2019-2020 has been extremely tough for the World, the UK and England. Businesses around the world have felt the impact and Vertex Surveys Ltd has experienced difficulties. In April we were not able to work at all, which has us all feeling seriously concerned. My brother and I had some profoundly serious decisions to make, which we discussed via Skype at the end of March.
A Coronavirus induced panic
When the UK was hit with the pandemic, business closed, millions were furloughed, fear crippled all areas of the private and corporate sector. Vertex Surveys Ltd quotes dropped to complete zero in April and the horizons for future work looked incredibly bleak. I’m sure experienced business owners who have experienced other recessions and unsettled times had the resolve to keep pushing in a positive direction but to be completely honest, we had an immediate panic.
We discussed whether we should batten down the hatches and save as much money as possible? Salary cuts, limit all expenditure, reduce google ad campaign budgets, stop marketing strategies. All of these are obvious direct money saving options.
After a long discussion we decided to go the complete opposite direction….
A solution based around support for small businesses, new equipment, and marketing
After the initial lapse in confidence we had multiple thoughts running through our head. As a country this negative attitude is not going to help us get back on its feet, so we decided to spend on professional marketing services and invest on the infrastructure of the company by purchasing new equipment and hunting down other survey professionals to help us become as fluid and nimble as possible.
For the equipment we purchased the Geomax Zenith 16 GNSS supplied by Doug Cashman at ProGeo Surveys Ltd. Doug is a lovely guy with a wealth of experience and the customer service is second to none. Would highly recommend. This piece of equipment makes Vertex Surveys Ltd so much more versatile, accurate and efficient.
After talking to multiple different digital marketing companies about how they could help us find work in an incredibly challenging period we decided to work with Lucky Promotion. John Luck was incredibly professional, cared about our strife and could give concise and direct ideas on how to push us in a better direction towards generating more target driven traffic to our website.
When I setup our google ad campaign personally, I had little idea on how to manage it. We were spending £200 pounds a month with no clear direction or time to maximise its potential. With John steering the ship, Lucky Promotion has helped us to hit over 20% over targets for 4 months straight. From now on our motto is to do what Vertex does best (Land Surveying, Boundary Surveys) and outsource the rest to good small and local businesses who are best at what they do.
Looking to the future of Vertex Surveys
We celebrated our 3-year anniversary in May and obviously have battled through a pandemic and will begin to navigate ourselves across our first deep routed recession.
Vertex Surveys Ltd had been doing well so far, despite the massive drop off in April, our revenue has steadily increased year on year, our brand and reputation is improving as well as our number of clients. Thumbs up all round for a brand-new RICS accredited Land Surveying and Boundary Surveys company.
We feel like a rare success story from this pandemic, but we appreciate that the immediate future does not look bright and the times ahead will be tough. The message we would like to give to people is please support small and local businesses. Whether that is through the suppliers that you choose, where you shop and where you buy services for your business.
If we all stick to what we are good at and help each other, I’m sure The World, The UK and even small LTD companies can shine through.
Cheers and good luck from all the team at Vertex Surveys Ltd