Community Maintenance Service Project

The creation and implementation of Community Maintenance Service (CMS). A non-profit community interest property maintenance company that enhanced Lincoln and Gainsborough’s local economy by pumping all profits back into local charities and the community. Furthermore, helping prevent homelessness through the organisations training program for vulnerable individuals. The project entailed the creation of the CIC’s Brand, Website, Digital Channels and Marketing Campaigns.

Proposed Plan CMS's Website
Mike Johnson MBE Review SRM Marketing

I have known Sam for around six months in my capacity as Chair of Directors for Community Maintenance Service (CMS). Sam was appointed to develop our new website, during this time I have found him to be one of the most passionate and hardworking people I know, his enthusiasm and energy is infectious, and his eye for detail is defiantly five stars rated. Sam is genuinely interested in his work and brings lots of new ideas to help any business grow, he is an inspirational young man who works fast and without fuss, he is truly a nice person to know. I have no hesitation in recommending Sam as a valuable connection in your business or network.

Mike Johnson / Chair Of Directors CMS
Stage One

Community Maintenance Service: Brand Creation

Competitor Research

I conducted a competitor analysis of maintenance companies in the Lincoln and Gainsborough area in order to gain an understanding of the competition. This included analyzing their domain, google business profile, motives, unique selling points (USPs), logo, sitemap, and an overview. I also conducted a competitor analysis of another community interest company, using Ethical Maintenance as the main comparison for USPs, typography, and imagery for the Community Maintenance Service (CMS).

Competitor Research

 

Audience Profiling

To understand what Community Maintenance Service CMS’s values needed to be and who they needed to appeal to. I first needed to gain an understanding of the audience we would be targeting for CMS.

Audience Profile
Community Maintenace service Audience Profile

Age Demographics

Mainly targeting Landlords and homeowners,the average age of a first-time buyer is 34 years old and increasing each year. This means CMS’s main target group is going to be 35 years and above. The average age of someone in Lincoln is 43.4 years old and 60% of the workforce in Lincoln are between 16 and 64 years old. As a property maintenance company, appealing to people in full time and with limited free time will be our primary focus, and as the average age for a first-time buyer is 35, our target demographic age range will be 35 years up to retirement. The average age of retirement in Lincoln is 64 years old. Furthermore, 35 – 44-year-olds are more likely to buy from a brand with strong ethical credentials. All this shows that the age range CMS will target will be 35-64 years old.

Gender Demographics

To determine the focus demographic of gender, looking upon ‘percentage chance to engage or donate with charities’ gives us the statistic that females are more likely than males to engage. With Lincoln having a higher population of females than males in prior years, they will be a good contender to be the focus of the ethical impact of CMS. However, this has only been approximately a 10% difference in gender engagement in the last few years. In terms of engaging with voluntary work, 24% of women say they volunteered in the last 3 months in comparison to 18% of men, although men are more involved with campaigning. This portrays that both genders carry equal importance, but women may be easier to target due to the higher engagement rate with CMS’s ethical USPs.

Income Demographic

In terms of the demographics of income, Lincolns average wage is £31.4k, West Lindsey is £34.8k, and Gainsborough is £26k a year, in comparison to the United Kingdom’s £38.1k in 2021. This shows that CMS should have its target wage bracket set between 25k -32k a year to be affordable to the average person in Lincoln or Gainsborough.

Interest Demographics

Considerate Conventionalists are intellectual and educated individuals who are usually between 45 and 65. These individuals seek information about brands before purchasing from them, these are the type of people that CMS would target with their ethical USP. Looking at this group’s age bracket their interests tend to include Watching Television, Reading Books, Solving Puzzles/Crosswords/Sudoku, Cooking/Baking and Gardening.

Pen Profile

Name: Mary | Gender: Female | Age: 44 | Dob: 05/08/1978

About Mary: She is a community driven woman, who enjoys baking for her friends, swimming on the weekends, and working full time as a primary school teacher. She is a mother of two and enjoys taking her kids for long walks. She has 14 years left on her mortgage and is a proud homeowner in the Lincoln area. She is actively engaged with charity work, participating in coffee mornings with friends to help donate money into local charities. She is on a yearly wage of 29k a year and is looking forward to her large pension set for her retirement.

