Business Challenge Summary

After purchasing a local franchise of a nationwide professional cleaning company, our client was disappointed at the quality and quantity of leads she was getting. When it came to figuring out how to promote a cleaning business, her goals were clear; however, she wasn’t sure how to get there. She enlisted the help of &Marketing to figure out how to stretch her digital advertising budget to successfully market a cleaning business in a way that generated qualified leads that turn into recurring business.

Prior to working with &Marketing, all ads were managed through the national head office. This over generalized approach led to sub optimal corporate-managed landing pages. Additionally, because they were managing at a national level, the ads were extremely broad and not necessarily in line with the needs of the local market. Unfortunately, local optimizations were impossible because the corporate office did not enable franchisees to access their Google Ads account, nor were they willing to segment their approach to be more inline with local markets. This meant our client had no control over the messaging being served to her target audience on behalf of her franchise. This resulted in a frustrated franchisee who knew her ads could be performing better but didn’t know how to work around the limited options.

Solution

&Marketing’s Cleaning Business Marketing Approach

We started by transferring all the franchise’s Google Ads accounts to one our client could access. We then recreated and optimized the ads by building an SEO-optimized landing page with clear CTAs, along with the addition of implementing a call tracking system to make it possible to see which ads were resulting in leads. We then created ROI/ROAS models to track clicks, leads, conversions, and close rates.

We used these metrics to drive recommendations for:

• Weekly optimization of Google Ads based on local performance
• SEO optimization for landing pages
• SEO optimization for franchise landing pages (to be delivered by each franchise to franchise corporate marketing)

&Marketing’s analysis of the existing corporate-managed Google Ads account and historical data revealed significant opportunity to optimize the franchise’s Google Ads and local SEO performance by implementing the following on an ongoing basis:

• Reducing or re-allocating ineffective Google Ads spend
• Implementing a call tracking system to eliminate incoming SPAM or wrong-number calls
• Improving technical SEO
• Model and optimize Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) to ensure the total spend is leading to inbound leads and incremental revenue by optimizing cost per click, conversion rates, and close rates.

After pouring over the data and figuring out a way to work around the initial limitations, the answer was clear – the best way to market a cleaning business is to run targeted Google Ads with locally-optimized SEO. The results speak for themselves.

About &Marketing:

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Business Challenge Summary

A cutting-edge healthcare technology company (BUDDI.AI), whose target audience includes C-level healthcare executives, was poised for major growth in 2021. However, they were playing in a fragmented competitive landscape that would require them to creatively “break through the noise” in order to build and maintain brand awareness, drive lead generation, and achieve tangible results. To become a true thought leader and partner of choice in the industry, they needed to enhance their digital presence.

Like many growing businesses, this client had neither the time nor the resources to hire an internal team to drive the level of marketing strategy and execution needed in order to achieve success. They also struggled with bringing an unknown concept to market and helping potential customers understand the value that it brings to their companies.

&Marketing’s Approach

Internal Discovery & Immersion

Due to the complexity and newness of the company and its product, a foundational “reset” was first needed, to create consistency and alignment within the company itself and ensure their positioning and messaging was delivered in a way that would resonate with their target audience. This discovery phase consisted of:

• A comprehensive review of backgrounding documents from the client
• Several internal stakeholder interviews and exercises
• Supplemental secondary customer research
• A high-level audit of competitor websites and messaging

&Marketing used this as fuel to build the following foundational outputs:

• Audience segmentation, customer research, and identification of pain points
• Brand voice and tonality/personality for each audience segment
• Value proposition and key message document, using our Storytelling & Branding framework
• The customer journey
• Alignment on success goals and KPIs (metrics)

 Business Intelligence

To identify digital marketing opportunities and create the building blocks for a comprehensive strategy and execution plan, &Marketing needed to first understand A) the target audience’s behavior online and B) the competitive digital landscape. To do this, we ran a Business Intelligence and Analytics project for this client to review and assess the digital online landscape:

• Keyword Striking Distance Analysis: Identifying top keyword opportunities based on current rankings
• Enhanced Competitive Analysis: Identifying competitor strengths and opportunities in which Buddi could steal their online market share
• Nontraditional Competitor Analysis: understanding where our target audience is going to consume information about our product/service that are NOT competitors.
• “People Also Ask” Research: Related online searches that may provide less expensive opportunities to rank or advertise for that reach our audience at each stage of the sales funnel

This research served as the building blocks for a future comprehensive strategy and execution plan that would include content, digital advertising, website enhancements, and SEO optimization.

Execution & Reporting

Discovery and Immersion combined with Business Intelligence data allowed &Marketing to create sophisticated, yet engaging content, automated email campaigns and highly targeted paid advertising on Google and LinkedIn helped to drive website traffic, lead generation efforts, and overall brand awareness.

About &Marketing:

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Here’s a story that might sound familiar. You work hard to build a marketing strategy aligned with your business goals. You begin executing on the strategy, but you aren’t seeing the results you want. However, you aren’t quite sure what to do differently or how to make a new plan. Before you know it, other responsibilities creep up and marketing is pushed to the back burner.

