across five categories: Sales Enablement, Integrations Innovation, Inbound Growth Story, Website Design and Graphic Design.
Says Spitfire Inbound MD, Darren Leishman, “What I really value most is the journey we’ve been on with Penquin [our sister marketing agency] and Suzuki. It’s been a fully integrated process that all parties have benefited from, from learnings to experience, and yes, financially too.”
Spitfire Inbound became a finalist in the Inbound Growth Story category - a prize awarded for the agency that has success by creating a client’s rapid growth with inbound marketing.
The client with incredible inbound success is Suzuki South Africa, who Spitfire Inbound worked with in collaboration with integrated marketing agency Penquin. In June 2017 Suzuki sales were 21.3% up year on year when the passenger vehicle market declined by 2.3% over the same period. Read our full case study here.
From December 2016 to June 2017, we increased their website traffic by 300% and saw more than a 50% increase in contacts. Once we started an integrated inbound marketing strategy, digital leads exceeded our twice revised stretch goal by a massive 123%, and customers attributed to web and content leads increased to 128% of the stretch goal.
“Spitfire Inbound integrates inbound into every aspect of their business, marketing, and mission, and are a true testament to their success,” says David McNeil,VP Global Partner Program and Strategy at HubSpot, Inc., “Since day one as a HubSpot Partner, their agency has been creating valuable, seamless interactions for their leads, prospects, and customers. Agencies everywhere can learn from their innovative tactics and impressive growth."
Says Darren, “We really value the trust of Suzuki in us, and the marketing manager of Suzuki South Africa keeping us accountable for what we’ve committed to. For me, the award is validation for the results we’ve delivered. It’s an award not for an awards sake, it’s proving the work we’ve done has been effective.”
Watch out for Spitfire Inbound potentially becoming the winners of the Annual International Impact Awards Grand Prize, awarded during HubSpot’s annual INBOUND event in September 2017.
Says HubSpot, “[Impact Award Winners are committed to] transforming marketing with personalisation and context, and have been instrumental in changing the way businesses attract, engage, and delight their customers.”
Follow our blog for live coverage of INBOUND17, and maybe even seeing us win the big prize!
Featured image: Bring on the flowers! (Samantha Steele)