How One Company Increased Leads by 15x in 5 Months.
Challenge
Linda owns a landscaping business and garden center outside of Elmira, Ontario, called St. Jacobs Country Gardens. This is the story of how she managed to exceed her lead generation goal 15x over and reach her 3-year revenue target in under a year, all while freeing up her time and becoming more profitable. After 14 years in business, Linda was tired of hearing: “We didn’t know you were here” or “I had no idea you did that” from people who lived so close to the Garden Centre. The business was starting to stagnate and she knew she needed to find new ways to reach her target audience. She wanted it to show up when people were looking not only for her nursery services, but for multiple landscaping services in her area. She also wanted her team to showcase their skills in different areas and to diversify the projects they were working on.
Solution
Upon asking other members in the landscaping community about marketing help, Linda was referred to our team member Vanessa at Intrigue. In her conversation with Vanessa, she identified that her goal was to generate 40 new qualified leads by December 31st, 2020. Linda’s criteria for a qualified lead was someone who was looking to complete a design & build landscaping project and had a budget suitable to work with St. Jacobs Country Gardens. Through our MAP Process, we identified the following areas of Linda’s online presence that were impacting both her lead volume and the quality of her leads: 1. A website that was difficult to navigate and did not clearly tell users what action to take (i.e. Book a Consultation). 2. St. Jacobs Country Gardens was showing up lower in Google compared to their local competitors. 3. Their nursery customers were unaware of the landscaping work that they offered. Next, the Intrigue team formulated a plan that would help St. Jacobs generate at least 40 new qualified leads before the end of 2020 and generate an additional $750,000 in revenue during their busy season. Step 1: Website The Intrigue team started by addressing the foundation of any marketing strategy — the website — and took three approaches to increasing leads. The first was the copy on the site. By leveraging keywords that people searched for when looking for their services, the team was able to improve SEO and boost organic traffic. The next step was to focus on the user experience. By organizing powerful imagery with concise copy in a compelling, visually-telling manner, the team was able to drastically increase visitor engagement and time spent on the website. Lastly, strong calls to action were integrated across the website, giving visitors clear direction as to the next steps to take. Step 2: Paid Advertising In addition to the SEO work that was helping increase the website’s organic traffic, the Intrigue team doubled down on a paid advertising strategy that brought in even more visitors. Search ads would appear when people were searching for specific keywords (for example, “landscaping company near me”) and display ads would show up when visiting certain related websites. This strategy led to an increase in website traffic of 12,046 visitors in a 5-month timeframe! Of those visitors to the site: – 104 submitted a request for a consultation – 128 of the visitors called for a quote request That’s 232 new leads! Step 3: Email Marketing The email marketing strategy was created to address the issue of past customers not knowing of St. Jacobs Country Gardens’ full range of services. This was an opportunity to increase sales as existing customers typically convert at a much higher rate than new leads with no prior relationship. A 5-part email drip campaign was created to educate past clients (with whom trust had already been established) of the full range of services offered by St. Jacobs Country Gardens. The results were astounding: the campaign saw an open rate of 70.2% and a click-through rate of 8.4% (by comparison, the industry averages are 14.4% and 1.8% respectively). This directly resulted in several new projects being initiated by existing clients.
Results
It is safe to say that the original goal of generating 40 qualified leads was far exceeded. The reality is that the Intrigue team was able to help St. Jacobs Country Gardens gather: - 362 new leads from the paid Google Ad strategy - 248 additional leads from organic Google traffic as a result of the SEO strategy. In total, the Intrigue team helped deliver 610 new leads — more than 15x the original goal — in a 5 month period. This resulted in St. Jacobs Country Gardens reaching their revenue goal 3 years sooner than they had originally planned. As a result of these strategies, Linda is now hearing the following remarks from people stopping by the Garden Centre: “We’ve heard great things about you” or “We see you everywhere!”. It’s a sharp contrast to what she was previously hearing! Even though she now has more leads than she thought possible, Linda finds herself more focused and productive given that she’s not spending nearly as much time with unqualified leads and tire kickers. If you are interested in seeing similar results for your landscaping company — and want to work with a marketing partner that actually gets the landscaping industry — schedule a call with an Intrigue team member today.
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