How Adept Used Digital Marketing to Drive Offline Leads for a Flooring Company

Can digital marketing make a difference for a company built around closing leads offline? It certainly can!

Adept's digital marketing strategy has resulted in a 150% increase in traffic since 2012 for a national flooring company, with additional gains in other areas.

Company Profile

The flooring company has six showrooms where people can buy flooring for home building and renovation projects. More importantly, it has a truck with samples that allows customers to choose flooring from the comfort of their homes.

The company's goal is to attract people into their showrooms or have them book an appointment with the mobile truck. This company isn't targeting DIY enthusiasts, but those wanting to hire someone to handle a complete flooring job.

In 2012, when Adept started working with the company, they were using TV, radio and billboards to drive brand awareness and bring people to their locations.

Marketing Goals

While the flooring company had a website, it didn't want to use the site to make online sales, which is different from the approach taken by many of Adept's clients.

The website is about getting people to book appointments - either in the showroom or with the mobile truck. The goal is to drive a lead that an associate can follow up and close.

That said, the company knew that the website represented an opportunity that could be working better as a marketing channel and revenue generation tool. That's why in spring 2012 it hired Adept to redesign the site and create a digital marketing strategy.

A Blank Canvas

Since the website had not previously been a core focus, for Adept it was like starting with a blank canvas. Adept implemented website analytics to track results and made tweaks to the site throughout the year. To date, conversions are up 91% since the new site was launched.

To bring traffic to the site, Adept used pay per click (PPC) advertising, (including search network, display network (banner ads) and remarketing) and implemented a location-based SEO strategy.

The core strategy was focused around the products offered specific to the locations where they offer them. In other words, since our client wasn’t looking to sell online nationally, it was a locationally-driven business focused on those looking for products in that location.

Implementing Local SEO

That made local optimization crucial. Local was everything. When people do local searches, they look at results in the local pack, so you have to make sure you have a presence tied to people who are conducting searches with a specific state or city.

In the beginning, the SEO and PPC strategy was built on targeting keywords around the flooring company's biggest products and most important geographical areas.

At the same time, Adept identified less popular, lower volume keywords which provided new opportunities to boost search ranking. In doing this, Adept made a surprising discovery about how people were searching for flooring products.

Inspiring Flooring Decisions with Social Media

The next step was to reach shoppers earlier in the decision-making process, both with SEO and social media. Adept helped the flooring company improve its social media presence by creating an editorial calendar focused on Facebook, Pinterest, Houzz, Google+ and Twitter, so there was consistent posting of interesting content across the properties.

We used Pinterest and Houzz to post visual inspiration. Houzz is an amazing platform where people are looking for inspiration for renovating their homes or building new homes. Flooring is a part of that. We can build and optimize portfolios and inspiration galleries so people find them and want to know where to get those floors. This strategy attracts those who are not yet ready to buy.

Mobile social advertising was another important part of the digital marketing strategy. That's because so many people are browsing Facebook in particular via mobile devices. For Adept, the evolution of the Facebook advertising platform created an opportunity to get the attention of the flooring company's target demographic, even if they were not yet looking for floors.

Adept helped the company create ads for store locations, as well as promotions and giveaways, which do well on Facebook. Adept plans to do the same thing with Pinterest when that social site opens up its ad options. The flooring product is visual and the core demographic is on Pinterest, so it's the perfect place to be.

Increasing Mobile Conversions

Aside from social media, Adept suggested that the flooring company support mobile device users with a responsive site. This launched in 2013, with three main goals:

  • To support mobile device users looking for directions and phone numbers on their way to a showroom.
  • To support the flooring research phase for prospective customers.
  • To help the company use mobile advertising successfully.

The company has already seen a 22% lift in mobile conversions.

Digital Marketing - a Strategic Overview

So how does all of this translate into a holistic strategy? Adept explains that there are three main phases for the flooring company's customers, and each requires different marketing approaches:

  1. Inspiration gathering and idea generation. Facebook posts, social advertising, Houzz and Pinterest galleries, banner ads and organic search are ideal for this.
  2. Serious consideration, where potential customers want to find the resources they need to make a project happen, including prices and companies. Organic and paid search strategies help here.
  3. Ready to buy. At this point, with the purchasing decision made, it's up to the client to convert the lead. However, Adept supports this with remarketing.

What's ahead for 2015? The company plans to launch a new showroom location and Adept will use the proven strategies outlined here to market it successfully.