Digital Marketing Transformation [Case Study]

• Updated on: 2017-09-28
• Read original article here

Digital marketing transformation is something that I talk a lot about online and with clients. When focusing on the marketing portion of this crucial business exercise, it can impact all levels of a company from top down. Unfortunately, digital marketing transformation is so commonly thrown around as a buzz phrase that it can be a bit obscure for many brand leadership to truly understand.

So clarifying a digital marketing transformation case study, using real data, can be extremely enlightening for those with a desire to transform their digital marketing into something that cannot only compete but actually dominate within their market space.

Digital marketing transformation is similar to digital transformation in business. In fact, digital marketing transformation is a significant part of digital business transformation. Where digital transformation encompasses all aspects of a business at every level, digital marketing transformation focuses on just the marketing components and how they connect, effect and improve a business’ bottom line.

So digital marketing transformation involves the total burn down of what is or has been done within an organization and a complete rebuilding of everything necessary to make the brand digital marketing effective in today’s online world. For some brands, that might mean everything from logo, branding and messaging. But for many brands it at least involves a total reworking of all digital marketing channels.

Digital marketing transformation involves the evaluation of existing brand marketing data and channels, conducting industry and competitive market research and then the designing of a customized and comprehensive digital marketing strategy based on all of that compiled information. Easy? Not in the least. Conducting the research required to both gather and analyze important data points and market condition information is crucial, time-consuming and requires specific experience and significant expertise to get right. You must build your transformed digital marketing on a foundation that is based on solid, factual data and not guess-work.

As with all of our digital marketing clients, we are under strict NDA (non-disclosure agreements) with the brand we are going to cover in our case study. We can say that this client is in the home improvement products market, but is not a contractor or construction business. As we begin with our client about two and half years ago, they came to use with a minimal digital footprint and their sole method for traffic, leads and revenue was being derived in-house via paid digital advertising. Their primary lead generation sources were paid search and paid social media advertising.

In this digital marketing transformation case study, we’re going to simplify the information we share to make it easily understood by our readers of all experience level. The data we’re sharing will come from both internal and external reporting sources which are meticulously tracked for results and for making constant modifications to the marketing efforts.

It is important to note that with this client as well as all of the clients we work with, we handle all aspects of their integrated digital marketing efforts for them. We work as their marketing department to manage and execute every component within their digital marketing to ensure four important things;

1) that the brand message stays on point

2) our expertise can be utilized at the highest level for strategy, execution and production

3) that results can be achieved rapidly and increase over time and

4) that our client can focus on their core competencies, knowledge and experience within their industry, market and business, instead of trying to make their marketing work.

Let’s cover some key areas that were transformed for this client:

As we stated, this particular client had virtually no digital footprint when we started with them in 2015. They were connected to a corporate level site that managed their location and was not at all useful for their digital marketing efforts. We followed the steps above to produce their own stand alone domain site with 16 front end pages, beautiful design and totally optimized for mobile, search and lead funnels. We went further last year by also creating a huge online catalog with over 350 products that is growing monthly.

Upon taking over the client’s social media accounts, there was very little traction. In fact their Twitter account had only about 228 followers and zero traffic. Furthermore their only other social presence was on Facebook and it was largely used for pushing ads, but it did have about 4,000 followers. Over time we have completely restructured their account strategy as well as consistently shared targeted content which has grown their Facebook page to 5482 likes and Twitter to over 1320. In conjunction with a unified content and integrated marketing strategy, their social accounts now drive about 5% of their overall website traffic, which continues to increase.

Over the last two years, our team has produced over 215 social media graphics, 89 blog posts, 109 blog graphics, 12 videos and around 16 front end web pages for this client. All of these pieces of content are custom developed and consistently distributed across their digital footprint online. The content that is being produced focuses on the interests of their target audience outside of their industry and the products that they sell. The content share is just about 50% split between these two areas, always giving readers value without direct sales pitches.

Starting from virtually zero two years ago, we managed to drive 8,500 visitors to their website in the first 12 months with a large 73% bounce rate, to last years traffic of 43,572 visitors and a bounce rate of 61%. Fast forward to just so far this year and the traffic has already reached 30,000 visits and a bounce rate of only 53%.So, their traffic has continually and dramatically increased, yet the amount of visitors that arrive on their site and immediately leave, has continually and dramatically decreased. By design.

The most recent numbers are showing that not only is the majority of traffic being driven to the client website coming from organic search, but it now represents 34% of all traffic to the site. What’s more, is that over 80% of the traffic being driven via organic search results are NEW visitors. Additionally, visitors average almost 4 pages per visit. So they come and they stay.

Relating to organic search traffic, the client was not really ranking on any search terms originally, as they did not own their own website in market. Since taking over their digital marketing efforts we have been able to change that significantly. In fact, of the top 50 search terms (of a total of about 150) we track for this client, they rank on page one on desktop and either position 1,2 or 3 on page one for mobile searches. In short, they’re dominating their market for both direct product and industry searches by their target audience as well as key target market content interests that their customers search for regularly.

On average 7-10 per week online, 25 inbound calls/week and numerous untracked weekly walk-ins.

With the ever-changing online landscape and multiple digital marketing channels required to be effective growing, you need to understand that digital marketing transformation is never done. Once the commitment is made to transform your brand’s digital marketing, it will be a continually process of making gains, tracking results and improving and changing again. We’ve seen our client go from just starting to revenues that consistently average from $250,000 to $350,000 per month.

Our clients that have made the commitment to transform their digital marketing have a distinct advantage over their competitors in many ways. Our clients are able to focus on their industry expertise and making their business operations and sales functions highly effective, knowing that their digital marketing is being handled by professionals that know what they are doing. This newly gained focus grows as their trust in us (through the results we achieve) builds over time.

We have done our best to get a clear digital marketing transformation case study across in a short blog post, but understand that there is certainly much more data, channels and results that we have achieved for this client. The point to take from this data is that both committing to digital marketing transformation and having a team that can actually execute it are key to obtaining the desired net effect.

Today digital marketing transformation is a requirement for all businesses, industries and market segments. Most B2C and B2B consumers all start their purchasing process digitally, before you ever see the whites of their eyes or hear their voice on the telephone. Creating a digital footprint based on data and a resulting strategic plan that can actually be executed well is what now separates businesses that are leading in their space and those that are just slowly getting by.

Digital marketing transformation is not at all cheap, but like many things in business, you get what you pay for. Digitally transforming a business and its digital marketing is key to impacting every business’ bottom line.