Values

After defining who Community Maintenance Service CMS should be targeting, defining the right values to appeal to this audience was vital. The core values are standards that guide Community Maintenance Service CMS and its way it that it does business in relation to its target audience.

Honesty: “a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way”.

Honesty and reliability are the key values of CMS. Honesty is the value that will allow customers to develop a level of trust. Trust is the most important factor with CMS’s business model due to homeless individuals going into people’s houses. Ensuring customers trust our safeguarding measures is vital to CMS’s service. Our brand must be transparent, and customers must have assurance from our values that they can trust us to come into their homes.

Reliability: “the probability that a product, system, or service will perform its intended function adequately for a specified period of time or will operate in a defined environment without failure”.

Honesty and reliability are the key values of CMS. Honesty is the value that will allow customers to develop a level of trust. Trust is the most important factor with CMS’s business model due to homeless individuals going into people’s houses. Ensuring customers trust our safeguarding measures is vital to CMS’s service. Our brand must be transparent, and customers must have assurance from our values that they can trust us to come into their homes.

Client/Customer Centric: “a strategy and a culture of doing business that focuses on creating the best experience for the customer, and by doing so builds brand loyalty. “Client-centric businesses ensure that the customer is at the centre of a business’s philosophy, operations, or ideas.”

Customer Centric is one of CMS’s values due to being a social enterprise not-for-profit. Since profits are not the focus of the business model, being customer centric allows for CMS to put the customer first and place them at the heart of the organisation. By doing this, customers are happy as they are giving back to the community, and they have had a positive experience with our service. This is vital due to CMS’s business model evolving around the experience of the service being valued higher than the service itself.

Community focused: “the state of living in a particular area or town and being focused on the community of people that are within the area or town, caring and benefiting each other.”

Being Community focused is one of CMS’s core values as it represents the core beliefs of our social enterprise. It stands for the ideology that community is important, and everyone needs to do their part to ensure a community can function and is fair. With CMS providing a platform where customers can give back to their community, community focused is the perfect description of CMS and its customers.

Empowerment: “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.”

CMS has empowerment as one of its core values as it empowers vulnerable individuals, helping them to develop their skills and create a career path for themselves through experience. It also helps to empower the local economy by providing it with a place for apprentices to learn, homeless individuals to become employed and gives back to the local community by helping prevent people sleeping on the street.  

Quality: “the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.”

CMS takes pride in providing a high-quality service that it can stand behind, which ensures customer satisfaction and the future of the platform. The aim is to offer quality to both customers and trainees with the experience they receive.

Safety: “the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury.”

One of CMS’s values is safety as CMS strives to provide a work environment that reduces risk to employees and trainees by planning teamwork and using the proper protection equipment and safeguarding measures. Furthermore, we want to ensure that any maintenance work is safely performed in our customer’s home.

Ethical Practice: “relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these.”

Ethical is one of CMS’s core values as it is the backbone of the platform. This is shown through the organisations character values like trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and good citizenship. CMS takes a moral responsibility to help combat homelessness in Lincoln and Gainsborough.

Community Maintenace Service's Personality

Identity

From understanding who the organisation wanted to target, what its values were and what Community Maintenance Service CMS stands for, the next process in the development was the brands identity. To understand the identity of the brand and why it coming into the market, performance indicators and unique selling points of the brand had to be understood. Once the attached document below was completed a mission statement, vision, promise were drafted and sent to the founders with a range of options so the identity could be created.

CMS's USP's

 

Voice

Language, Typography, Characteristics.

Language:

  1. A clear USP and sense of brand values: Being a trustable, honest personality (brand) that is caring and mentor’s people. The brand relates to individuals, situations and is understanding of circumstances.
  2. A list of words and phrases: Vulnerable individuals, considerate, understand, social responsibility, aware, honest, community, liaising, and transparent.
  1. Copywriting rules: “always friendly, but we never use slang”, “Follow code of conduct”, “Always portray a considerate and caring persona”, “Sensitivity awareness”, “Attentive” “Compassionate”, “Charitable and friendly”.
  2. A sense of how you want the customer to perceive you: Crisp, fluent, approachable but professional.

