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41-Year-Old Business Embraces Digital

With four showroom locations and 41 years in business, Beverley Hills Home Improvements is one of the Toronto region’s largest and most trusted window and door dealers.

In the past, the company relied heavily on print advertising, but observed the return on investment from that medium going down year over year. They turned to tbk Creative for assistance in determining the best way to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy.

There were many issues with their previous digital marketing set-up:

1.

No brand identity – The company lacked a purposeful brand identity and, like many of their competitors, were relying on the short-term strategy of attracting customers through promotional offers (E.g., 40% off). We have found that promotional offers are no longer a key differentiator in the home renovation industry because so many groups make similar offers.

2.

Out-dated feeling website – The previous website was less than 6 months old and was professional in design but average in look. As one of Ontario’s largest independent window and door dealers, the previous website didn’t do a great job of representing how large and reputable the company was.

The Old Beverley Hills Website

3.

Problems with SEO – For an organization of their size and reputability, the company had poor overall rankings in Google SERP.

4.

Quantifying ROI – The company was running AdWords campaigns but the performance reports they were receiving were heavy in data and unclear as to how much money they were making on advertising dollars spent.

The Hub & Spoke Model

For about four years, tbk Creative has been describing situations like Beverley Hills’ as a “Hub and Spoke” model. The hub is a commitment to creating the right website and brand identity (that is immersed throughout the website) then, and only then, focusing on the spokes, which are offline, digital programs that drive qualified traffic to the hub. If you can get the hub right, – a strong brand identity and lead conversion-oriented website – spending money on the programs (the spokes) and the brand itself will maximize its ROI.

Keeping this in mind, we produced a sound, new brand identity and a lead-converting website to serve as the company’s marketing hub, then developed and rolled out an integrated digital marketing strategy that would reliably produce brand awareness, website traffic, and qualified leads.

In more detail, here’s what we accomplished:

1.

A new brand identity – The company didn’t have a purposeful brand identity and relied on promotions. tbk Creative developed a brand identity that would appropriately communicate the company’s authentic commitment to consumers’ homes (as well as other brand promises and value propositions) to the marketplace.

2.

High-fidelity artwork files – We created a new professional website on WordPress that contained 11x high-fidelity artwork files. When a web design firm produces high-end PSD files matched with brand-oriented imagery and core messaging, we call this infusion high-fidelity artwork files.

The new website contained

  1. a custom design.
  2. a WordPress content management system.
  3. a mobile-responsive interface.
  4. brand core messaging.
  5. four location pages (for SEO).
  6. accessible web design for people with physical disabilities (WCAG 2.0).
  7. long-scrolling product pages.

3.

Online Sweepstakes – Beverley Hills has a lot of competitors in the Toronto region. To help the company stand out in an ocean of competitors, we created and launched the $25,000 Home Extravaganza — a contest that rewarded one lucky family with an extravagant home make-over.

Contest form page

A side-bar story: When launching Beverley Hills’ sweepstakes, we noticed the conversion rate on the landing page was only 2.3%. After performing a conversion rate optimization (CRO) project, we made five modifications to the website and, as a result, the landing page conversion rate grew to a total of 13.5% (a 487% conversion rate increase). We learned that when a brand or agency is willing to collect data, analyze it objectively, and implement the logical-driven conclusions, a brand’s marketing campaign undergoes profound performance improvements in a short period of time.

4.

Email Marketing – Each month, we created a highly branded email campaign that focused on clever core messaging, a promotion, and a strong call to action. We were committed to making these email campaigns to be amongst the most graphically engaging advertisements in Ontario’s home renovation industry. When the average transaction value often exceeds $5,000, the quality of each consumer touch point matters.

5.

Digital Advertising – We consistently ran an integrated digital advertising program in ten of their markets and conducted proper goal tracking to know which markets, ads, ad products, and keywords were producing the highest return on investment (ROI) for media dollars spent. Items like dollars spent, impressions, clicks, leads generated, average value, and close rate of leads were tracked and measured so the client knew the campaign’s approximate ROI. Moreover, this data would further assist us to iteratively improve their digital advertising campaign over time.

6.

Search Engine Optimization – We took a holistic and comprehensive approach to their search engine optimization, which included but wasn’t limited to

  1. correcting duplicate content issues.
  2. building out further city-specific pages.
  3. ensuring sound on page SEO (canonical, heading structure, meta, URL structure, alternative attributes, etc.).
  4. keyword-rich blogging (a total of 4 blogs were produced per month in the term).

The Results:

Since implementing the new brand identity, website, and digital marketing strategy, the brand has achieved the following (within one year):
  • Organic Search (SEO) – 46% increase
  • Sweepstakes Leads – 3,390 (with a 13.5% conversion rate)
  • Website Traffic – 133% increase
  • Google AdWords – 743% return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • Online leads from website – 297% increase*

*Their previous website set-up goal conversions in September 2014, so we compared September 29, 2015 to December 31, 2015 to September 29, 2014 to December 31, 2014.

What we learned

  • Andrew Schiestel, tbk Creative

    This was a rewarding project for the team to implement because we were able to develop the client’s brand identity and create an effective integrated digital marketing plan. Throughout the process, the team introduced newer technologies, such as HTML5 animated ads, and experimented with the frequency of email campaigns, both of which yielded a higher return on investment. This was a good project to pull out various program analytics and, by tracking performance on creative and frequency of publishing, Beverley Hills was able to hit a point where their ROI was quite high for the amount of marketing dollars being spent.

  • Melissa McInerney, tbk Creative

    In a world of hyper conversion, where every website decision is focused on getting customers' click and contact information or purchase, we chose to take the creative leap and keep a memorable experience at the forefront. The website's main page employs a unique scrolling effect that lets the user control the page's movement. In the window and doors space, this module is certainly outside of the norm, however, the leap was worth it. This unique online experience helped Beverley Hills make a memorable impression on their customers.

  • Kylie McConnell, tbk Creative

    When communicating on behalf of a brand, do so from a place of authenticity and factuality. In an industry as competitive as the window and door renovation space, there are many players in the game trying to grab the consumer’s attention. This can create a lot of “noise” and false promises in the market. I stand proudly knowing that, from the beginning of our partnership with Beverley Hills, the team took the time to meet the people behind the brand name, learn their processes, tour onsite, and learn the ins and outs of the organization. We wholeheartedly understand what makes the Beverley Hills experience unique and valuable to their customers, and we’re able to carry this very real identity throughout their brand transformation, website redesign, and digital marketing projects.

  • Andre LeFort, tbk Creative

    This website project taught me the value of moving towards a larger goal, or set of goals, and how incremental improvements can mitigate risk, allowing us to measure each change along the way. This was exemplified in a few of the website’s components, including (but not limited to) a scrolling intro on the homepage, product landing pages for all product categories, on-site SEO, and website performance updates such as security and speed.

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