Trowel Trades Supply - Case Study

A mission to lead not follow

Trowel Trades Supply, a regional supplier of building materials, masonry products, and architectural stone was approaching their fifty year anniversary as a company. While business was continuing steadily, Trowel Trades wasn’t receiving new leads or winning new projects due to its antiquated website.

The building supply company has a mission “to lead, not to follow; to deliver excellence; and to set the standards in product selection, technical expertise, and customer service,” which was missing from their marketing.

As a regional company, Trowel Trades had untapped opportunities it wasn’t able to reach with a legacy approach to sales. The company had just added a new line of products that helped them expand their territory but needed to build demand for these products from architects and commercial contractors.

What was holding them back?

Before DMG came on board, Trowel Trades lacked strategy in its marketing.

The website wasn’t set up to help users find what they needed.
The website wasn’t structured to encourage conversions and capture leads.
The blog was unstructured and infrequently updated. Articles were not SEO-focused to attract new visitors.

Company president Richard Vaughan knew Trowel Trades needed to build a marketing foundation that would provide continued future growth. Trowel Trades needed more than just a website redesign - they needed a tool that would continuously build upon their marketing and sales efforts.

President Richard Vaughan shared,“We have no idea if our marketing is working and we are certainly not receiving new leads from our website”.

It was time for a change

The company's prior attempts to redesign the website for lead generation left Vaughan skeptical about adopting an inbound marketing strategy. Would the legacy sales team adopt and utilize the new strategy and materials? However, Vaughan understood that they needed to begin with a strategy before implementing tactics.

Like we do with all clients, we developed a strategic marketing plan that was focused on buyer personas, and how Trowel Trades could help solve their problems, challenges and be the authority for the client.

Through many conversations, meetings and email exchanges, DMG helped guide Trowel Trades through the process of building a strategic marketing plan, shared how an inbound approach would benefit them and the power of HubSpot and marketing automation. They recognized that this approach would actually free up the sales team’s time.

We explained in detail the inbound methodology and Delta’s vision for how to drive demand for their products and services. They were very receptive to the idea of building a new growth driven website.

What we did:

DMG launched a 30-day quick wins program designed to take their pre-existing materials and improve upon them. It didn’t make sense to waste time and start by re-creating the wheel. We implemented HubSpot to immediately start capturing leads and data to their CRM.

Next, we developed a comprehensive marketing and sales roadmap that identified their goals and ideal customer profiles, pulling from their existing rich data on their best clients. Then we identified tactics that would create awareness and drive demand for their products and services.

When the plan was complete DMG launched a user-friendly, growth-driven website and initiated a content marketing strategy that included optimizing their local search and social media.

One of their top-performing assets became their Landscape with Stone Idea Book. Resources like this were intended to educate residential and commercial clients alike. The hope was to provide clients with enough knowledge that Trowel Trades would be the obvious choice for their building, masonry, and architectural stone needs.

"DMG has delivered for us time and time again. All of their staff offer friendly, knowledgeable, and professional insight that helps move our business forward." - Eric Mootz, Trowel Trades Supply

Results: Increased Website Traffic, Leads, and Sales

Trowel Trades’ growth-driven website proves to have been the right approach for continual improvement. The inbound content approach provides evergreen materials that can be used to constantly generate leads.

As Trowel Trades’ website traffic has increased, they have also seen a growth in organic traffic. Blog readership increased, resulting in a 694% increase in inbound leads generated straight from blog content.

By far, the largest growth Trowel Trades saw was in their lead engagement. Prior to having an inbound marketing strategy, lead engagement was at 154 in 2016. It grew rapidly to 1,894 in 2018. That’s 1,130% growth.

260% increase in website visits (956 to 3,442)

448% increase in sales leads (60 to 329)

"We hired Delta several years ago to help us build a new website, create an in-bound marketing program (Hubspot) and to bring us into the 21st century regarding our company's marketing efforts. On time and on budget these projects were completed. Since the inception, David and his dynamic staff, who are certified with the most current social media methods and strategies, have designed a more current and effective marketing platform for our business. Always pleasant and professional, their team and ours have become good friends. I can highly recommend Delta Marketing Group to anyone looking for a Marketing Group. They will certainly meet or exceed your expectations!"

Richard Vaughan, President of Trowel Trades Supply

What's next for Trowel Trades?

Trowel Trades was finally able to take their years of industry knowledge and use it to educate their clientele. The content marketing strategy continues to bring qualified leads to their sales team.

Delta provided Trowel Trades with the gift that keeps on giving - a constantly growing pipeline of leads for the sales team to nurture, which will build future business for the company.