Typography:

Brand typography is a visual element of brand style guide, or brand book, that arranges your business’s written copy in a legible way and aligns your messaging with your brand personality. Brand typography is not quite the same as brand font or typeface, although they are all closely related.

CMS’s typography needs to take the brands identity into consideration. The chosen font needs to be economical with the amount of space used for wordcount. Furthermore, the brands voice being fluent and crisp needs to be considered. The typography needs to be eye catching, ethical, represent CMS’s colours, present text clearly, look professional but feel approachable and friendly.

Typeface:

For CMS a Serif font would be the best route of action as they are font types with personality but are still professional. Script and Decorative fonts are not professional enough for this purpose.
Typeface used for Headers: font name :1. Nexa Bold.
Typeface used for body text: Times New Roman

 

 

 

Characteristics:

CMS’s Brand Characteristics are the core values and fundamentals that showcase the true essence of the brand. They are a set of attributes that are identified as the physical, distinctive, and personality traits of the brand like that of an individual. It is important for CMS to stand for something that is unique and consistent in nature. CMS characteristics need to paint a constant image of honesty, transparency, reliability, and fidelity towards local communities.

Therefore, I believe CMS’s brand characteristics should be:

Passion, Consistency, Distinctiveness, Loyalty, Compassion, Transparency.

 

Purpose

CMS’s purpose for existing, what does the brand exist to do?

The UK is currently facing a recession, with many individuals and families struggling to support themselves. It is estimated that first-time buyers will see their monthly mortgage rate increase to an average of 40% of their gross salary due to this increase (BBC, 2022). However, on a more local level, Lincoln is the highest homeless per thousand in households assessed for all local authority districts in the East midlands as of 2021/22. (.GOV, 2022)
The purpose of this brand is to take advantage of the increased housing in the area to tackle the growing issue of homelessness in Lincolnshire. By working in the maintenance industry with CMS, vulnerable individuals will learn valuable skills to create a more stable situation not only for themselves, but for the wider community.
Residents will see a direct and indirect benefit. They will be given a high-quality service but will also maintain a close relationship with the workers during the process. This consistent interaction will create the reassurance and accountability that is needed to ensure that a professional service has been delivered, whilst an ethical benefit for the community is being achieved.

Brand Guidelines

After developing all the previous elements of the brand, I gained an understanding of what the brand was and what it wanted to achieve. Furthermore, how to present itself to the public, so after this i wrote up a draft of the overview of what the community-interest-company was as a brand guidelines template so anyone could understand the brand.

Community Maintenance Services Overview

Community Maintenance Services (CMS) is a community-interest-company operating in and around Lincoln and Gainsborough. Our social enterprise takes pride in our excellent relationships with our customers. We consistently respond to customer feedback to improve your experience. By reinvesting our profits into the local community and economy, the consumer will know that they have made a true impact. We offer a guaranteed quality service, with a fixed free quote of up to 30 days. Building a rapport with our customers is vital, as we want to ensure that we adhere to customer specifications. The cornerstone of Community Maintenace Service CMS is providing opportunities to vulnerable individuals facing homelessness in our local area, by shadowing our experienced staff. They obtain an industry skill set and a range of personal developments, underpinned by our core value, honesty. This ensures realistic, achievable timescales for completion of jobs, with transparent pricing of our fees. Our on-call teams consist of a specialized local tradesman, and an aspiring apprentice. With safeguarding measures in place, we ensure a professional working environment to complete work to the highest standard. Whether you’re a homeowner or a commercial property owner, Community Maintenace Service CMS offers a range of maintenance services that can accommodate all. Some of these services include plumbing, repairs, general maintenance, carpentry, plastering, painting, and decorating. Community Maintenace Service CMS aims to fix, decorate, and clean as many customer requests as possible.

CMS Brand Guidelines Document

Colour Palette

What colours will represent CMS?

