Reaching More Potential Customers Through Online Marketing: A Success Story
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 9:15 am
International Machinery, a Canadian dealer of used and reconditioned heavy-duty trucks, has been in business for over 30 years. The family-owned company in Maple Ridge, British Columbia prides itself on maintaining high quality standards and a rigorous vehicle reconditioning and inspection system.
For the past few years, International Machinery had been focusing heavily on its online marketing . The company had built a successful website that enjoyed significant traffic and a high conversion rate of leads through organic SEO. The website provided a steady stream of leads, but over time it had become less appealing and less user-friendly.
In 2016, the team decided to modernize it. They chose a partner agency from the United States that specialized in truck and RV marketing. They felt they were in good hands with a digital marketing agency that understood the company’s business. The new website was launched in the spring of 2017, with the hope that it would help grow business.
A new website with disappointing performance
The new website looked great, and the updated logo looked great. However, upon launch, International Machinery owner Mike Faulkner sensed something was wrong.
Potential customers stopped coming to the new site as soon as it went live. And the previously steady flow of potential customers didn’t pick up over time. Was it a change in the industry? A technical glitch with the website? Mike Faulkner reached out to the agency for answers, but despite numerous calls and meetings, nothing changed.
With the website's results still poor after six months, Mike Faulkner engineer database decided to get a second opinion on what might have happened. BDC stepped in to help.
New approach yields impressive results
The collaboration with BDC yielded impressive results, including a 184% increase in leads generated through the website. By the time the collaboration ended, Mike Faulkner had a banner month, making six sales in nine days from leads generated through the site.
"Our experience with BDC introduced us to online marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and website analytics functions," he emphasizes.
Step 1: Conduct a digital audit
How did the website, after providing no leads for a while, manage to generate six sales in nine days? We first looked under the hood, examined its technical performance and inspected all the elements that make a website work properly.
We discovered that International Machinery's had technical glitches and that a major error had occurred when it was launched: its 301 redirects had not been configured correctly, causing it to lose its ranking in search results.
Step 2: Establish the Foundation for Sustainable Online Marketing Activities
We met with the agency partner and shared our findings with them. We also provided them with a list of website fixes and mentoring so they would be better able to support Mike Faulkner and help him strengthen his website’s organic SEO.
Our recommendations included the following measures.
Review and optimize website metadata (the information the website sends to a search engine like Google or Bing).
Use the typical customer profiles that the website is trying to target.
Define keywords to attract only the targeted potential customers.
Edit key website content to better showcase the company's unique qualities and improve organic results.
Prioritize restoring organic ranking lost as a result of the error that occurred in the 301 redirect process.
Review the SEO of advertising texts to better attract the ideal clientele – potential buyers of used trucks.
Step 3: Refine the digital marketing strategy
After establishing a solid foundation, we worked with Mike Faulkner to better define his digital marketing strategy and spent time with him during the implementation, including helping him run online marketing campaigns so he could better understand how to manage and lead his team and agency partner.
The results
Thanks to the changes BDC implemented for International Machinery, the phones started ringing again and interested potential customers started pouring in. After four months, the company's website recorded the following results:
79%
increase in overall web traffic
136%
increase in organic traffic
184%
increase in contact form submissions
International Machinery is very pleased with the results so far. “BDC quickly identified the major problems with our new website and our vendor,” says Mike Faulkner . “It turned out that the agency had done just about everything wrong. Our potential customer base dropped off alarmingly when our new vendor redesigned our website, but BDC quickly turned things around.”
What about your business? Do you need help preparing your online marketing campaign? Would you like a second opinion on how your website is performing? Contact us .
For the past few years, International Machinery had been focusing heavily on its online marketing . The company had built a successful website that enjoyed significant traffic and a high conversion rate of leads through organic SEO. The website provided a steady stream of leads, but over time it had become less appealing and less user-friendly.
In 2016, the team decided to modernize it. They chose a partner agency from the United States that specialized in truck and RV marketing. They felt they were in good hands with a digital marketing agency that understood the company’s business. The new website was launched in the spring of 2017, with the hope that it would help grow business.
A new website with disappointing performance
The new website looked great, and the updated logo looked great. However, upon launch, International Machinery owner Mike Faulkner sensed something was wrong.
Potential customers stopped coming to the new site as soon as it went live. And the previously steady flow of potential customers didn’t pick up over time. Was it a change in the industry? A technical glitch with the website? Mike Faulkner reached out to the agency for answers, but despite numerous calls and meetings, nothing changed.
With the website's results still poor after six months, Mike Faulkner engineer database decided to get a second opinion on what might have happened. BDC stepped in to help.
New approach yields impressive results
The collaboration with BDC yielded impressive results, including a 184% increase in leads generated through the website. By the time the collaboration ended, Mike Faulkner had a banner month, making six sales in nine days from leads generated through the site.
"Our experience with BDC introduced us to online marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and website analytics functions," he emphasizes.
Step 1: Conduct a digital audit
How did the website, after providing no leads for a while, manage to generate six sales in nine days? We first looked under the hood, examined its technical performance and inspected all the elements that make a website work properly.
We discovered that International Machinery's had technical glitches and that a major error had occurred when it was launched: its 301 redirects had not been configured correctly, causing it to lose its ranking in search results.
Step 2: Establish the Foundation for Sustainable Online Marketing Activities
We met with the agency partner and shared our findings with them. We also provided them with a list of website fixes and mentoring so they would be better able to support Mike Faulkner and help him strengthen his website’s organic SEO.
Our recommendations included the following measures.
Review and optimize website metadata (the information the website sends to a search engine like Google or Bing).
Use the typical customer profiles that the website is trying to target.
Define keywords to attract only the targeted potential customers.
Edit key website content to better showcase the company's unique qualities and improve organic results.
Prioritize restoring organic ranking lost as a result of the error that occurred in the 301 redirect process.
Review the SEO of advertising texts to better attract the ideal clientele – potential buyers of used trucks.
Step 3: Refine the digital marketing strategy
After establishing a solid foundation, we worked with Mike Faulkner to better define his digital marketing strategy and spent time with him during the implementation, including helping him run online marketing campaigns so he could better understand how to manage and lead his team and agency partner.
The results
Thanks to the changes BDC implemented for International Machinery, the phones started ringing again and interested potential customers started pouring in. After four months, the company's website recorded the following results:
79%
increase in overall web traffic
136%
increase in organic traffic
184%
increase in contact form submissions
International Machinery is very pleased with the results so far. “BDC quickly identified the major problems with our new website and our vendor,” says Mike Faulkner . “It turned out that the agency had done just about everything wrong. Our potential customer base dropped off alarmingly when our new vendor redesigned our website, but BDC quickly turned things around.”
What about your business? Do you need help preparing your online marketing campaign? Would you like a second opinion on how your website is performing? Contact us .