Zano Controls’ 10-year growth journey: The full-funnel marketing strategy that built a market-leading brand

From zero to hero: building a brand into the recognised market leader

Zano Controls are a trailblazing electrical manufacturer who brought the first digital LED dimmer to the lighting control market. Their innovation, technical skill and distinctive branding have made them a recognisable, trusted brand in LED lighting control. 

Yet, when they enlisted Nutcracker, over 10 years ago, they had no marketing and no brand presence: just an innovative product, that most of their audience didn’t even know they needed.

Zano had more than its fair share of challenges. Their product was ahead of the curve: most of their audience didn’t know they needed digital LED dimmers and had become accustomed to ‘making do’ with lesser-quality products. They were up against well-established competitors with loyal customers and significant market share, in a sector where trust is hard-won. Plus, they were building a brand from the ground up. Education, brand building, and targeting would be critical to reach the right audience, with the right message, and engage this challenging customer base of time-poor electrical contractors and wholesalers.

Nutcracker built the Zano Controls brand from scratch: creating a strong voice and consistent visual identity across all touchpoints of the business, which resonated with their audience and stood out against competitors. From their striking black, white and blue branding to attention-grabbing straplines and USPs, we built a brand that looked and felt different to everything else on the market. Using creative campaigns that spoke directly to lighting professionals, we underlined the ground-breaking technical ability of both the company and their products. 


Case study illustration
Case study illustration

Behind the scenes, Nutcracker CEO, Jenny Knighting, worked in-house with Team Zano to curate a solid sales and marketing strategy. By exploring multiple channels, including telesales, lead generation and trade events, as well as direct-to-installer marketing, Nutcracker was able to build strong relationships with wholesalers and electricians alike.

With this strong commercial strategy at the heart of everything, Nutcracker have driven audience growth and brand awareness through social media and email marketing, while continuing to enhance the brand identity through a wide range of content creation, from blogs and guides to instructional videos. This content also allowed us to build rapport with leading electrical industry publications, resulting in regular Zano appearances across the trade press.

Social media has been a key part of the brand’s growth. We quickly built a following from zero to over 15,000, which is over 2,000 higher than key competitor follower counts, in a market that traditionally has limited engagement from customers. Our creative campaigns and platform management have driven over 10 million impressions to their social media pages, including 450,000 video views and 175,000 engagements. 

In 2022, we launched their new e-commerce website, writing, designing, building, and driving sales through this new channel – giving more control to prospects and changing how they could engage with the brand.

We have driven £70,000 in e-commerce sales since the launch of their e-commerce website, alongside thousands each week through direct telesales. That’s purely from direct e-commerce sales: wholesale and third-party sales continued to grow thanks to Zano’s burgeoning brand visibility,

Over 77,000 new users have been welcomed to the new website, with our content reaching 3,000 views per blog.

Through email marketing, we have also connected with 50,000 industry professionals that meet Zano’s sales criteria, achieving average open rates of 27%, which is well above the industry benchmark.

Through about two years of direct outreach, we’ve also raised the CEO’s LinkedIn profile to nearly 4,000 connections with industry professionals, which has supported our work driving the company page to nearly 3,000 followers – triple the follower count of Zano’s nearest competitor.

Nutcracker’s services have kept expanding alongside Zano’s growth, resulting in Zano being branded as “the best dimmers on the market” by numerous electricians.

Here’s a full breakdown of all the services we provided over a ten-year span:

  • In-house sales and marketing management
  • Telesales
  • Social media management
  • Branding and packaging
  • Email marketing and data management
  • Blog content
  • Creative marketing materials
  • LinkedIn outreach from the CEO’s profile
  • Paid social
  • Events
  • PR
  • Website design, build and management

“Nutcracker is an award-winning marketing agency for good reason. Jenny and the team are exceptional. With their skills, passion, and dedication, they really are the only team for the job.” – Mark Lewin, CEO 

We love helping disruptive new businesses find their slice of market share through brand building, storytelling and marketing strategy. For more information, or an initial chat about the possibilities, email jenny.knighting@nutcrcakeragency.com