Turning Desynit’s website into a powerful sales machine
Amy Grenham, Head of Marketing, Desynit www.desynit.com Project dates: 2013-2014
Valuable Content Customer Story
Desynit is a super-talented team of systems developers. They’d come a long way as a business — but their messaging and website did not reflect this at all. How should they get the message across on their new website, and what content did they need to drive sales? A total revamp of their marketing communications was needed.
Desynit’s challenge
Fast-moving businesses can often grow and evolve at a speed that leaves their brand messaging and website lagging way behind. Desynit is an ambitious IT firm that faced just this challenge.
This Bristol-based team of super-talented systems developers had come a long way as a business — but their messaging and website did not reflect this at all. Leads were coming in, but the team were reluctant to point enquiries towards the website so they knew they were missing valuable sales opportunities. A total revamp of their marketing communications was needed.
The Valuable Content team worked closely with Amy Grenham, Head of Marketing at Desynit to make this change happen — creating powerful customer-centric messaging, getting the website platform right, devising a coherent content strategy and providing a raft of useful content for the new harder-working website.
Revamping Desynit’s website and marketing
The starting point for this radical rebranding was to talk to Desynit’s clients. It was vital to understand how key audiences saw Desynit and how they felt they added value. The findings were enlightening and helped to shape the messaging strategy right from the start. Amy Grenham pulled a strong team together to create the new website.
Building on Desynit’s strategic marketing plan, she hired the team here at Valuable Content (for message creation, website planning, content strategy and writing) Amy brought in designer Christian Tait (for brand design and illustration), web designer Iain Claridge (to build a fully responsive new website), and talented young film-maker Gordon Wilson.
Marketing manager Amy Grenham, says:
“We had moved such a long way as a business and nothing that we were doing reflected that for our customers anymore. We had been looking at refreshing our marketing communications — in fact, we virtually needed to start again. The whole lot needed reworking and there was no point in fiddling around the edges, we needed to do it whole-heartedly.
Valuable Content seemed like a really good fit. They had dealt with businesses that had a similar profile to ours, with similar needs. They understood what we were saying to them and I thought that they would be the kind of people that we could partner with very happily.”
Desynit wanted the content strategy to be driven by a clear customer focus and talking in depth to clients was a key part of the challenge.
Amy says: “We had done a lot of looking internally at where we were going and who we were but we needed to go and talk to our customers. We knew Valuable Content had a lot of experience and skill in doing that kind of qualitative research.”
How we did it
There’s no doubt about it, Desynit are exceptionally good at what they do and clients love working with them — and the feedback certainly demonstrated that. Crucially though, the way that clients talked about Desynit’s systems was more emotional than it was technical or operational. In fact, the value they got from Desynit’s work was essentially human — as one client put it: “good systems like this change your life.”
That single powerful statement shaped the foundation of a new client-focused Desynit brand.
“I think this research has actually been a very, very important event for the company. It has been quite fundamental. I don’t think you realise how many assumptions you make about what people think about your business. Valuable Content listened to our customers and they were able to put across our values in terms that really meant something from the customer perspective. They changed our approach from an internally-focused message — ‘we build business applications’ — to ‘good systems change your life’, which is the purpose of our service and spoke directly to our customers. This shift in focus has been key to our success.””– Amy Grenham
By creating this core brand message — good systems change your life — Valuable Content were able to devise a consistent approach and plan and provide a raft of content for the new Desynit website. Underpinning everything was the desire to create content that would be useful to Desynit’s key audiences — such as the Good Systems Manifesto. 
“The manifesto is a really fantastic example of how Valuable Content have listened to our customers and to us and they’ve come up with something really creative and really rich with a universal appeal. If we hadn’t used them, I think we may have got a website that was possibly more of a work of art; when what we really wanted was a work of commerce.” – Amy Grenham 
The results
“If you look at where we’ve come from and where we are now, it’s an absolute quantum leap. We have a website that really supports us all the way through the sales funnel. We didn’t just want a website, we wanted a powerful content hub and that’s what we’ve got. Already, I can see the team are very pleased to have a new brand identity. Our team are already repeating the messages. I think there’s a certain confidence that if we can do this, we can do a lot of things.
Valuable Content really nailed it. I think clients will have more confidence in us as a business. I think that they will understand what it is that we do much better and where we can offer value and we’ve backed it up with evidence.” – Amy Grenham 
The final verdict on Valuable Content
“The way that Valuable Content engaged with us was what we had dreamed of. They identified the need to understand the ways in which our customers benefited from their dealings with Desynit, captured this information and went on to help us develop key items of content which at last allowed us to articulate the Desynit brand. The quality of the material which they have produced is second to none. They take techno-speak and turn in to plain English. Thank you Sonja and Sharon!” – Matthew Morris, Director, Desynit 
“Sonja and Sharon are great at listening, understanding and taking on board a lot of information and translating it into messages which really mean something. They have a really fantastic understanding of the wider picture and where content fits into the strategy. They are incredibly engaged and I felt that their absolute commitment to this project matched my own. I would recommend Valuable Content for any business that wants to use content to attract and engage their audience. I know that they will be there to advise us on how to slice this content up and serve it and how to grow our content library over time. I have really enjoyed working with Valuable Content. They are really supportive, they are good and they are fun people to work with.” – Amy Grenham
Five ideas to help you transform your website:
- Gather in-depth customer feedback to understand the true value of your products and services.
- Use that feedback to create a unifying central message that inspires your customers in a way that they can relate to.
- Ensure that your core message consistently informs all of your content and branding so that your messages hit the mark every time.
- Create a website that is a work of commerce not just a work of art — hard-working websites should deliver your business objectives and support you at every step of the sale
- Bring your ethos to life with a great About Us page or even a manifesto like Desynit’s — a clear commitment to helping your customers.
Further reading on the Desynit approach to its website and marketing:
You can follow the story of this VC project on Storify. See: Desynit – small company with a big heart.
