How We Rebuilt A Digital Campaign & Increased Conversions Over 315% During A Pandemic

PROJECT BREAKDOWN

Working with the management team, we started with a phased approach, using an agile methodology for strategy, messaging, design, development, SEO and marketing.

CHALLENGE

After sitting with management, completing audits and competitor research, it became very clear that major changes were necessary to eliminate wasteful Pay-Per-Click (PPC) spending and create an updated website experience that provided the user with more information about the cabinet products, available options and services offered. New site features such as showing the color options for cabinets and countertops, as well as standard included features were essential to demonstrate quality and custom craftsmanship. In addition, it was important to communicate that Cabinets Plus is a family-owned business that offers strong warranties for their products and materials. This messaging was important for the owners, and differentiated them in the marketplace. Other big-box cabinet manufacturers build inferior products and have inadequate quality control processes, at far greater prices.

ASSESSMENT

The project required a major overhaul of the Cabinets Plus brand across all digital channels that consisted of improvements to messaging, user experience (UI/UX), website design and advertising. The strategy shifted from the previous agency’s direction, and was conceived with KPIs and results in mind. We knew that if we were to take on this project, we needed to track its success (or failure) and this was echoed by the client as a requirement.

At the onset, a thorough audit was conducted to look at keywords, search phrases and competitors to learn what was working, what wasn’t, and available opportunities. With that came research into personas to identify primary and secondary target markets and develop a messaging framework that spoke to them. This research was critical to shape the strategy moving forward and allow our strategists and content / search engine optimization writers with a strategic guide to move forward in a consistent manner to speak to the right customer.

SOLUTION

Having completed the strategy, our plan was put into motion. The next step consisted of redesigning the website, focusing on user experience and engagement, while being mindful of site performance and search engine optimization. Using the messaging framework, our content developers carefully crafted search engine optimized content and a new sitemap that helped the user quickly identify the different products that were available along with custom options. From there we started on the website design following the newly adopted brand guidelines and built the website upon Roots.io, a modern WordPress development framework. This framework turns the out-of-the-box WordPress install and puts it on steroids, to give our developers tools they are accustomed to in custom development IDEs, thus allowing them to build and push to staging and production servers quickly and efficiently. This framework also allows our developers to resolve basic WordPress deficiencies that create performance bottlenecks, such as render blocking JavaScript and CSS. The result was a fully responsive website across all mobile devices, utilizing advanced caching such as Varnish and Redis to make the site load quickly. This site speed is critical for search engine optimization (SEO) performance and organic traffic, as it is factored into search results by search engines like Google.

With the website build underway, our marketing team got to work on a complete overhaul of the PPC campaigns. The account had major issues to overcome, such as overlapping keywords with negative keywords, demographics/regions, and poor use of phrase/broad/exact match terms. Utilizing our research, we constructed an entirely new campaign from the ground up, focusing on transactional keywords and phrases that showed buyer intent to eliminate this wasteful spend and increase engagement and conversions. For example, keywords such as “Entertainment Center” when in use as a broad match term would yield results for music and concert events at local stadiums and events, instead of “entertainment center cabinets” for a home. This correction alone translated to savings monthly. From there we created a small pilot campaign to track the progress along with A/B testing to see which ads, ad groups and keywords were effective with each passing week and month iterating to hone the scalable, and optimized lead gen program. In addition, we utilized other marketing techniques to get in front of and remind potential customers of our offers with remarketing and display ads.

RESULTS

Measuring success was paramount. We defined measurable success and key performance indicators (KPI) with management, allowing us to track and report on program success beyond whether leads were coming in and the phone was ringing. To do this, implementing reporting tools such as CallRail, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics were essential. CallRail allowed us to track calls coming in from various sources and relate it to certain ads and keywords within the campaign, and Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics allow us to define the events and behaviors we expected to create a conversion. Did the conversion register when someone picked up the phone and called? Perhaps when they filled out a form requesting more information? All of these were trackable events that triggered metrics to be recorded for reporting purpose.

After implementation and deployment of the website and optimized marketing campaign, the results were clear, even during a pandemic:

This above table highlights the tremendous improvements that were made by optimizing the previous campaign, effectively targeting and optimizing keywords and phrases, using negative keywords as strategy to eliminate wasteful spend, and leveraging competitor-specific campaigns. Impressions have increased by a staggering 8288% over the previous year, and clicks increased by an astounding 3559% over the previous year. The most important KPI, conversions, increased by 310% during this same period. This showcased effective marketing to a researched target customer with a slight increase in ad spend monthly--only 6.7%.

Each month, on-going optimizations and adjustments are made and tracked via KPIs and reporting which is reviewed with the client, along with strategy for the coming month. This includes on page optimizations, as well as content creation and strategy.