When comparing 2022 performance to 2021
Challenge
44 Farms saw online competition steadily increase over the years, especially in the text ad and Google Shopping space, and the bulk of their sales came during the holidays. They also had a reporting problem and were not receiving the level of detail needed or consistency in metrics between Google Ads, Shopify, and their previous agency’s analytics, making marketing decisions difficult.
Solution
The Team ran campaigns in Q1-Q3 that targeted other holidays like Valentine's Day and Father's Day, plus the summer grilling season. The next step was to find terms that considered customer intent for PPC. To inform this strategy and provide visibility, CallRail, and TopSpot's proprietary form analytics tool LOOP were implemented.
Results
A goal of 300-500 orders a week in their off-season was made, quickly achieved, and maintained through Q3. The company saw a great summer with an ROI of 347% in June alone and averaged 252% for the season. The critical holiday season saw big results including an 88.91% increase in holiday revenue. Overall, the company had a record year with $3 million in sales from web traffic alone.
About 44 Farms
Industry: B2B & B2C Food Sales Location: Cameron, TX
44 Farms is a local ranch and family-owned business offering high-quality beef products like steak, jerkies, and ground beef. These premium meats as well as meal sides are sold online to restaurants, groceries, butchers, and individual consumers and include corporate gifting and meal bundles.
In 2021, the bulk of 44 Farms’ sales came through during the holiday season, with orders from their e-commerce coming in at $500k. The company needed a stronger strategy to help beef up its paid search program year-round, especially those targeting the consumer set. They came to TopSpot before the 2021 holiday season to tackle challenges in their paid search program and data.
Search including specification (USDA choice) and type (porterhouse steak).
Raising the Steaks/Stakes: Creating Sales Impact Year-Round
The objective was to reach 300 orders a week in the off-season by finding pockets of seasonality to boost sales—meaning less reliance on Q4 revenue. Paid ad content and keywords in Q1-Q3 utilized other calendar holidays and the summer grilling season. Terms answering a user's query for meat specifications, size, and type that aligned with TopSpot's B-SMART Method® were put into place.
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USDA and organic certification
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Specifications like Texas-raised and grass-fed
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Meat types and cuts such as ribeye and porterhouse
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Sizes in ounces
This method offers a structure for targeting the right traffic that results in quality leads.
A large portion of the 2021 budget focused on branded terms. A customer looking for branded content would find it organically or directly, so to avoid wasting money, this was revised to include paid keywords that helped distinguish 44 Farms (the company's site) from 44 Farms Steaks (the product ordering site) to help direct traffic properly.
Cooking Up Engagement: Using the Recipe Section for PPC and a Common Customer Concern
It's one thing to purchase a beautiful ribeye for yourself or receive it as a gift, but how do you cook it? There was some concern visitors were not converting because they were intimidated—unsure of how to properly prepare and cook these quality products. To answer that, their recipes section was revised from a list to a card layout and was made searchable via filters for product and recipe types along with a search bar.
Once the user experience was revised, recipes were added, which created additional landing pages for ad content. By including grilling favorites like hot dogs and hamburgers, seasonal content to provide more ad options and opportunities for keyword usage in their PPC program was achieved.
44 Farms Recipe Page: A great way to add keywords is utilizing helpful content.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Increasing the Impact of Holiday Sales
Though the bulk of the strategy looked to improve 2022 as a whole, the holiday season (or Q4) was still vital to revenue goals. Revising their paid search strategy to increase corporate orders for the 2022 holiday season, which usually included sizable orders, could impact that critical, seasonal lift.
The prior terms in their paid search strategy were too broad and included keyword phrases like “gifts for him”. A phrase like this is expensive to bid on due to a wide range of competitors, including large retailers. This was narrowed down to target lead-generating traffic versus general traffic to avoid large, indirect competitors—focusing on consumers looking specifically for food and meat gifts.
The holiday ad program as a whole was a success by adding more ad content options, keywords, and drive-to landing pages focused on the tenets of the B-SMART methodology. Additional messaging was placed on the site for corporate gift leads, adding a call-to-action button to the homepage and revising the corporate gifting page with order placement instructions to help users complete purchases. The strategy worked, and corporate order conversions from PPC rose by over 879% (7809 vs. 797).
Better analytics tools like LOOP Analytics helped consolidate data to help make better marketing decisions.
A Job Well Done: Better Data and Analytics to Track Results
With the cadence of 300-500 orders, the year 2022 allowed 44 Farms to focus on operational efficiency and preparation for the holiday ramp-up versus driving revenue. With TopSpot's proprietary tools at their disposal, they received better insight into their ad performance and built a trusted relationship with their digital marketing data and Team.
This creates consistency and transparency in their marketing analytics to build an informed strategy with data they can trust.
Corporate gifting site.
Client Testimonial
"We have had the pleasure of partnering with TopSpot for a considerable time, and we are thrilled with the remarkable results they have delivered. Their team of experts has transformed our online presence with their impeccable search engine optimization strategies, resulting in a substantial surge in traffic and sales on our 44 Steaks website. Their team's proficiency, responsiveness, and commitment to our success have been remarkable. We highly recommend TopSpot for anyone looking to achieve outstanding results in their online business endeavors."
Awards
2023 AMA Crystal Award for Digital Marketing Paid Search Campaign: Large (over $10,000)
American Business Award Bronze Stevie Winner for Small-Budget Marketing Campaign of the Year (<$3 million)
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