Growing a financial services company from four regional to 11 national service centers

Foundation Financial Group

Foundation Financial Group wanted to gain nationwide exposure. This campaign earned media coverage for the company's accomplishments and highlighted its fast growth. As a result, Foundation Financial Group has increased its visibility locally, regionally, and nationally, which, in turn, has increased the company’s ability to grow revenue and expand by entering new geographic markets and adding additional financial services exponentially.

The business challenge

When Foundation Financial Group came to Axia Public Relations, it was a mostly unknown brand. In fact, it had a negative reputation and needed reputation management services. Axia PR recommended the company focus on media exposure to reach its goal of gaining national awareness for its mortgage product, as well as its emerging insurance, retirement, and tax expertise. This included pitching the company and its executives as experts for news stories.

Axia identified the company’s need for exposure and constructed a strategic plan to have Foundation Financial Group appear in national and local news among its 11 U.S. locations. Foundation Financial Group gained recognition as a leading national mortgage player by highlighting its best business qualities: fast growth and aggressive expansion.

To do this, Axia’s team focused on gaining media exposure for the company's accomplishments as well as its focus on customer service and educating customers.

Prior to hiring Axia, Foundation Financial Group had never received an award. Axia created an awards program to highlight the company's achievements.

The solution

The solutions were to turn the negative listings on search engines into positive ones by earning favorable news media coverage, using SEO strategies like online reputation management and autocomplete SEO, earning annual local, industry, national, and global business, employment, leadership, and community awards nominations, and booking local, industry, national, business, and community speaking engagements.

The results

Over two years, Foundation Financial Group gained local and national awareness, which increased the company's revenue exponentially.

I have very high standards… Axia has delivered on that.”

Mark W. Boyer, Foundation Financial Group

Foundation Financial Group earned recognition for its strengths with 20 awards. This included recognition as one of the “Best and Brightest Companies to Work for in Atlanta” from the National Association for Business Resources, which referred to the company as “a superior workplace based on excellence in its innovative strategies as well as industry leadership.” Others noted Foundation Financial Group as a great company to work for and motivated top mortgage professionals to pursue a career there.

Other awards Foundation Financial Group received were 904 Magazine’s “Companies with Heart” and Jacksonville Magazine’s “Companies Who Care.” The Jacksonville Business Journal listed the company’s CFO as one of the “Ultimate CFOs in North Florida.” National Mortgage Professional Magazine also honored the company’s CEO, Mark Boyer, with its prestigious “40 Under 40" award, citing him as a top financial business leader in the U.S., determined by votes from peers. The American Business Awards named the company as a finalist in the “Company of the Year – Banking and Financial Services” category. Finally, Foundation Financial Group’s biggest media success was an award from Inc. magazine, which has an international readership. The magazine named Foundation Financial Group one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. in its annual Inc. 500|5000 list of private companies. Foundation Financial Group was able to gain the recognition it needed to get its name on the map.

The success continued in all forms of exposure, including social media. The company went from having a nonexistent presence on Facebook and Twitter to having approximately 10,000 likes on Facebook and nearly 9,000 followers on Twitter.

Four months into its relationship with Axia, Foundation Financial Group sat down to discuss the campaign in an evaluation meeting. The CEO said Axia had far exceeded the company's expectations. He said their recruiters no longer had to double or triple book employment interviews because they went from having a high no-show rate to a near-zero no-show rate for job interviews. He said employees felt more enthusiastic about the culture of Foundation Financial Group and happy to be part of its journey. Positive comments from employees' family and friends after reading the news coverage increased morale for staff as well, which translated into greater sales and productivity.

Boyer said he felt confident his staff was committed to the vision of growth for the company and no longer struggled with finding talented financial candidates to fill positions. Foundation Financial Group was now a company people recognized, trusted, and wanted to be a part of.

Foundation Financial Group is no longer an obscure financial services company. Instead, the company is a competitive mortgage business with a wave of new clients and talent wanting to be part of its vision. The confidence and momentum gained from this campaign helped Foundation Financial Group continue to accelerate its national growth.

During the two-year campaign period, Axia generated more than 1,503 articles of earned positive media for the client. Foundation Financial Group’s earned positive media coverage represents an ROI of 183 times – a dramatic return made more impressive by the company’s revenue growth.

This case study included $62.5 million in AVE. Axia prefers better metrics to show the value of earned media coverage. Check out why you should stop using AVE to measure earned media coverage.

Highlights