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Isaac’s Moving Case Study: Doubling Leads in a Cut-Throat Industry

 In Local SEO, PPC, Remarketing, SEO

Case Study

Isaac’s Moving

Doubling Leads in a Cut-Throat Industry

Isaac’s Moving & Storage is one of the most respected names in the moving industry, with offices serving Boston, Houston, Philadelphia, and beyond. Isaac’s offers a variety of moving service including residential, commercial, long distance, international and more. As a licensed mover since 1988, Isaac’s is a trusted brand with a long track record of providing honest and reliable moving services to thousands of customers.

Bottom-line results

125%

Increase in web leads in 2 years

2000+

Qualified leads within CPL goals

40%

Increase in Organic traffic YoY

2X

Page one ranking in 12 months

31%

Increase in lead calls

The Challenge

The moving industry is one of the most competitive local services verticals in search marketing. Various factors make this market very hard to tackle through SEO and SEM. Many websites competing for target keywords are not moving companies but lead aggregators, willing to make extravagant claims to collect leads. Many other players in the market are engaged in black-hat marketing approaches including fake Google listings, spammy location doorway pages, AdWords click fraud, and more.

For an ethical, long-term value player like Isaac’s, the moving market proved complex to approach given the multiple locations and the competitive marketplace. Working with OpenMoves, the team developed and implemented a comprehensive white-hat SEO strategy coupled with local Paid Search campaigns on Google and Bing that succeeded in more than doubling online leads from 2015 to 2017.

“We are in a tough industry, and OpenMoves made a big difference in increasing our paid and organic leads in multiple locations!”
– Ron Hefez, Isaac’s Director of Sales

A White-Hat Approach to a Black-Hat Industry

Both Isaac’s and OpenMoves were committed to planning for long-term success using marketing strategies that follow search engine guidelines and generate value for users. Unlike churn-and-burn lead aggregators, we created a plan to optimize for durable success over time. Some of the strategies employed included,

Multi-Platform Citation Management Effort. Citations and overall local listings management is key to success in local SEO for movers. This is a complex concept because moving companies are typically service area business, that also typically reach many locations where they are not physically located. This issue was especially complex for Isaac’s which had a long past history of old locations, moved locations, and more. The effort to audit, organize, and optimize all local listings is still ongoing and includes platforms like Yext, BrightLocal, our own SEO platform, and more.

A New Website with Good Fundamentals. When OpenMoves started working with Isaac’s the website was dated and lacked key features such as a secure domain and strong mobile website. Working with excellent partners including Mass Digital Marketing, a new WordPress website was launched and further refined that hit all the important SEO targets and helped to lift the Isaac’s brand in traffic and conversion rate.

Generating SEO Value Through Blogging. In an industry where most players are basically all saying the same things on their websites, adding further content value through blogging was key for Isaac’s. An ongoing content marketing effort was developed to help expand website keyword targeting, inform users, and lift overall organic results. Through greatly expanded content marketing, the website has seen continued content freshness and relevance.

Hyper-Focus on AdWords Mechanics. PPC for the moving industry is not a space where hugely creative ideas are key – success in this space requires mostly a hyper-focus on getting the AdWords mechanics exactly right. This means aggressive optimization efforts on quality score, CTR, campaign and AdGroup structure, negative keywords and match types, and more. We also leveraged Isaacs’ call tracking software that allowed us to track calls and optimize around the relevant ad channels that produced the highest qualified calls.

AdWords Click Fraud Detection. In recent months, OpenMoves saw what we believed was a uptick in fraudulent clicks for Isaac’s that AdWords was not blocking with sufficient strength. (Just one of many signs pointing to the brutal competition in the industry.) By installing 3rd-party click fraud software, we were able to quickly and effectively negate hostile clicks without limiting the reach of Isaac’s ads.

Lead Nurturing. Staying top of mind with interested prospects is crucial to converting prospects to moving clients. OM maintained an effective remarketing and retargeting campaigns on AdWords to stay top of mind with relevant banners. Additionally, OM deployed marketing automation to send automated email drips to prospects that expressed an interest on the site; these automated drips helped increase conversions for moving estimates.

Results that will Last

  • Total web leads rose over 125% from 2015 to 2017
  • AdWords generated more than 2,000 total leads within CPA goals in 2017
  • Over the past 6 months, SEO traffic has improved more than 40% compared YoY
  • Page 1 ranking keywords doubled over the last 12 months

Conclusion

Seasons and Programs

The local movers industry is a tough market to attack, and Isaac’s has a local presence in multiple cities like Houston, Boston and Philadelphia and more, but the combination of a strong brand and underlying business with a steady and well-implemented SEM strategy lead to strong success. Working with OpenMoves, Isaac’s found a partner dedicated to white-hat work that would stand the test of time. To learn more about OpenMoves and our approach to ethical, durable SEM campaigns, please contact us today.

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