Looking back over Radfield Home Care’s history, it is clear to see a timeline of astute business decisions and smart processes helped pave the way for success.
Launched in 1982, the Radfield care brand started life as a small residential care home in Shropshire operated by the parents of current owners, Dr Hannah MacKechnie and Alex Green. In 2008, the time came for Hannah and Alex to take over running the business, who after research decided to pivot the focus from residential care into care at home.
If moving the operations from a brick and mortar business model to an agency model wasn’t ambitious enough, the move to being a franchisor 3 years ago not only took a huge amount of effort, but also shows the acumen of the business owners to identify an opportunity in the market and pursue it to great success.
Hannah and Alex’s expertise was complemented by Hannah’s husband’s skillset, Phil MacKechnie, whose experience in digital marketing was borne from a successful career for several agencies and brands, leading to Phil eventually setting up his own consultancy.
Radfield Home Care now has 13 territories operating throughout the UK providing high quality care services to older people who are living within their own homes. By operating this service within the private marketplace, the business is able to attract new franchise partners and equip them with a model built to recruit and retain expert carers, allowing for a higher focus on the quality of care and a huge opportunity to grow the Radfield brand.
Radfield utilise a full mix of multi-channel campaigns to raise awareness, with a particular focus at business launch on paid media.
After building an attractive market proposition and with the team’s experience in marketing, the campaigns were successful in generating leads – however the business faced a hurdle in being able to effectively attribute the revenue received to the marketing activity.
Thankfully, Radfield knew who to rely upon, Phil says:
“I had utilised Ruler’s platform previously within my consultancy, harnessing the power of the technology for my clients within the legal industry.
At Radfield we utilise a wide range of paid media, SEO and email activity to generate leads. Ruler’s system helps us track all of our channels to evidence the end user’s journey from awareness through to conversion.”
The purchase of care is often a stressed purchase, with family members wanting to quickly find a solution for their loved ones within a short period of time. As with any product, customers shop around, which makes every interaction pivotal.
Phil continued, “We find that while the initial enquiry may be made online, the customer will also interact with us via live chat, phone, leaflets, business cards etc, making it difficult to join the dots of a customer’s behaviour.”
By linking up marketing activity with call tracking solutions, Ruler’s data enabled Radfield to quickly identify the campaigns which are most effective.
Phil commented, “The call tracking and recording functionality has been particularly useful, as it provides us an opportunity to provide feedback to call handlers as we can evidence the activity that contribute to a successful sale compared to a less effective call.”
Adding Ruler’s call tracking to their training programme played its part in the organisation’s submission at the prestigious British Franchise Association HSBC Franchise Awards 2019, with Radfield Home Care successfully winning Emerging Franchisor of the Year.
Alongside call tracking, Ruler’s attribution technology has also ensured Radfield stay on the right path with campaigns and has fostered a greater relationship of transparency with their supporting marketing agencies.
Phil said, “We saw the benefits of using Ruler within the first week of activation. As we were driving activity via PPC for the first time, Ruler identified lucrative leads that weren’t recognised by other tracking solutions our agency had in place.
“We quickly realised Ruler had to be the blueprint. It not only benefitted us, but our PPC agency could see the true value they were delivering. Without that insight we could have shot ourselves in the foot and not seen the complete attributed picture .”
While the home care sector is not typically an area you’d look to for innovation, Radfield Home Care is bucking the trend and is continually looking to develop for the benefit of franchise partners and their clients.
Thanks to the close relationship Radfield has fostered with Ruler Analytics, they know that any developments made will be supported by Ruler’s team.
“In terms of our own call handling, we’re touching the limits of functionality. Our next phase will be integrating VOIP call systems with our CRM platform. Ruler will add that final piece of the puzzle to provide the ability to track return on investment – which is a relationship not many other tracking providers have grasped.”
“Ruler operates a similar model to ourselves. The team understand that tasks, patterns and process help drive activity. Thankfully when reaching out with improvements to the product, Alex and the team have been positive in listening to suggestions and adding them to their roadmap.”
“When we onboard new franchise partners they are often surprised by the level of support Ruler provides. The team are always on hand to help train new starters and provide assistance wherever necessary.”
Phil’s closing comments were full of praise for Ruler Analytics,
“Before Ruler Analytics came along, there was a lack of transparency between activity being connected to online and offline performance. In 2019 we’re able to calculate the ROI of offline literature being delivered and resulting in a sale, versus the equivalent of a PPC Ad campaign. The Ruler platform is rich in functionality and affordability versus all the competitors. Radfield has directly benefited from Ruler’s vision and I have recommended it to a lot of providers, clients and agency clients who face similar challenges to ourselves.”
If you would like to find out how Ruler can help you identify the true value of your marketing campaigns, too, book a demo today!
