Mirage Reports Sales Increase in 2013

Mirage Machines, an Acteon company, received a significant uplift in sales last year due to ongoing targeted online lead generation campaigns.

Specialist engineering company Mirage, based in Derby U.K., supply high spec on-site machines to companies around the world, specializing in pipe maintenance and hot tapping equipment for the oil and gas industry.

Mirage launched a new website in early 2013 and sought to capitalize on a long standing historical trend of traffic closely correlating with sales. As such, the business placed an emphasis on building upon their digital presence in order to stimulate further sales growth, “This led to researching a systematic solution to make the most of our online opportunities, to generate quality leads and drive sales rather than just increase traffic,” said Esther Akers, Marketing Manager.

“We wanted something to streamline all our activity and manage it in one place. This project was going to sit at the core of our marketing and needed to link seamlessly with our wider work scope.”

“With all this pulled together we started looking for a specialist partner to make it happen. With Katapult having already supported us with our brand refresh in 2012, we were interested to see what they could offer.”

Marketing partner Katapult helped Mirage review who they were talking to through their online channels and what their potential customers were looking for. “Understanding their buyers, their interests and their buying process was key to setting the strategy for their inbound marketing campaign, to increase organic search traffic and on-page conversions. Once we’d developed buyer personas to understand customer needs, we could then optimize landing pages to directly address these needs” said Martin Broadhurst, Katapult’s Digital Marketing Manager.

Esther said, “We completed our initial three- month trial with Katapult and saw some great results even within this short timescale”

“The project improved the visibility of our brand online and drove engagement with our specified audiences while offering a cohesive strategy for online marketing. It leads people through a structured process of engagement and contact.”

With the aid of marketing automation software, the inbound marketing process has enabled Mirage to identify leads at all stages of the buyer decision making process and find the most appropriate and effective way of marketing content to their audiences at each stage of the journey. This has led to a more effective partnership between their Sales & Marketing teams, and made marketing more accountable for generating sales-ready leads and ROI.

In the initial three-month period, the Mirage website has seen a 33% increase in weekly organic search traffic, with referral traffic increasing by 25%. Page views have increased by 49% and leads generated through the website have increased by 200%.