SMC X SkyTek

Overview

Skytek Office Solutions provides scalable and flexible executive suites and virtual offices to meet the needs of any unique business. With all the amenities to serve a true office, Skytek additionally helps to manage the day-to-day necessities of a business, with features such as a Virtual Assistant so that businesses can focus their efforts on the core operations. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic and the rapid transitions to working from home, Skytek has shifted its marketing efforts to promote the virtual features and optimizing its digital space, rather than their office spaces located in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Thus this landscape was our top priority when working together to strategize solutions for this project. Our main point of contact was the CEO, Muhammad Kermalli who has been involved in Skytek for over fourteen years and was originally acquired by SMC’s Managing Director at the time, Garrett Mitchell in the Fall of 2020.  The Smith Marketing Consulting team recently worked on The Skytek project, which was led by project director Aidan Alderson. His team was made of 4 consultants: Aarti Patel, Alyssa Lee, Peyton Southam, and Robert Lim. The Co-chair of SMC, Chloe Martineau, also assisted on this exciting project.

The Problem

When beginning the project, our team analyzed Skytek and informed ourselves of the business and the industry it was in. Once familiarizing ourselves with the company, we conducted further research into the market it was in, as well as Skytek's own social media platforms, and began to pinpoint areas of improvement. Their social media platforms were somewhat outdated, with a lack of frequency between posts, and outdated images of locations and services offered. These pages did not paint an accurate picture of the well-established company itself, in comparison to competitors who had vibrant media sites, gaining greater attention from the industry target market. SMC saw an opportunity to increase follower engagement and post activity. Skytek's overall goal was to increase consumer awareness of their services and to increase target market engagement through upgrading and updating their social media pages as well as their marketing strategies. Focusing on these factors would increase their SEO and broaden the company's reach in the industry.

The Solution

While approaching a solution for Skytek, we took a step-by-step process to analyze their digital platforms, such as their website and social media accounts. As a team, we started off by conducting an extensive Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis of their Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and company website. We recognized many strengths, such having concise information on their website, featuring a diverse group of people in their branding, having a good colour scheme that ties into their brand and an overall aesthetic look to their website. Some areas of improvement included creating more frequent posts, developing graphics that are at a higher quality for social media pages, ensuring all content is relevant to the business and mission, increasing engagement, and overall building more of a presence online for the company brand. 

As a result, our team focused on improving the social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, since these were the platforms that were to have a higher outreach to their target market. In addition, we were also interested in increasing more awareness about Skytek, such as their products, services and value proposition, as we saw it was missing in their current marketing efforts. SMC values the importance of ensuring that all social media platforms are consistent in the way they market a company, so we suggested posting these campaigns on both LinkedIn and Facebook with 40-80 characters per caption. This would help increase engagement, so people are able to learn about valuable information of the firm. We also created a cover page for their Facebook and LinkedIn, which stated “Stay Connected, Build Success”, as we saw this as a great opportunity to market what Skytek truly stands for. This revamped social media strategy helped Skytek build a foundation on developing more creative forms of marketing.

Highlights

Industry: With the unique and niche nature of the industry,  online presence is essential. With the large saturation of competitors, it is very difficult for Skytek to stand out without a strong social media and digital presence.

Nature of the Company: With the COVID-19 pandemic, their executive office spaces were directly affected. However, they were quickly able to adapt to the situation with the addition of Skytek’s virtual offices. 

Competition: Due to the unique and international nature of the market, Skytek faced many competitors both domestically and across the border. The international nature of the market also emphasized the importance of leveraging digital marketing to reach audiences that are not within the geographical area of Skytek. 

Did we develop any new skills?: With Skyteks focus on social media strategy, the team was able to learn a multitude of skills for this project. Some of these skills include social media content creation, campaign creation, market research, and more. 

How will this experience allow your team to grow?: This project allowed the team to learn about and utilize our individual strengths, as well as improve on our weaknesses. With the focus on how the business was affected by COVID-19, it also allowed the team to get a unique experience that many have not faced before. 

What surprised us?: One thing that surprised us was Skytek’s focus on helping out small businesses. During these trying times it is important that we help entrepreneurs and their projects, and Skytek has many programs that directly work towards expanding the network and knowledge of small business owners. 

Keys to Success

#1 - Open Communication with the Client is Crucial

When dealing with clients remotely it is important to keep an open line of communication throughout the entirety of the project. Ensuring to have weekly or bi-weekly check-in meetings are very beneficial in ensuring everyone is on the same page.

#2 - Always plan out and schedule your work at the start of the project

When starting the project with a plan that all members of the team understand it will help keep team members on track and help guarantee work will be complete properly and on time. Although sticking to a structure is good it is also important to be adaptable and to not be afraid of adjusting the plan as things change throughout the project.

#3 - Foster an open team environment

In order to be successful, especially with the online working environment, everyone must feel comfortable to share their ideas and ask questions. Being open to try new things and learn from each other will help team members build the best possible solutions.

#4 - Set clear goals for the team and individual members.

It is important to remember that although our first priority is helping our clients, we are a student-run organization with lots to learn. Teams should get together and write out what they want to accomplish during the project and track their progress along the way. Secondly, individual members should write down what they want to get out of the project and work on aspects of the project that they want to learn.