Case Studies

When it Comes to Your Tech Stack, Sometimes Less is More

Ocreative Agency Case Study

Overhead shot of person sitting at a desk typing on their laptop.

Summary

Marketing agency Ocreative faced a dilemma familiar to many agencies — their clients were struggling under the weight of a clunky, disjointed tech stack. From the frustration of managing inefficient spreadsheets to track metrics, to juggling multiple disconnected platforms that provided siloed, unusable numbers, their clients were fed up and ready for a change. They needed a better way to track and manage data, and they looked to Ocreative for answers. Using SharpSpring's all-in-one marketing automation platform, Ocreative stepped in to help clients organize and consolidate their data so they could see for the first time which marketing and sales efforts were truly bringing in sales and proving real ROI for their businesses. Ocreative Chief Business Development Officer Matt Koeppel shared how his agency assisted clients to connect their external system with SharpSpring to generate leads and track each touchpoint of the customer buying journey through to the sale: "Because of the integrated CRM, you have sales and marketing now working on the same platform. Marketing needs to be able to identify their campaigns for attribution and sales needs to share their opportunity data. If you don't have those two pieces coming together, you're not going to see the full picture. Now our clients' marketing teams have the ability to provide tools for sales to use within the platform. And I think that's one of the greatest things ever for them."

Challenge

Ocreative's clients were:

Utilizing spreadsheets or multiple disconnected platforms to manage data from their marketing and sales efforts.

Missing data (or tracking incorrect data) to see the complete picture on their marketing campaign ROI and sales.

Not effectively aligning their marketing and sales team strategies.

Solution

Using SharpSpring's CRM and automation platform, Ocreative helped clients eliminate manual processes, digitalize offline data, and organize and consolidate digital data to track real ROI and revenue. "The initial goal was just to digitalize what they were working with offline to get it into a format where they could see it and actually filter it, query against it, and run reports off of it. Before, they were doing all kinds of things with spreadsheets and pivot tables and all that stuff that nobody wants to do. And so we were able to eliminate a lot of that painful manual process for our clients," said Koeppel.

Campaign

Tactic 1: Digitize Client Data A majority of Ocreative's clients were still using spreadsheets to track data. The agency knew digitizing that data would provide clients with a better, simpler view of the marketing and sales team efforts and remove risk of lost opportunities. Ocreative utilized SharpSpring to allow clients to efficiently run marketing and sales campaign reports and visibly track ROI across teams — eliminating missing or incorrect data between teams.

"Clients needed us to provide them with more usable, visible data," explained Koeppel. "Now, they can start to see the numbers. And I think within the next three to six months, those numbers are going to be scrutinized closely and used heavily in their next step planning and decision-making. It's really given them something they can now review, take back, and take action upon. Whereas before it was all just speculation and spreadsheets." - Matt Koeppel, Ocreative Chief Business Development Officer

Tactic 2: Consolidate Tech Stacks Ocreative's clients were using multiple tools and the data wasn't connecting to provide a full picture of how campaigns were performing. With missing and disconnected data, the teams couldn't see which marketing and sales efforts were effectively driving conversions and revenue. The missing data on how a lead or customer enters the funnel and converts to a sale left clients without a precise storyline to guide them in strategizing which touch points throughout the sales funnel needed improvements. Ocreative helped clients consolidate their tech stack using SharpSpring so they'd have a centralized database and the tools that were a good fit for the client's specific needs were integrated for best results. Now, Ocreative clients can segment their messaging to leads and customers to deliver the right personalized message at the perfect time.

"That was a game changer for us, really giving a proper tool that consolidates all this stuff together and eliminates silos is key. I mean, if you don't have to go to 12 systems to pull data together and then try to cobble them into a report, it's going to save time and headache, obviously," said Koeppel.

Tactic 3: Align the Marketing and Sales teams Many of Ocreative's clients were functioning with disconnected Marketing and Sales teams and disconnected objectives. Each team focused on its own data so measuring campaign success was difficult. Ocreative was able to provide a solution using SharpSpring's marketing and sales tools to allow clients to integrate with other systems to track the source of leads or generate leads. These days, their clients can see the full picture all in one place.

The Results

By digitizing data, consolidating tech stacks, and using SharpSpring's all-in-one marketing automation platform, Ocreative's clients now have a fuller, more clear view of their marketing and sales campaign efforts and ROI.