Case Study
SLC
Client
Southern Land Company
Industry
Commercial & Residential Property Development
Services
Content | Web Design | Social Media
TOP STATS
Re-imagination and development of SLC’s brand story and voice
Comprehensive PR strategizing and marketing coordination to educate to Port Washington community members
A visually and technically revamped project website that better represents brand and appeals to audience
Developed and produced deep library of educational blog content
We <3 You Too, Jenna
“No matter the need or request, Estes Media always provided deeply insightful market strategies and exceptional pieces of evergreen content. They were responsive, communicate, and transparent every step of the way, and continually went above and beyond to take initiatives, make things happen, and deliver exceptional and compelling work.”
– Jenna Lefever, Head of Public Relations
Challenges
Southern Land Company (or SLC) has been developing a large $100M project in Port Washington, New York for over 4 years but was struggling to effectively communicate with community members and would-be residents. Their greatest challenge was informing and educating community members about both the broad benefits of the project on a micro scale, as well as, on a macro scale, the ethos of the SLC brand and their unique company approach. They recognized the need to develop a deeper, more thoughtful brand story and educational content for the Port Washington community. Internal teams quite simply lacked the tactical firepower to crack this tricky PR nut. That meant that needed to solicit the help of an agency with unique storytelling sensibilities that could bring their story to life and create evergreen assets that would resonate with residents and thoughtfully explain the objectively positive impacts their project would have. The Port Washington project had an existing templated site but was lackluster in both its amount of content and its SEO strategy. SLC needed a dedicated team to help strategically manage and drive these content and website efforts. SLC employed the help of an outside PR firm for a number of years, but their niche was largely contained to public affairs and community relations. To better communicate their story and message, SLC needed a library of educational content, a refresh of their static and largely unseen project website, and ongoing management of both efforts.
Battle Plan.
Process & Highlights
Content was internally recognized as a general but lower-priority need within SLC, but Estes Media helped to more thoughtfully explain its long-term value. Above all, SLC was continually impressed by Estes Media’s creative and out-of-the-box strategic thinking. Joshua and team consistently went above and beyond to demonstrate how they could further elevate marketing efforts and propose new strategies for a variety of channels that previously weren’t on the company’s radar. Throughout their collaboration, Estes Media always shared a clear path forward and regularly underlined their collective objectives. Meetings were held weekly, both with individual team members at SLC as well as with larger, multi-agency think tanks to develop effective ideas together. Estes Media’s time was increasingly spent on content and blog creation, a creative process they ensured was always seamless. Communication was constant and each team member was responsive to any calls or messages, making the day-to-day process as easy as possible. When appropriate, they also took the initiative to reach out to stakeholders to arrange content meetings without having to bother Jenna or anyone else internally. Those efforts helped establish Estes as a team of go-getters devoted to making things happen and getting things done. Every deliverable was thoughtful, detailed, and on-time. Joshua and team not only provided a plethora of creative opportunities and ideas, they also executed some of SLC’s finest written work for both the project and the company as a whole. During this ongoing collaboration, the team at Estes always took extra steps to thoughtfully plan out pieces of content and thoroughly explain the strategy behind each and every idea.
RESULTS
Over their multi-year engagement, Jenna and team were consistently impressed with the quality of content produced. The writing was so strong – both deeply educational yet conversational enough to remain broadly accessible – that it engages community members as soon as it was published. Readers were compelled from the first paragraph, and the deep insight helped drive organic conversations around important community topics. It was clear through every content cycle just how much preparation went into each piece. Not just good housekeeping, but insightful interview questions that would be shared ahead of each conversation, and never the same list twice. It all bolstered the reality that Estes Media was making every effort to guide a story and extract meaningful information. The website redesign process was equally seamless. SLC executives came back with tons of edit and revision requests, and Estes Media was also receptive and responsive to all feedback and diligent about implementing them as quickly as possible. Even with relatively short notice and a condensed brainstorming window, Joshua and team were able to dive in head-first and deliver by their promised date. The delivered website looks exponentially better than before and is in a much stronger technical and SEO position. It not only serves as a better representation of the SLC brand, but it’s more easily found via organic search. Each step along the way, Estes Media followed through on initial objectives and delivered everything inline with expectations. All project goals were met and the utmost diligence maintained to foster a productive and structured process. The content and website now only received overwhelmingly positive feedback from everyone at SLC but resonated profoundly with Port Washington community members as well. All of these multi-channel efforts helped dramatically alleviate the workloads of Jenna and other internal SLC employees. Estes’ efforts had a massive impact on internal teams, who felt very helped and supported, and were able to operate much more efficiently, especially knowing they could rely on strong and consistent deliverables. Overall, Estes Media made the lives of marketers at SLC far easier by creating fantastic evergreen content. Most blogs or articles required deep preparation and heavy-lifting, but Joshua and team always handled with grace and managed to make the process enjoyable. Most importantly, they always took extra steps beyond requests or expectations to produce fantastic stories that articulated the intuition, thoughtfulness, and integrity of the SLC brand.
