About Cottage Industries, Inc.
Cottage Industries is an award-winning, residential design and construction company. Their services include creative architectural design, sound structural engineering, efficient and supportive project management, and fine craftsmanship in all the trades. Their strength is to seamlessly blend old with new, accommodating many architectural styles including Colonial, Victorian, Tudor, Georgian, Contemporary, Farmhouse, Cottage, Splits, and more.
The market in Philadelphia is bustling. With new homeowners moving into the city, Cottage Industries knew they had to expand their services into these suburbs in addition to serving the Main Line, a stretch of townships they had been serving for the past 26 years.
With goals of differentiation, increasing leads, and doubling revenue, Cottage Industries began looking for a new marketing strategy and partner who could help reach their goals.
What We Did…
With Inbound Mill’s guidance, Cottage Industries began developing their inbound marketing program to generate a consistent stream of qualified leads in their pipeline. Their sales process was mapped out online and new metrics were established to measure the effectiveness of their inbound marketing campaigns.
Using Marketing Automation and Technology To Track And Measure Success
Overall traffic to the website, Twitter and Pinterest followers, new qualified leads, and blog subscribers were new metrics that were tracked using marketing automation software and other technologies. The impact of their inbound marketing program was measured through these metrics to reach their lead generation goals.
By poring over the data points of these important metrics, insights were gleaned about the performance of the content they were creating. Cottage Industries determined whether or not a topic like historic restoration resonated more with their target market than aging in place. This helped them to restructure their future content to improve traffic and conversions, and see if their time and money was bringing them closer to the type of qualified leads they wanted.
Overall, the team wanted to know what marketing efforts were going to bring them the bigger jobs that placed them on the upper-end tier of remodeling projects in their region.
Content Creation
Content was the backbone of their inbound marketing program. Once we established a blueprint of their online sales process, it was time to create content to cater to that process. Content like blog posts and premium content offers such as ebooks were created to drive leads for the company. Prospects were catered to with the right content at the appropriate stages of their buying journey.
Email Marketing & Social Media
After the content was created, Cottage Industries journeyed into the social media landscape. New social media and email campaigns were launched to promote their content in front of prospects who were ready to consume it. Consistent promotions were pushed out on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Houzz to bring eyeballs back to the hub, their website. Since implementing social media into their inbound marketing program, their social media traffic increased by 1,480%
Email campaigns were an integral part of their marketing strategy as they served to delight current clients and consistently engage with prospects with new informational content that helped answer common questions about remodeling. When prospects were ready to move further down the funnel, they were greeted with the appropriate content that helped them understand more about the Cottage Industries brand. Since implementing email campaigns, Cottage Industries has seen a 4,120% increase in traffic from email campaigns.
Search Engine Optimization
Content marketing requires optimization best practices to make sure that the search engines can index the content being published. Best practices such as including keywords in the meta tags, titles, subheaders, and image alt-tags were followed to make sure Google and Bing were able to read this valuable content. This, in turn, allows prospects to find the helpful content.
When content is properly optimized for the search engines, search rankings are increased. Since optimizing their site, Cottage Industries now has their website on the first page of Google for priority keywords such as kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling in their local regions. They have several first page rankings along with multiple listings on those pages. Moreover, their organic search traffic has increased by 4,960%.
"We're very happy with the results. Since optimizing our site, it is now on the first page of Google for priority keywords such as kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling in our regional areas. We also have several first page rankings along with multiple listings on some of those pages. Moreover, our organic search traffic has increased by 4,960%!"
Adam Sherman
President
Results…
Inbound efforts in the form of blogging, premium content offers, email marketing, and social media marketing combined have helped Cottage Industries increase their overall website traffic by 203%. This new increase in traffic has helped them engage with new prospects in a way that is much more personalized, timely, and engaged. It has also helped them achieve one of their major marketing goals- more leads in the pipeline.
Leads in the pipeline are great, but qualified leads are the lifeblood of any business. In order to close more sales, Cottage Industries needed more sales qualified leads who were nurtured and educated about the company’s unique value proposition.
Since the redesign and inbound marketing program, Cottage Industries has an increase of 450% in sales qualified leads in their pipeline. This has given them more opportunities to have more meaningful conversations to turn into on-site appointments.
Inbound is helping Cottage Industries engage with new prospects and delight their current clients for repeat business. Their content is reaching into new markets in Philadelphia as they improve their brand presence and positioning. This has helped their new prospective clients to understand important aspects of their process such as how optimum value design can help them contain their costs. More importantly, it has shifted their sales conversations to becoming more of a value add for every project they consult.
