Driving Success for Rainbow Muffler & Brake
Challenge
Last summer, Cleveland-based Rainbow Muffler & Brake contacted madison/miles media after finding us on the World Marketing Collective and looking into our digital marketing services. The company’s marketing efforts were underperforming, and it needed more leads (in the form of calls, specifically) for its six locations. Rainbow Muffler & Brake has been providing quality auto services in Northern Ohio since 1980. In addition to exhaust work and brake service, it offers complete auto repair and maintenance services for cars and light trucks of all makes and models. Delivering high-quality service at a mid-range cost, the family-owned company struggled to differentiate itself from inexpensive, lower-quality competitors and higher-cost, big-name competitors. Rainbow Muffler & Brake’s marketing avenues included pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, several websites and a Facebook account. Although the marketing efforts weren’t consistently measured or monitored, the owners knew their marketing wasn’t working well enough. Sales weren’t what they needed to be, and they had to gain more leads. A change was essential. With too much on their plates, the owners lacked the time and expertise to devote to marketing. They needed us to create a solid strategy, manage the marketing program and — most importantly — deliver leads.
Solution
Rainbow Muffler & Brake had multiple websites — a general one with all the locations’ information, as well as an individual site for each location. Online ads led to the different sites, which had outdated design and were lacking in content. They ranked for the company name but weren’t drawing in leads earlier in the buyer’s journey. A new website — one that draws in visitors with optimized, keyword-based content; captures leads with landing pages; and monitors conversions with tracked phone numbers — was essential. But before starting on the site and updating the branding, we knew it was imperative to create a proper strategy with baselines and goals. Beginning with a discovery meeting, we dove into the details of Rainbow Muffler & Brake — the business’s strengths and challenges, buyers and competitors, future goals and past performance. We looked at their wants and, more importantly, their needs. We researched and created buyer personas, analyzed competitors, defined their differentiators and determined local and industry influencers. All this came together in our proprietary m360 Marketing Map — a comprehensive guide to propelling their business. Our strategy’s tactics included backlink development, citation building, online review management, SEO and social media management. But at the heart of it all was an auto repair blog and lead-generation offers created on the HubSpot platform and centered on a keyword strategy and buyer personas. Once we solidified our plan, it was time to execute. Because Rainbow Muffler & Brake needed more leads immediately, we launched the Rainbow Muffler & Brake blog on the client’s old site to begin boosting organic traffic. Simultaneously, we redesigned and reconfigured the website, planning its features around customers’ behavior and needs. The new site is about more than sharing location information or telling people about Rainbow Muffler & Brake’s services. It’s about generating inbound leads. The previous Rainbow Muffler & Brake sites lacked a distinctive look, so we had a blank slate for the new site’s fresh design. The only exception was the logo. It was important to Rainbow Muffler & Brake to use their existing logo in its original form. With this in mind, the new site borrows two shades of blue from the logo as the basis of the color scheme. The goal with the design was to give Rainbow Muffler & Brake the look of an industry authority, while communicating a friendly, trustworthy, neighborly feel as well. Ease of use and responsiveness were also chief concerns throughout the process. The hero images all use a subtle rainbow-hue effect to reinforce Rainbow’s Muffler & Brake’s brand identity. The overarching goals of the layouts are cleanliness and clarity, executed through a limited color palette, comfortable margins and big icons. We used a round sans-serif font in varying widths, along with a serif font for readable body copy. The locations area of the homepage addresses the challenge of listing each location and showing them individually on a large, readable map — without taking up a lot of vertical space on the page. It’s designed to be intuitively interactive on any device. To become more visible in search results, our SEO specialists wrote multiple service pages, which then link to the locations that offer the specific service. We integrated a HubSpot-hosted blog, which includes a form for readers to subscribe to updates. We also created a landing page to use with PPC advertising. To capture leads, we wrote and designed an e-book and hosted it on an additional HubSpot-based landing page. Relevant blog posts include a CTA to download the offer, and we set up workflows to send follow-up emails after visitors opt in. To quantify conversions from the site, we integrated HubSpot tracking code that logs when a visitor fills out a contact form or clicks a phone number.
Results
For Rainbow Muffler & Brake, the number of calls is the most important metric. With more calls, they have more customers and better profitability. As a result of our efforts, calls to Rainbow Muffler & Brake increased 2.75 times in just two months. Now, five months later, the locations receive more than 5 times as many calls than when we began. Website Sessions As you can see from the graph above, website sessions also have increased steadily since the site’s launch in October 2017. Naturally, new customers followed the additional traffic and calls. Almost immediately, Rainbow Muffler & Brake saw a noticeable uptick in business. Historically, the company’s sales decline between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, in 2017 they maintained steady business during the holiday season and achieved 14% growth overall — with one location up 32% — over the same period in 2016. ” The sales overall are up compared to last year, which is fantastic,” says Christine Boyce, co-owner of Rainbow Muffler & Brake. ” I am excited to see how the shops do this spring, which is our busy season.” Through our strategy-based efforts, we’ve driven more traffic to Rainbow Muffler & Brake, delivering the necessary calls and customers with a high ROI.
madison/miles media
madison/miles media is a content-driven digital marketing agency, with a focus on awesome work and measurable results. Our sweet spot is partnering with B2B businesses making $5 million to $150 million in revenue to accelerate their marketing and get results. For the past 13 years, we’ve leveraged significant sales experience,...
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