From a few hundred customers to over 5,000. And the admin role was phased out.
Pool Barrier Certification was already a good business. We helped it grow faster: a campaign to get things moving, a rebuilt website, SEO and blog content that keeps compounding, and automation built into the way the team already works.
5,000+
customers, up from a few hundred
30 min → 2 min
admin per job
95%
of operations on autopilot
The challenge
Brothers Tom and Rob run Pool Barrier Certification, inspecting and certifying pool barriers across Victoria. They hold SPASA's 2024 Inspector of the Year award. The work was good and the reputation was earned.
The problem was the ceiling.
Enquiries came in at one or two a day. Every inspection carried about 30 minutes of admin once the job was done. More jobs meant more paperwork, and more paperwork meant more admin staff to carry it.
Tom didn't need someone to build him a business. He needed the one he had to grow without the office work growing with it.
The approach
This wasn't one campaign and a handover. It's an ongoing engagement, and each piece builds on the last.
A campaign to get things moving. We ran an initial marketing push to put more enquiries in front of the team early.
A rebuilt website. A new site that makes it clear what Pool Barrier Certification does and how to book an inspection.
SEO and blog content that compounds. Search work plus a steady run of articles answering the questions Victorian pool owners actually type into Google. Each article keeps working long after it goes live, and they stack on each other.
Automation built into how they already work. We didn't ask the team to change their process or learn a new system. We set them up to get more out of the software they already used, then built automation into the work that happens after every inspection. Admin per job dropped from 30 minutes to 2.
The results
- Over 5,000 customers, up from a few hundred.
- Enquiries from 1 to 2 a day to 30 to 40 a day at peak.
- Organic search traffic up 500%.
- Admin cut from 30 minutes a job to 2, across thousands of jobs.
- About 95% of operations on autopilot.
- The admin role was phased out. Once the automation was in, the admin work it replaced was effectively an $80K-a-year role, now running for about $100 a month.
Today the business sits on 200+ five-star Google reviews and a 4.9★ average.
Or, in Tom's words: three times as busy, but twice as efficient.
“Three times as busy, but twice as efficient.”
“…cut down admin time and post inspection work from 30 minutes a job to 2 minutes a job.”
“He also set us up to maximise the technology and software we were using, and introduced us to some other software that made our lives and work much easier and more efficient and productive.”
What you can take from this
Look at the admin after every job.
If each job drags paperwork behind it, that's where your next hire is hiding.
Automate how you already work first.
Get more out of the software you're already paying for before you buy anything new.
Treat the website, SEO and content as one system.
A site on its own is a brochure. Add search and content and it keeps compounding.