Colour Palette Document

Colour Mood Theorising

Certain colours or combination of colours can have negative or positive imapcts on our moods or emotional state. Due to this picking the colour pallette for CMS was important in order to ensure we picked colours that represented the ethical and community driven elements of the C-I-C. The following colours were the best representatives for the brand to start the colour pallette journey with:

  • Brown – Warmth, Seriousness, Reliability, Support and Authenticity (Safety and Security).
  • Orange – Courage, Confidence, Warmth, Innovation and Friendliness (Outgoing and Unique).
  • Green – Health, Hope, Freshness, Nature, Growth and Prosperity (Healing and Growth/Life).
  • White – Honest, Clean, Innocence and Simplicity (Trustable and Pure).
  • Yellow – Creativeness, Happiness, Warm and Cheer (Happy and Positive with Exploration).

The two first suggested two primary colours of CMS’s Brand were:

  • Green due to our Ethical standpoint as it uses an Organic element to represent a natural growth of a socially responsible brand wanting to grow in synergy with the local community.
  • White as it represents untarnished beginnings which is the perfect representation of CMS and their workforce. It also helps to portray CMS’s commitment to being honest, trustable and pure.

The main suggested Tertiary colours to go with this colour pallette were:

  • Brown – sturdy, reliable and dependable, which are some of the key USP’s that CMS wants to focus upon helping to justify credibility.
  • Orange – acts as a stimulatory for feelings of enthusiasm and courage, which is vital for a starting brand with such unique USP’s like CMS. Research suggests it enhances contentment and assurance.
  • Yellow – its longer wavelength ensures it grabs attention and stands for happy and positive emotions. This is good for a smaller brand to build up a subconscious memory of their logo and colours. The emotions captivated also help to solidify CMS’s ethical values.

 

However, our client liked orange that was used in the colour pallette mood board presentation and decided they wanted a green and orange pallette. From this we selected the two colours for our primary colour mood pallette and began finding the exact match of Hues of green and orange that the client wanted to represent CMS.

  • Green – Hue of fresh grass. Health, Hope, Freshness, Nature, Growth and Prosperity (Healing and Growth/Life)
  • Orange – Salamander Orange. Courage, Confidence, Warmth, Innovation and Friendliness (Outgoing and Unique)

After consistant liason with our client, going back and forth with a range of hues of each of the colours a final colour code was picked for both the green and the orange:

Colour Pallette

Logo

The face of CMS.

Community Maintenace Service's Logo Imagery

Logo Imagery

Before briefing the designers, a range of imagery that might be suited to Community Maintenance Service CMS was complied and sent to the founders to see what imagery and combinations they wanted to use for the logo using our recommendations. This document included a range of competitors logos, icons representing social impact, housing and gardening to ensure the logo correctly represented CMS’s service.

Logo Brief

A logo was then created suited to Community Maintenance Service CMS by using the brands: Goal, Vision, Mission Statement, Positioning, Promise and Colour Palette. All of these compiled in the brand guidelines document allowed a range of designers to create their interpretation of what CMS’s logo should look like.

First round of designs:

Second round of designs:

Clients chosen logo and icon design for Community Maintenance Service CMS:

Community Maintenace Service's (CMS) Logo
Community Maintenace Service's (CMS) Icon
Stage Two

Community Maintenance Service: Website Creation

Domain Name

A domain name is vital for establishing a good impression on the internet, for Community Maintenance Service CMS this was no different. After scouring domain name providers and establishing a .com domain was too expensive for the start of the brand, www.cmslincs.co.uk was born. The domain is a Country-code Top-Level domain, this means that the domain is more likely to rank for local results. Furthermore, using CMS and Lincs in the domain help the site to rank through our targetted keywords (CMS) and (Lincoln) due to the C-I-C operating in lincolnshire, giving the site a higher chance to rank correctly. Finally, the domain is short, easy to remember and is our brands name, so customers have a good chance at remembering our url as they visit the site more.

www.cmslincs.co.uk

WordPress

Due to my experiance with WordPress and it being the best website open-source content management system, for CMS WordPress was used as the management software and hosting was supplied. Furthermore, the number of plugins available on WordPress help make the customization on sites more advanced. After this we then transfered the domain name to the WordPress.

