Plastic Recycling Hub & Maximize Marketing

Speaker: Mario Hilmi, Plastic Recycling HUB

Mario Hilmi: Hi, my name is Mario Helmi. I'm the managing director for plastic recycling hub in Sydney and in Melbourne, we are a plastic recycling company that's focused around uh rigid plastics or plastics that people don't find easy to recycle, such as bins P BC pipes, you know, plastic chairs, items that are a bit obscure, not your normal recycling model. Uh Our objective is to be able to, you know, find a gap in the market and be able to capture all of these types of materials and we turn them back into pellets. So we literally go through a, a whole process of, of breaking down the product and then melting it out and then bringing it back into a, a new form to be able to re be reused by other manufacturers uh for different types of products right across the industry.

Mario Hilmi: Being a startup in your initial years of business. It, it's always difficult to be able to leverage, you know, the diversity that any marketing uh activity brings to, to your organization. From a cost aspect, uh outsource, outsourcing our business to maximize, gave us the opportunity to be able to leverage uh an outsourced resource to, to really start ramping up um some of our marketing activities and our brand awareness and our services uh to the, to the community. And we found that um by using, um you know, maximize to be able to uh do all of our digital marketing for us, uh as well as some of our non digital marketing uh activities was a cost effective way for us to be able to uh really start ramping up the amount of leads the amount of awareness um that we can bring out onto the market. It was very challenging in the early days, uh to be able to con even convince people, uh you know, and I think uh the advantage of outsourcing um to maximize was that it, it, it gave me the capability to really broaden my um exposure across New South Wales Uh And at the same time, gave buyer confidence, you know, when, when a, when a buyer or a supplier or, or even a customer wanting to get rid of plastics knows that you, you know, you've got constant investment in marketing and they see your ads everywhere or they see information about your company everywhere. It gives a lot of strength. Um So, rather than trying to bring it in all in house, we found utilizing um you know, maximize as an outsource company uh a cost effective way uh to still achieve, achieve a very high uh response rate in, in the amount of traffic that was coming in without out laying out, laying uh a lot of costs.

Mario Hilmi: Um the impact that I think plastic recycling hub has seen uh since we started to use maximize uh is, is, you know, probably the, uh the sheer amount of calls, uh the sheer amount of leads, uh and the quality of the leads that are coming through. Uh We, we have seen that, you know, um ever since we did switch over to maximize that, uh there's been a tender, a more focused approach in targeting the customers that we really need to, which is, you know, the, the literally the fortune 500 companies, uh you know, organizations that don't normally think about, um you know, plastic recycling as a, a massive uh you know, saving in waste costs, you know, to today, there's a lot of companies that just throw out their general plastic in their, in the, you know, in the, in the, in the bin or they send it to a landfill and that cost is astronomical, you know, the, the, the rate of the market is $430 a ton and, and we're not even, you know, 20% of that cost. And it, it's one of these scenarios where uh we found that by starting with maximize, uh we've seen a AAA massive growth in the amount of opportunities. We've seen a massive growth in the quality of the opportunities that are coming through as well as the education it's giving out to the market. Uh We do believe that uh you know, we are now considered AAA, definitely a, a small medium enterprise compared to being a, a small business when we first started. and that, that's directly impacted by the initiatives and the creativeness that uh maximize put on the table for us. You know, we, we've seen that we're able to get our messaging out more clearer, we're able to target a younger generation of a market um where, you know, old leaders like me, you know, we're, we're dissolving and, and there's a new generation coming in. So I feel uh having maximized uh with their young approach to be able to target the, the younger leaders um in their campaigns and understand how they think and what the messaging is is probably been the biggest impact for us. So our overall volume of, of plastic that comes in has increased, you know, well, over the 130% mark quarter on quarter. Uh It's been phenomenal growth for us, er, ever since we've, we've joined and it's still growing, we don't see it to grow, we don't see it slowing down, sorry, uh any time soon. Um because we are, we do constantly invest and, and do look at some of the newer ways that they're putting ideas forward for us to be able to move forward.

Mario Hilmi: It's an interesting question uh around giving someone advice where when considering to use, maximize uh when, when we first started to, to use maximize, I was a little bit hesitant with respect to the thought processes that were putting us through, you know, asking us to commit to a three month plan um of building out the market awareness and building out our presence on Google, etcetera. Um That's hard, it's a hard decision for our generation. Uh I, I think the advice I would give is, you know, give them the opportunity to be able to prove to uh present the plan to you like they did with us and, and, and be willing to invest in that plan. I think if we didn't make that decision uh of, you know, committing to the first quarter, we would not have seen the returns that we're seeing at the moment. And, and, you know, we're confident now we, we actually go, we are tied in to maximize uh and we're tied into them comfortably. We, we close our eyes and we let them run with their, their, their thoughts, their initiatives. Uh we, we're just followers because we believe that, you know, we, we've definitely got, uh, more than positive ro i from the investment that we, we made. Um, and, you know, uh, the, uh, you know, biting the bullet and, you know, taking the hat off my head that says, oh, I know what's best cos I've been in the game, uh, I think is probably the wisest thing I did and, and I would advise that to anyone else, you know, take your hat off and don't think that this generation knows it all. They don't uh maximize, definitely knew how to attack the younger generation, who are the new leaders in our industries. Uh You know, they, they knew how to be able to capture their thoughts very quickly and very effectively without that.