When you’re in the business of fixing pipes, installing HVAC systems, or baking cupcakes, keeping your marketing in tip-top shape can be burdensome. Imagine if your business involves marketing for yourself AND businesses fixing pipes, installing HVAC systems, and the like.
Sound overwhelming? Definitely. Time consuming? Absolutely.
MediaBeast Marketing Group is a full-service, conversion-driven agency located in Tampa, Florida, founded in 2013. Their clients run the gamut (from home services to personal injury lawyers to nonprofits). They provide their clients with a well-rounded media approach and comprehensive digital strategy, covering responsive website design, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and mobile marketing. The team of seven employees manages over thirty clients, detailing roadmaps that outline marketing strategies, tactics, costs, and projected results to keep their clients’ teams focused on specific goals.
When the MediaBeast team brought their PPC services in-house, they needed a better way to efficiently and successfully manage client campaigns. The team also noticed that they were having a tough time competing with rivals like Yellow Pages and Driven Local. MediaBeast was drawn to WordStream because of its competitive metric information. The team brought WordStream Advisor for Agencies on board and has never looked back.
Taking WordStream for a Test Run
With multiple clients needing SEM help, MediaBeast decided to give WordStream Advisor for Agencies a test drive. Starting with just one of their accounts, they issued an ultimatum: beat out the competition, and the rest of their clients would join WordStream advisor; if there was no improvement, they’d move on to greener pastures.
The first account incorporated was a plumbing business getting beaten by their competitors in the local market. With assistance from the call-outs and tips within WordStream Advisor, the client saw rapid improvement and started winning business from their local rivals! The insights from WordStream Advisor allowed the team to focus on specific metrics they were not competing well against and helped look to find ways to improve these metrics to drive better results.
Since that first account, MediaBeast has managed almost 50 different accounts through WordStream Advisor for Agencies.
Some of the MediaBeast Team
Strategizing with the 20-Minute Work Week
Samantha Lappla, an account manager at MediaBeast, says, “I look at digital marketing as a trial-and-error scenario. Sometimes you know a certain campaign will be successful and other times you try a tactic, but it doesn’t show you the success you were searching for, so then you go in and think what you can do better.”
The MediaBeast team, while juggling multiple accounts and channels, monitors spend throughout the month to observe how their clients are pacing to achieve their goals. Lindsay Elsten, another account manager at MediaBeast, reports that the team uses the 20-Minute Work Week to keep track of not only spend but any red flags that could be raised throughout the week and get new ideas for changes to make within each account.
Lindsay says, “WordStream does the ‘thinking’ for you before you have to think. I have saved so much time with the 20-Minute Work Week by using it as a starting point to what I can look at further in an account.”
Because different companies have varying objectives, the team makes use of WordStream’s industry benchmarks to help assess and estimate what clients should expect from their campaigns. Lindsay says they also like to use the CPA goal tracker within WordStream Advisor to watch their costs and how the metric changes over time.
Turning the Tide with WordStream Live
While WordStream Advisor for Agencies offers prescriptive, account-specific advice, it was the educational and strategic advice from WordStream’s experts that gave MediaBeast’s search success story new life, according to Lindsay. MediaBeast attended WordStream Live, our premier, bi-annual customer event. The event featured presentations from WordStream customer service representatives on key topics like Expanded Text Ads, device and bid adjustments, account structuring, analytics, and more.
Lindsay took note of tips and tricks on reducing keyword clutter, using IF functions, and optimizing for mobile conversions. She decided to put her new knowledge to the test on one of her client’s accounts—and after a month and a half, she saw a huge improvement.
By reducing the number of keywords in each ad group, adding expanded text ads with IF functions to capitalize on a mobile audience, and adding mobile CTAs on landing pages, click-through rates jumped 87.47%!
Since WordStream Live, the MediaBeast team has focused more closely on mobile through the IF functions in expanded text ads and specific CTAs. After focusing on mobile tasks, the top three performing text ads featured IF functions AND mobile CTAs!
Winning Together
A fun story we love to tell about MediaBeast’s Lindsay from her experience at WordStream Live: she was so immersed in sharing tips with her team back home and rapid-fire tweeting pictures from the event, she killed her phone battery by cocktail hour! Luckily, she was able to plug in and get enough juice to get out of the city, safe and sound.
Lindsay said, “The biggest thing is that I don’t feel like the service is degrading. Sometimes when you work with experts in a field, it can be intimidating to ask questions or seek advice. The WordStream employees never make you feel like you should already know what you’re asking.”
At WordStream, we like to consider ourselves experts in search marketing. Our employees live and breathe PPC to keep our software and services on the cutting edge for our customers. Which is why we are excited to receive feedback about our customers’ successes! The MediaBeast team also gushed over their customer success rep, Greg Herrmann (we love him, too!).
We could not be happier to have MediaBeast on our team!