On top of this, you aren’t exactly sure how Google Ads work or how to develop an email nurturing program. Then a pandemic hits and all of a sudden it’s been five months since you’ve done any marketing and your lead generation programs are in serious need of revival.

We’ve certainly heard this story before and it led us to develop a quick hit, six-step rescue marketing strategy plan to help businesses bring their lead generation efforts back to life. We’ve broken it down into five steps:

• Analyze Data
• Uncover Insights
• Develop & Implement Recommendations
• Measure Results
• Develop Long-term Plan

&Marketing’s Marketing Strategy Rescue Plan Approach

We had the opportunity to test out our process on a client who needed to kickstart their lead generation efforts after being derailed by the pandemic chaos. Let’s break it down step by step.

Step 1: Analyze data

We went straight for the data first to understand what has been done, identify gaps, assess results from current activity, and identify what is driving those results. We utilized all data platforms the client could provide including:

• Google Analytics
• Google Ads
• Social Advertising
• Search Console
• CRM Data

Additionally, we interviewed current customers to get greater insight into the user experience. This helped frame how we looked at the data to develop actionable insights we could apply to marketing tactics.

Step 2: Uncover Insights

After mining and analyzing the data, we began forming insights to fuel our rescue testing efforts. This means we looked holistically at data to determine overall trends and potential areas of improvement.

In the example of this client, we identified they were not effectively utilizing their data to update their marketing channels or adhering to best practices in Google Ads or LinkedIn. They also weren’t consistently communicating with their prospects.

Step 3: Develop & Implement Recommendations

Using the data and insights gathered, we pulled together a recommended “testing plan.” In order to gain quick results and re-evaluate, we recommend developing a four to six week plan backed by data insights that’s designed to help meet a specific and agreed upon goal.

In this example, our goal was to generate leads. With this information in mind, we laid out a four-step plan to generate leads. Here’s what that looked like:

• Utilize LinkedIn Advertising. We decided to try LinkedIn ads because our client has some high quality downloadable pieces of content that weren’t being fully leveraged. Plus, their audience spends a good deal of time on LinkedIn. We built ads with a call to action to download the content.
• Launch Google Ads.The client had tried running paid search before on Google Ads, but due to competing priorities, they had trouble keeping up. Without a hands-on approach, it’s nearly impossible to adhere to best practices. Our team decided to revamp the account so the client’s site would be included in related search results.
• Test Email Marketing.Email marketing had been done in the past, but with little consistency. Initial results were encouraging, but follow-up was nonexistent. &Marketing put together an email marketing calendar to repurpose existing content. We also created a reporting structure for the sales team to follow up with anyone who engaged with the emails.
• Focus on Content. Though they already had a strong content library, their organic results have been lacking. &Marketing put together a data-backed content calendar to hone in on terms and topics we know their target audience is searching for on Google.

Step 4: Measure ResultsAs with all things marketing (and business), what matters most are the results. Developing ways to measure the tactics against your goal makes it possible to know how things are performing. If you aren’t tracking toward your goal, don’t panic. That simply means you need to try something new. This is why we measure–so we know what works and what doesn’t. The key is testing it for a bit before deciding to invest a great deal of time and money. That way, when you do invest, you will know you aren’t just shooting in the dark.

For this project it was all about lead generation, so our metrics were pretty standard:

• Number of leads broken down by source
• Cost per lead broken down by source
• Meetings booked
• Sales closed

Step 5: Create a Long-term Action Plan

After running the tests and analyzing the metrics in relation to the goals, we had a much better understanding of what performed well and what didn’t, what can be optimized, and what should be scrapped or added. Then we developed an action plan based on the results to best fit the client’s overall business goals.

The Results of Our Marketing Strategy Rescue Plan

In this case we discovered that while LinkedIn was producing leads, data showed the best leads were attributed to the email lead nurturing campaigns. So our recommended plan of action was to focus efforts on email marketing and stop investing in digital ads. This empowered the client to take back the reins on their marketing with an increased confidence that they are using their precious time wisely.

Rescue projects like the one above present opportunities to reset, revise, or restart marketing efforts with the confidence of knowing you are investing your resources wisely to achieve overall business goals. Need help rescuing your marketing for 2021? Contact us and we’ll be happy to put together a rescue project for you to get your marketing back on track.

About the Authors:

Ann Ehinger – Marketing Manager Ann Ehinger serves as the link between clients and creative to drive projects that deliver results. With over a decade of experience working in the nonprofit, technology, and agency space, Ann is adept at managing a project from idea to completion while navigating all the ups and downs that pop up in between.

Paul Ferguson – As a Marketing Director at &Marketing, Paul Ferguson uses his 16 years of B2B marketing experience to help clients develop fully integrated marketing solutions that make impressions and drive results. Whether it be design-oriented campaigns or digital market execution, Paul skillfully creates strategies backed by data, to effectively reach client’s desired audiences. Paul graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a double minor in Marketing and Business Administration. Visit Paul’s LinkedIn.

About &Marketing:

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.