More than double the enquiries on our own media. A partner that can try and learn alongside us.

FIND Inc. works in home renovation and real estate. Feeling a problem with enquiries from its own channels, the company began work with us in September 2020.

We asked Mr Tomita, senior managing director, about the digital marketing problems a renovation company faces and how the work with NowVillage began.

Struggling to control the volume of web enquiries

First, could you tell us your role and team?

I am Tomita, senior managing director and executive general manager of corporate planning at FIND Inc. I am responsible for corporate planning, marketing and the corporate functions.

What is the goal for your department?

First, to hit the annual order target. The KPI is the number of enquiries from each source. Other measures include site visits, visit rate, close rate and average value. Because each channel is judged differently, we optimise for each measure.

Our medium-term direction is to increase the share of customers who come through our own channels. At present we depend to some extent on other companies’ platforms, so we recognise the need to grow the volume from our own.

What marketing were you doing before you asked us?

We had done one-off landing pages and web advertising, but the results were not what we hoped. The budget itself was not large, and the question became when to cut our losses rather than wait for the advertising to work. That may be a common story at companies that cannot commit to digital marketing.

Enquiries from magazines and portals came in reasonable numbers, but the yield was poor; we spent a great deal of effort on each one and still rarely closed.

Digital marketing is not just a matter of building a landing page; you need to work on the paths through the site, SEO, social media, all of it. At the time we did ask specialists in landing pages and in advertising management, but the lack of anyone we could consult about digital marketing as a whole was the source of our trouble.

It sounds as though you had already done a fair amount of digital marketing before working with us. Were you conscious of problems on the web even then?

Yes. We reposted blog articles we had written and put them up as columns on our own site, and started social media, but with no clear goals it was a case of let us just publish something. With no know-how on choosing SEO keywords, we were simply getting through volume.

On the web, I wanted to reach a state where spend this much on advertising and you get roughly this many enquiries, so the volume could be controlled like a tap. Depending too much on other companies’ platforms for placement leaves you unable to respond flexibly, and in our case too many enquiries also risks our people not keeping up, so I felt we had to move to a structure led by our own channels.

A relationship where we can try and learn from the same side

How did you come to know us?

It started with a conversation with a company president I know, who asked whether we had problems around web marketing. He said there was someone he wanted to introduce and asked if I would like to hear them out, so I said please do. That is how Mr Imamura, NowVillage’s representative, came to see us.

We talked then about our problems with acquisition and our plans. When I said I wanted to build up web marketing know-how within the company, he said in that case we can help.

Why did you choose us?

In conversation our views lined up. Talking to him, his thinking was easy to follow and fitted ours.

Renovation covers a wide range, and the right strategy differs completely by company, and you picked that up carefully. You also did not talk in stereotypes, construction is like this, renovation is this sort of thing, other sites do it this way, which fitted us.

Web marketing is not do this and you will succeed; it is optimised through hypotheses and trial and error. That needs constant communication both ways. On that point NowVillage is a dependable partner who sees things from the same side and tries and learns with us.

Enquiries more than doubled

When did the work begin, and what did it involve?

We began in September 2020. At the time we started with the paths through the site, improving conversion and making sure people did not drop out of even the enquiry form. In parallel we began building a landing page for a new service.

Mr Tagai often says it matters to improve closest to the conversion first. The enquiry form had a great many fields, so on his advice to cut them we started with the form. Too many detailed fields make it tiresome and increase drop-off, so we switched to a flow where people enquire first and we gather the details afterwards.

After the site work and the landing page, we also had you run Google advertising to win enquiries. That started in April 2021 and continues today.

We now also ask you for SEO articles and consulting on the structure of the site.

What did you set out to achieve?

The number of enquiries, above all. In the end, enquiries from the site more than doubled comparing 2020 with 2021. Many factors are involved, but I think the web work with NowVillage had a large effect.

The improvement to the enquiry form in particular was significant. Without it, there must have been many customers who would have quietly dropped out.

Things changed internally too. Where our approach leaned towards branding and marketing tended to be judged after the fact, I feel we have built more of a culture of talking in numbers.

Building that culture was something I had long wanted to do, and having NowVillage involved as a third party has made it sink in internally.

A partner we can trust with the web as a whole

Where are you now, and what do you expect from us?

We currently ask you for landing pages, advertising management, SEO and new sites, the web in general, and we would like to keep consulting you from many angles.

This year in particular is when we check the answers to everything we have tried, and we want to produce still better results. Conditions change constantly; we will keep passing on our detailed requests and nuances, and we ask you to keep catching them.

What do you think characterises us?

That you respond broadly and flexibly across the web from a marketing angle. A solution-led service that includes helping us build capability in-house, and that includes introducing us to various resources to solve a client’s problem.

Companies that move like that sound common but are not. Most say we specialise in this area. NowVillage has become somewhere we can ask about anything around web marketing.

Which companies would you recommend our services to?

Companies struggling to make headway with web marketing, or about to start it from nothing, should definitely talk to you.

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FIND Inc.
・HP：a-find.jp
What we do
　Renovation / remodelling
　Property sales brokerage
　New build / custom homes
　Space design
　Financial planning
　Home inspection

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