Clover
Driving connection, acquisition and long-term expansion.
How Clover is flourishing through strategic brand design and performance marketing.
As a future-facing pipeline infrastructure provider, Clover plays a critical role in driving sustainable community development and economic growth around the country. Their expert team plans, sources, and supplies the network of pipes that forms Australia’s vital underground circulatory system. Every day, millions of tonnes of natural gas, water, and minerals move through this network to provide the lifeblood of major sectors like agriculture, renewable energy, resource extraction, and more.
It’s perfectly fitting then that Clover’s recent history as a business is defined by those same exact themes: sustained and exponential growth, improved connection with significant markets, technical expertise, and cutting-edge innovation. After conducting a full rebrand to better convey their scale, exclusive supplier relationships and capability, Clover has grown into a true tier-one provider in a highly competitive industry. This is the story of their success.
The problem
Australia faces a wide range of unique challenges regarding the supply of crucial resources. This is due to a rapidly growing and vastly distributed population, harsh environmental conditions, and an increased emphasis on sustainable practice. As always, new challenges require new ways of thinking, something Clover embraces with consistent enthusiasm.
The approach
While some established players within the pipeline infrastructure industry are comfortable to look the other way, Clover runs towards the future with courage. After engaging in a rebrand and website redevelopment project, Clover has continuously initiated ongoing programs of performance marketing, website analysis and optimisation, content generation, and improved presence at key trade events.
The end-game
Connection, acquisition, and long-term expansion. Clover has experienced sustained and substantial growth in their program of activity. The team has expanded to new markets, both nationally and internationally. They’ve grown to serve new sectors and develop significant client partnerships in key segments. And they’ve continued to foster impressive depth and breadth of engagement with their existing clients. While Clover always remains future facing, the recent past has seen an incredible trajectory for the business.
CONSISTENT, QUANTIFIABLE BUSINESS GROWTH
In a ten-year period, Clover has experienced huge growth across all key indicators for their business.
From website visitation to opening multiple new warehouses and distribution centres, there’s been universal progress. General visitation to the Clover website has increased by 429% in six years, with contact enquiries for new business up 272%. The team has expanded their geographical footprint, delivered larger and far more sophisticated projects, and secured exclusive key supplier partnerships with global leaders like Superlit, Erciyas, Betta Valve, PipeMakers, and Saint-Gobain PAM.
While these impressive results speak to the value of Clover’s sustained commitment to performance marketing, there’s another crucial aspect to the story: a strategic rebrand to reposition their business and empower the team with the right platform to generate this success.
A REBRAND TO REACH NEW HEIGHTS
In 2018, following the first five years of its operations, Clover experienced solid growth and built a strong industry reputation. Then, they took the next step.
Despite promising progress, Clover still had perception challenges to overcome. When going up against established tier-one competitors in critical tenders or procurements, Clover found itself struggling. The business wasn’t appropriately conveying its true size, scale, or capability to the market.
While Clover’s industry experience, specialist knowledge, and exclusive supplier relationships are vital to communicate, there’s a bigger story waiting to be told. Clover deals with precious resources that are essential for life: water, natural gas, minerals, and more. Supplying these resources in sufficient quality and quantity is literally life-giving work.
At the same time, however, the pipeline industry is fast-paced, demanding, and driven by practicality. There’s a ‘matter of fact’ pragmatism at play, which is reflected in the values and motivations of Clover’s key audiences. In response, the new brand needed to be strong, direct, and grounded in reality. For Clover, it’s equally crucial to deliver in full on time today as it is to have a compelling vision for tomorrow.
FREEDOM THROUGH STRATEGIC FOCUS
In Clover’s legacy identity, crucial brand elements are linked to specific industries. Two of the four colours in the logo represent the organisation’s equal focus on water, gas, and electricity.
It’s extremely difficult to be everything for everyone. Clover shrewdly recognised there is significant value in building deep expertise within a specific category.
This approach informed the decision to focus solely on water infrastructure projects and is reflected in the singular Clover green, itself a nod to sustainable and environmentally conscious project delivery with a view to a brighter collective future. This idea is reiterated and encapsulated in ‘Future Facing Pipeline Infrastructure’, the brand’s key tagline and banner.
Structured to stay nimble, willing to do things differently, and always looking to push the envelope with new technologies and product innovation, Clover knows the importance of moving with the times.
DRIVING GROWTH + EXPANSION
Clover’s new brand has done more than simply better capture and articulate the team’s scale; it has actively driven it to crucial new heights.
In 2020, Clover opened its newest national distribution and office centre in Western Australia. As soon as the team hit the ground in WA, Clover’s performance marketing played a key role in driving visibility and traction in this burgeoning market.
Within the first 12 months in Western Australia, Clover recorded a 136% increase in new business leads and enquiries. In two years, that number grew to a 227% increase in leads and enquiries. In addition to broader business activity, these opportunities played a crucial role in supporting the team to establish a local client base and bolster expansion in a key market for mining. The Western Australian presence would provide a crucial foothold for the delivery of major projects Clover would go on to win and deliver in the resource extraction sector, like FMG Fortescue’s Iron Bridge magnetite mine project: a world-class $3.9 billion mine site delivering 22 million tonnes of high-grade magnetite per annum.
To support a highly technical and discerning customer base through a long, sometimes complex sales cycle, Clover supplies the most comprehensive product literature and materials possible.
SUPPORTING SOPHISTICATED SALES CYCLES
With a long and sophisticated sales cycle to navigate—supporting multiple audiences, from procurement teams and specifiers to technical engineers—Clover’s detailed product documentation provides valuable ‘always on’ sales support.
Sourcing products through exclusive supply partnerships with a global network of leading pipeline infrastructure businesses, Clover has a flexible product suite. Different audiences will use products in variable applications. Stringent requirements for standards, accreditation and compliance only serve to make the situation more complex. Detailed information is key.
Clover‘s highly effective approach to product marketing has been honed over many years through a program of research and optimisation. It continues to drive sales and business development opportunities, with hundreds of thousands of website visitors downloading and viewing Clover’s technical product documentation.
COMMITMENT TO TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE
While digital activity is critical, Clover recognises pipeline infrastructure is a thoroughly hands-on industry. Maintaining personal connections through presence at trade shows and events is vital.
It’s equally important that every aspect of Clover’s brand conveys the innovation and cutting-edge capability that defines their organisation. As a result, the team invests in trade show technology to create an immediately impactful and long-lasting impression.
Over the years, Clover has built an ecosystem of infrastructure to capture and convert prospective customers. One key feature is the team’s BrightWall, a synchronised cluster of multiple screens that makes big, bold videos and imagery impossible to miss. Through shooting, editing, and configuring footage for Clover’s incredible capability across a range of industries, the team ensures that prospects are shown—not told—and every prospect starts the conversation with an immediate understanding and appreciation for the team’s tier-one status.
READY TO DRIVE SIMILAR GROWTH?
Clover has driven significant, sustained progress over a period of many years. If you’re ready to replicate that success, the best time to start is now.
Head over to the Clover website now to learn more about the specific challenges, opportunities, and innovations associated with future-facing pipeline infrastructure.
Or, if you’re ready to start generating the same sort of growth and expansion as Clover, get in contact today.