D Blackburn Contractors is an established building, roofing and landscaping firm in Lancashire, 25+ years in, a 30+ strong in-house team, and a brilliant reputation. What it did not have was marketing. We built the entire engine and we run it. Here is exactly what changed, with the real numbers.
Dan Blackburn had spent 25+ years building one of the Ribble Valley's most trusted building and landscaping firms, all in-house, no subcontractors. The reputation was there. The marketing was not.
A separate contractors site and landscaping site, neither performing, neither bringing in real work.
Enquiries mostly rang straight to Dan's mobile. Nothing was captured or tracked, and the contact list was, quite literally, empty.
With Dan flat out on site, enquiries went unanswered for weeks. Good work was lost simply because no one could get back in time.
This was never a talent problem. It was a system problem. Dan was trying to run sales, quoting and marketing out of his own head while running the jobs. The brief was simple: build the machine, connect it, and run it.
Most trade firms end up with a website person, a separate SEO person, a social agency and a lad who does the ads, none of them joined up. We replaced all of that. XGrowth is DBC's entire marketing department: strategy, website, CRM, SEO, content, email, social, video, paid ads, print and reporting, all under one roof and all pulling the same way.
And it went beyond marketing. Once the CRM and deal boards were live, we helped Dan bring a dedicated salesperson into the business to pick up every enquiry within 24 hours, where before, with Dan on the tools all day, leads could sit for weeks. One team who knows the business, one connected system, and one monthly report that shows exactly what is happening and what it is worth. A full marketing department, without the overhead of building one.
Two underperforming legacy sites merged and redirected into one brand-new HubSpot site: sitemap, personas, full copy, journeys, imagery, SEO keyword map and migration, design, build and training. Behind it, a full HubSpot CRM with two sales pipelines, a custom sales process and live sales and finance dashboards.
Call tracking on the phones, live chat and chatbots on the site, and Xero integrated, so every call, form and quote is captured in HubSpot and tied back to the marketing that created it.
On-page and technical SEO with a keyword map, 15 blog articles, local SEO, and a rebuilt Google Business Profile (services from 9 to around 95, review replies from 10% to 34%), plus digital PR in the local and trade press.
Monthly social campaigns moved to a video-first approach, a Customer Video Hub and a YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram ads with automated follow-up and remarketing, Google Ads and LinkedIn lead generation.
Four free downloads, a pricing and brochure download, a home-extension cost calculator and a resources hub, all capturing leads into HubSpot, then 47 email campaigns, nurture and re-engagement across the database.
A qualifying enquiry front door so the team spends time on the right jobs, and a structured quote-closure and follow-up process to stop quotes going cold.
A full brand and logo refresh with a new design system, carried through 1,000 printed brochures, business cards, van graphics, site A-boards and QR-code tracking.
Live dashboards and a plain-English monthly report, so Dan always knows what is working and what it is worth.
When we started, the customer database was empty. This is the real growth, month by month, straight from the HubSpot CRM we built.
And it is not just volume. Every phone call, form and quote now tracks back to the marketing that created it, with millions of pounds of deals being nurtured in the pipeline at any one time. For the first time, Dan can see what works and put money behind it.
Not stock images. These are Dan's real, live tools, the ones we built and run every day.
"When I met Mark I had a great team and a good name, but two websites that did nothing, no system, and no idea where my work was really coming from. Half my leads were sitting unanswered because I was flat out on site. XGrowth built the lot and they run it for me, and they helped me get someone in to answer every enquiry within a day. I've gone from nothing to over 3,000 customers on the system, the phone hasn't stopped, and my turnover has roughly tripled in a year. It's like having a full marketing department without carrying one. Best decision I've made for the business."
If you are brilliant at what you do but your marketing is held together with string, this is exactly what we fix. We build it, connect it, and run it, so you can get on with the work.