Hicks Landscaping

How TriMark Increased Hick's Landscaping Sales Volume while Lowering Marketing Spend by 75%

Campaign start date:  January 4th, 2010
Campaign launch date:  January 14th, 2010
Website:  http://www.hickslandscape.com
Services invested in:  Web Design, Web Development, SEO & PPC

Customer Profile

Hicks Landscaping is a North Carolina landscaping company offering landscape design, irrigation, lighting, drainage, hardscape, and lawn maintenance services across Wake County and Central North Carolina. Hicks Landscaping is fully insured and has been providing residential and commercial customers with beautiful new landscaping projects since 1996.

Business Challenge

During the 2009 fiscal year, Hicks Landscaping had been investing over $60,000 annually with the Yellow Pages and other forms of print media advertising. Even though Hicks Landscaping was receiving a fair amount of sales volume and website traffic, the TriMark team felt that a drastically lower marketing and advertising budget could be just as effective, if properly spent online.

In January 2010, Hicks Landscaping dropped all other marketing efforts and switched solely to TriMark Solutions, and began to invest in TriMark's precise online marketing strategy. TriMark's main objectives were to:

• Decrease Overall Marketing & Advertising Spend by at least 60%
• Improve Online Presence & Visibility
• Generate Relevant, Highly Targeted Leads, Creating an Overall Increase in Sales Volume

Solution

TriMark developed a strategic SEO and PPC plan to provide Hicks Landscaping with a stronger online presence and an increase in sales volume at a lower cost. This strategy involved a highly specialized and targeted PPC campaign, careful onsite and offsite SEO planning and implementation, and the creation of 3 additional complete websites focusing on specialized services offered by Hicks Landscaping.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

• Created numerous relevant text ads for various keywords on the search network
• Added negative keywords to avoid unnecessary clicks
• Tested multiple ads for better performance
• Utilized Facebook as a way to generate more qualified leads

SEO Optimization

• Designed & implemented a complete website overhaul for their current website, www.hickslandscape.com
• Optimized pages for various keywords to target specific services
• Updates title tags & meta tags, generated additional organic inbound links
• Created 3 specialized websites focusing solely on specific services offered

Results

In 2010, TriMark was able to increase website traffic and lead generation for Hicks Landscaping while lowering their marketing expense by $45,000 a year, a decrease of 75%! Within the first 6 months, TriMark generated 64 new online quote requests with a PPC budget of only $500 a month, when Hicks had been generating roughly 40-50 per six months.

Investing only 25% of 2009's marketing budget, TriMark Solutions was also able to generate over 4,100 total visitors since the website revamp in January, 2010 (statistics range from January 1st, 2010 to November 12, 2010). This was an increase of over 300 visitors as compared to 2009's fiscal traffic with a $60,000 print media budget.

Additionally, with a strategic SEO campaign, TriMark was able to achieve very high organic rankings in Google in just the first 4 months. As of November 2010, www.hickslandscape.com ranks on the first page of Google for many of their highly competitive keywords, such as "Landscaping NC" "Landscaping Raleigh".