Plugin Selection

While creating CMS, in order to enhance its functionality and performance, I carefully selected a set of plugins:

  • To optimize the website’s search engine rankings, I utilized the All in One SEO plugin. It allowed me to easily optimize meta tags and content for better visibility in search results.
  • To improve the website’s speed, I used Autoptimize which minifies and combines CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files, as well as WP Super Cache, which creates a static HTML version of the website to serve to visitors, instead of dynamically generating pages.
  • To arrange categories of posts on the website, I used the Category Order plugin which helped me to display them in the desired order.
  • To enable visitors to contact me easily, I used the Contact Form 7 plugin, which allowed me to add contact forms to the website. Alongside this i used Mailchimp in order to collect the emails on a database and build up CMS’s email list whenever users fill out a contact form on the site.
  • To enhance the security and design of the website, I used Jetpack and Jetpack Boost which provide a wide range of features.
  • Finally, Site kit by google integrated Google services to provide detailed analytics and insights about the website’s performance.

All these plugins were chosen to ensure that the website was efficient, secure and user-friendly.

Sitemap Structure

A sitemap structure is a hierarchical representation of the pages on a website, organized in a way that makes it easy for users and search engines to understand the organization and navigation of the site. CMS’s site structure was carefully thought out.

CMS’s site structure is designed to be user-friendly and easy to navigate:

  • The main page is the Homepage, which serves as an introduction to the organization and its mission, and provides links to the other pages on the site.
  • The “About Us” page is the parent page for “Careers with CMS” and “Policies” pages, which provides detailed information about the organization, its history, and its values.
  • The “Our Services” page provides information about the services that CMS provides.
  • The “Contact Us” page provides various ways for visitors to get in touch with the organization, such as phone number, email, and a contact form.
  • The “Testimonials” page features feedbacks from satisfied customers.
  • The “Careers” page provides information about job opportunities with CMS, and the “Policies” page provides information about the organization’s policies and guidelines.

This structure makes it easy for users to find the information they need and understand the organization’s mission and values, and how to join the team. After setting up the site layout, it was uploaded to Google Search Console to make it easier for crawlers to crawl and index.

 
 

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol that is used to establish a secure connection between a web server and a web browser. It is important to set up SSL for CMS because it encrypts sensitive information such as personal data, login credentials and financial transactions, making it more difficult for hackers to intercept and steal this information. This can help to protect the website’s users from identity theft and financial fraud, and it can also help to build trust and credibility with visitors by showing that the website takes security seriously. Additionally, SSL also helps to improve the website’s search engine rankings by providing a secure environment for users to navigate the website.

Installing an SSL changed CMS’s domain name to:

https://www.cmslincs.co.uk

Analytics

Analytics tracking for websites is an essential aspect of measuring the performance and success of a website. Google Analytics and Google Search Console are two powerful tools that can be used to track various metrics and gain insights about website traffic and user behavior.

Setting up Google Analytics for CMS involved creating a Google Analytics account and then adding the tracking code to the website’s codebase. This was done by adding the code to the header of the website, alternatively, could be done by installing a plugin that can handle the integration. Once the tracking code was added, Google Analytics began collecting data about the CMS’s visitors, such as their location, the pages they visit, and how long they stay on the site.

Google Search Console is another web service by Google that allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. Setting up Google Search Console for CMS involved adding the website to the Search Console and then verifying ownership by adding a code to the website or using DNS record. Once CMS was set up, it began tracking data about the website’s visibility in Google search, such as the keywords that drive traffic to the site, and any crawl errors or security issues.

Both Google Analytics and Google Search Console will provide valuable insights about CMS’s performance and can help to identify areas for improvement. This can include tracking the number of visitors, the pages they visit, their demographics, and what actions they take on the website. It can also help to monitor the website’s search engine ranking and visibility, to identify where the website is ranking for specific keywords and what pages are being indexed by Google.

Google Business Profile

Google Business profiles are a powerful tool for local businesses, to promote their business on Google search and maps. Setting up a Google Business profile for CMS involved creating a Google account and then adding the business information, such as the name, address, phone number, website and hours of operation. Once the information was verified, the business appeared on Google Maps and in Google search results when people search for businesses in the area.

