How We Helped HarborOne Bank Create a Small Business Hub

HarborOne Bank wanted to create an effective resource hub to help their customers learn how to build better businesses. But, without an internal content team, they didn’t have time to do it themselves. Dave Tryder, HarborOne’s SVP and CMO, immediately saw the value in working with The Small Business Company to get it done.

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Being embedded in HarborOne’s business marketing team allows The Small Business Company to provide ongoing expertise and insight.

To get started, The Small Business Company worked closely with the marketing team to help design the layout of the resource hub and determine the best way to organize content. Presenting information in a segmented way has made it easy for HarborOne’s customers to access the right information depending on where they’re at within their business development process; start-up, recovery, growth, or choosing to sell. As every business is a journey, HarborOne gave their resource hub a rather apt name: ‘Voyage’. 

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Content Selection

Voyage was being built from scratch, so we recommended a full curriculum of content, giving each segment a wealth of information for each stage of business. To select specific content for the curriculum, Dave let us take the reins and is glad he did, adding: “We trust them completely and they are fantastic to work with”. 

We conducted interviews with HarborOne’s customers to collect information for case studies; suggested a comprehensive range of videos and podcasts; and online business planners for their customers to create business, marketing, resilience, and succession plans.

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Talking Numbers

Since Voyage has gone live, HarborOne’s small business traffic has seen a 400% increase — a direct effect of embedding our content within their website. Furthermore, 16% of all small business traffic on the HarborOne website goes to Voyage for information and advice.

“The Small Business Company are a highly valued extension of our Marketing Team, giving us access to their invaluable small business expertise and insights we can’t find anywhere else.” — Dave Tryder

Once the hub was thriving, we identified other places where content could be deployed within HarborOne’s ecosystem. Content was re-used from Voyage and amplified inside other channels such as social and print media, e-newsletters, and direct-to-consumer communications. 

To monitor the effectiveness of Voyage, each month Dave shares HarborOne’s Google Analytics to help decide on new content. Our relationship with HarborOne is an ongoing collaboration as if we’re all sitting at the same table.

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Local Heroes

Small businesses account for an astounding 99.5% of businesses in Massachusetts, while Rhode Island small businesses employ 53.5% of the state’s workforce. Dave and his team truly care about their small business customers and our content and strategies help them effectively reach as many of them as possible. We also help by creating case studies profiling HarborOne’s loyal customers as the local heroes they are.