Gateway Powder Coating
ROI = Relaxing On an Island
SUCCESS STORY
At the culmination of the first year of our campaigns together, Gateway Powder Coating and Drive were able to drive down lead costs to $3.28 each, which led to an overall increase in revenue of 21% from Drive-attributed purchases during this time. This led to owner Mark being able to sell his business and finally retire. First Year Results:
1,582
Leads
$3.28
Cost Per Lead
$14.32
Cost Per Purchase
7.8X
Return On Investment
THEIR STORY
Coming Back for a Reunion
Gateway Powder Coating gives any object personality. While much of their focus is on car, truck, and motorcycle rims, they stand out from other similar companies by coating literally anything their customers bring them from lawn furniture, to bicycles, to automotive parts.
Gateway Powder Coating was previously a Drive partner that left for a period years ago before Facebook offered the ability to track offline conversions and before our proprietary tracking software, Marketing Milk, had been developed. Gateway Powder Coating had previously tracked research metrics like website visitors, but wasn’t able to see the complete customer journey with clear ROI metrics due to technological constraints.
This time around, we had a more tangible goal that could result in increased sales for the business. Considering the personnel that Gateway Powder Coating had, we decided we would create a strategy centered around in-platform Facebook leads submissions.
Many business don’t believe that lead generation on Facebook works because their “leads don’t close”, but commonly, it’s more of a matter of standardizing the sales process to close leads than the leads being poor quality themselves. Since Gateway Powder Coating had the staff in place to be able to call leads within 10 minutes of submission, as well as follow-up 5-7 times each, for every lead, every time, lead generation was a viable strategy for the business.
THEIR GOAL
Driving Towards an Exit
When Drive re-partnered with Gateway Powder Coating, our goal was to scale the return from digital advertising to the point that owner Mark could sell or franchise-out his business and live the good life of retirement. We couldn’t say for sure exactly what revenue total that would need to be, but we set a goal of getting to a 3X ROI or a $27 CPA over the first year and scaling our ads out from there.
OUR SOLUTION
More than Rims
In 2020, you have to look at your business as an online company with a brick-and-mortar pickup store. Gateway Powder Coating understood that once that a person reached out and went from digital to physical it was very important to continuously follow up. We lead a busy life. But for good customers we owe it to them to call over and over till they give us thumbs up or thumbs down and not prequalifying any leads.First touch is speed of communication from lead submission to contact so we knew we needed a sales person. Sales first product second.
We used Gateway Powder Coating’s existing customer database to retarget customers who hadn’t purchased over a specific period of time, as well as build and A.I-driven lookalike audiences to retarget individuals who walk, talk, and act like Gateway Powder Coating’s current customers within a 1% variation.
We then created ads that highlighted Gateway Powder Coating’s two main value propositions: Improved aesthetics and protection. We utilized a mix of ads that address both of these by focusing on both the practical and recreational use of the product.
We also highlighted price-conscious specials offers, high-end services, and retargeted any website visitors that remained anonymous with a free giveaway campaign to get information from unidentified researchers.
OUR SUCCESS
Eye-Catching Results
We crushed every goal we set. Our CPA was nearly 50% less than our established goal. We more than doubled our ROI target. We attributed 21% of overall sales to our advertising efforts, and in June of 2020, Mark was able to achieve his goal of selling the business and retiring. We look forward to working with the new ownership on scaling to the point of becoming a franchise, as well as picturing Mark in a straw hat and hawaiian shirt every day for the foreseeable future.
“It was a pleasure and I look forward to restarting the process when it comes to helping franchisees create their individual marketing needs. For now it is Sandy beaches and cocktails to start out my retirement.”
— Mark E., Owner, Gateway Powder Coating
PRODUCTS USED
Static Ads
Carousel Ads
Dynamic Creative Ads