Growth Marketing: 15x at The Vigilance Group
Small businesses don’t become larger on their own. That requires expertise on where to build, what to manage and when to scale. Here’s how we optimized entire business operations for a model small business and directly influenced 15x growth in a single year.
The Challenge
The Vigilance Group is a nationally respected personal security & safety consulting company that teaches clients how to recognize and avoid threats to life.
The business was founded by a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with decades of global anti-terrorism and vigilance training. Through 15 years, the Company had established a strong regional reputation and steady business but struggled for next level success.
In the three years prior to our engagement, more than 240 people were murdered in nearly 50 mass shootings across America. These included the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting (21 dead), the 2021 Tops Supermarket murders in Buffalo (10 dead), the 2020 King Soopers shooting in Boulder (10 dead), the 2019 shooting in Virginia Beach (13 dead) and El Paso (23 dead). The Vigilance Group saw only a slight uptick in business during this time.
Our Approach
Our initial work with The Vigilance Group involved foundational audits of the company’s product offering, target markets, competitive landscape, marketing mix, sales process and more. We also performed an operations health check to ensure the company could fulfill the increased business we expected to generate. We assessed five years of pricing history, marketing results, website and social media analytics and other useful measures to appropriately recommend solutions, among them:
an enhanced digital persona and footprint, including an optimized Google Business Profile and other SEO
heavy earned media efforts to both lead and follow the news cycles
intentional sales targeting via segmentation and improved sales cadence
revamp of branded sales collateral
consistent, more competitive pricing
photography and other visual assets for marketing uses.
Our Results
Nothing can qualify our impact better than the 15x revenue boost we created within 12 months. From a bottom-line perspective, that exceeded our client’s wildest dreams.
Our SEO work — including a newly minted Google Business Profile — made immediate impact with directly attributable inbound calls and sales inquiries. Within months, The Vigilance Group had grown in national and regional notoriety as a leading subject matter expert and appeared in nearly a dozen television and print media stories. These included morning television show appearances, noon talk show appearances, Sunday print features, long-form call-in shows, magazine features, radio, podcasts and more. In all, an estimated 7.5 Million impressions within the initial campaign.
That attention created a pipeline of new corporate clientele who sought group training against security risks, on-the-job personal assaults and active shooters threats. We also saw high interest from the general public and modeled in-person public training seminars for mothers and their daughters in large venues. Ultimately, we were honored to push the business into 15x growth while helping to protect thousands of lives.
