Home Insulation Company Increased Leads by 2,942% & Doubled Business with New Approach

Inbound Success Case Study

300,000

Organic Monthly Website Visitors

10,109% increase from 18 months prior

2,942%

Increase in Organic Leads

Per month over an 18-month period

Retrofoam's Journey

If you live anywhere in the northern part of the United States, you’re no stranger to freezing temperatures during the winter months. In some places, just making the trek from the front door to the car feels akin to being a member of the Knight’s Watch in Game of Thrones, traveling from Castle Black to Craster’s Keep.

You wish for nothing but the safe comfort of your own toasty home.

But what about when that cold starts creeping into the house? Do your toes get chilly walking across the kitchen floor, even with the thermostat set to inferno? Do you feel a frosty draft when standing next to your exterior walls? Does your energy bill begin to skyrocket right around the time “Winter is Coming” memes start circulating the web again?

Well, if you live in Michigan, this narrative is all too familiar, where frigid temperatures are a regular occurrence, as summer gives way to fall and winter. And these are the exact problems that Retrofoam of Michigan, a statewide spray foam insulation contractor, wants to solve for all Michiganders.

“We help homeowners achieve comfort and energy efficiency in their homes with environmentally-friendly foam insulation,” says Retrofoam owner and CEO Mark Massey.

They Started by Evaluating Their Website & Marketing

But how exactly how did Retrofoam get started on the road to being the go-to resource for home insulation questions? It began with taking a hard look at whether or not their website was a strong enough resource of information already on all things insulation and home energy bills.

First, they looked at their traffic and how much they were spending on digital advertising.

“There was a point where we were stagnant and kind of plateaued,” explains Massey. “We weren’t losing ground, but we were spending a lot more money on marketing, and we weren’t getting better. We weren’t growing anymore.”

Massey is an avid learner himself, so he attends several digital sales and marketing events every year. He’s always looking for that one great idea that will help his business succeed. Then, a few years ago, he heard IMPACT partner Marcus Sheridan speak for the first time.

“I really started paying attention when Marcus said, ‘We (business owners) put our pricing in this black box, and we don’t want anybody to see it,’” Massey recalls. “And that was me. That was exactly what I was doing. That was my ‘ah-ha!’ moment.”

Not long after, Massey hired IMPACT’s consulting team to help him train his in-house content marketing team how to better attract traffic to their website, convert more leads, and close more jobs.

As with most IMPACT consulting clients, they started by following the principles of They Ask, You Answer.

Doing Digital Sales & Marketing the Right Way 📊

To do things right, they hired a dedicated content manager whose duties were to create content for the website without any other internal distractions.

“I focus solely on content,” says Amanda Ringler, Retrofoam’s content manager. “That’s what you need. If you’re spread too thin, you’re not going to get any of it done.”

In addition to writing an average of two blog articles per week addressing homeowners’ most pressing insulation questions, Retrofoam doubled-down by answering all of the same questions in videos.

“We recently started a project called Foam University,” explains Eric Garcia, Retrofoam’s general manager and videographer. “We get a lot of questions from everyone around the state about foam insulation. We had an idea to make a show answering specific questions in a short format. Often when you search for answers online, when you ask a specific question, you can get up to twelve answers. We cut all that out. We give you a specific response to a specific question on what you need to know as a consumer.”

Retrofoam has put a lot of hard work into their content marketing efforts, but how has it paid off?

Answering Questions Through Content & Video Paid Off 📹

“The first year working with IMPACT we saw some success pretty much right from the start. Before working with IMPACT, our organic site traffic was around 7,000 sessions for the year. After the first year, we saw our traffic jump to over 50,000. After the second year, our traffic jumped to over 300,000. After you see that much success, you think, ‘Man, it must level off.’ But, believe it or not, the year after that, we saw a 500% increase in organic search.”

Ryan Litwiller Marketing Director, Retrofoam

While traffic increase can be incredible, what’s really important for anyone doing content marketing is to convert more leads and have more jobs to bid on.

“In the first year working with IMPACT, our leads increased by almost 80%,” says Litwiller, “The second year, they increased by over 60%.”

Retrofoam’s closing rates of leads to customers has increased. They attribute most of their shortened sales cycle and closing rates to the content leads have read on their website.

Ringler admits, “Since we started doing content full time, the homeowners are probably 80% to 90% educated before they walk through our door. If not for the content, we wouldn’t have the leads that we have, we wouldn’t have the closing rate that we have.”

In just three years, by working with IMPACT and adhering following the principles of They Ask, You Answer to the letter, Retrofoam went from stagnant business growth to a heart–and home–warming content marketing case study.

“We've doubled our business since (we started working with IMPACT), and I attribute it all to content, and assignment selling, digital marketing.”

If that story doesn’t keep you warm at night, maybe some new home insulation from Retrofoam will.

Results

Organic Sessions (November 2016 → January 2019)

Organic Contacts (December 2016 → January 2019)

Total Page Views (crossed over 1.1 million as of March 2019)

Organic Keyword Growth

The IMPACT Learning Center