Google Business profiles allow CMS to update it’s information, upload images, and post updates, such as new products or services, special promotions, and upcoming events. It also allows customers to leave reviews, which helps businesses to build credibility and increase visibility on Google search and maps.

Google Business profiles also allows CMS to track statistics such as the number of views, clicks, and calls to their business profile. This data can help CMS to understand the effectiveness of their online presence and make data-driven decisions to improve their online performance.

 

Website Design/Content

The website design of CMS was created using the popular content management system, WordPress. The website was built using the Flatsome UX builder, a powerful and user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder that allows for easy customization of the website’s layout and design. 

The content of CMS is focused on providing information about the organization, its mission, services, and values. The website includes pages such as “About Us”, “Our Services”, “Contact Us”, “Testimonials”, “Careers” and “Policies” that provide detailed information about the organization. The website was designed to be easy to navigate and user-friendly, making it easy for visitors to find the information they need.

An enquiries form was also added to every page of the website, making it easy for visitors to contact CMS with any questions or concerns. The form allows visitors to provide their contact information and a brief message, and it is submitted directly to the organization’s email address. This feature makes it easy for visitors to get in touch with the organization and helps to build trust and credibility with the website’s visitors.

Visit CMS

SEO

CMS’s SEO optimization is a key aspect in ensuring that the website is easily discoverable by search engines and users. I implemented a hierarchical website structure that makes it easy for search engines to understand the organization and navigation of the site. This structure, along with a clear and consistent URL structure, makes it easy for search engines to crawl the website and understand its content.

To further optimise the website for search engines, I focused on using specific keywords throughout the website’s content. These keywords have been researched and chosen based on their relevance to the organisation’s services and mission. This helps search engines to understand the website’s content and match it to relevant search queries. In addition, I focused on making the website quickly rendering, which is a crucial aspect of SEO, as page speed is a ranking factor for search engines. The organization has used techniques such as optimizing images and minifying code, to ensure that the website loads quickly for users. This not only improves the user experience, but it also helps the website to score high on SEO audits.

Overall, the SEO optimization implemented has resulted in a website that is easily discoverable by search engines and users. With a clear and consistent structure, specific keywords, and a quickly rendering page, the website scores high on SEO audits, and it is well-positioned to rank well in search engine results. Scoring 92/100 for SEO on Google Lighthouse.

Social Media

Social media is an essential aspect of promoting a business in today’s digital landscape. CMS, as a CIC maintenance service company, had social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter set up in order to reach out to a wider audience and promote their services.

On LinkedIn, CMS can showcase their services and connect with other professionals in their industry, as well as potential customers. They can also share articles and blog posts that provide value to their audience. By creating a company page on LinkedIn, they can also post job opportunities to attract potential employees.

CMS LinkedIn
Community Maintenance Service LinkedIn
Stage Two

Community Maintenance Service: Marketing Campaigns

Email Marketing 

To start an organic marketing campaign for CMS, I used Contact Forms 7 with an extension for mail chimp in order to start collecting users information and build up CMS’s email marketing database. This campaign had three stages in order to collect users emails. Firstly, setting up contact forms to save all the users emails and build them in a database, allowing for passive collection of emails as the site gained more traction. Secondly, for CMS’s launch event, users who wanted to attend the grand opening event were pushed through to the site to sign up in order to collect their email data. Finally, using the build email audience from the opening to send promotional emails to all the users attained as an organic marketing tool.

Print campaign

We executed a print campaign for CMS using a leaflet to reach the local community. We designed a visually appealing leaflet that showcased the key benefits of CMS and how it could help the local community. We highlighted the services offered by CMS in a clear and concise manner. We then distributed the leaflet through door-to-door delivery, and placement in local community events from charities CMS has a working relationship with. The campaign generated a lot of interest, and we saw a significant increase in inquiries and sign-ups for CMS services. The print campaign was a success to getting a foothold of awareness in the local community, and we were able to effectively reach and engage. Find the leaflet below.

CMS Leaflet Print Campaign
CMS Leaflet Print Campaign