Penn Dutch Structures is one of the largest distributors of outdoor buildings in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. They offer a variety of structures, including sheds, barns, garages, and more. Penn Dutch sells both “ready to deliver” options or customized products to suit a customer’s unique needs.
The Challenge
Penn Dutch first came to us looking for internet marketing services, including SEO, content, and social media. Ultimately, they wanted a more comprehensive marketing strategy that combined the foundations of digital and traditional marketing.
Our Strategy
We’ve created unique strategies for each of the internet marketing services we provide to Penn Dutch. We’ll take a more granular look at each service below.
SEO & Local SEO (Including Google My Business)
We perform monthly technical website crawls to identify any on-page crawl issues. This helps Penn Dutch maintain a healthy site with high crawlability and search performance. We also expanded the sheds section of the site to improve search performance for shed-style queries and serve users highly-targeted content.
We’ve worked on building out user flows to deliver relevant content to the prospect’s specific needs at multiple levels within the sales funnel. This was achieved by adding compelling, useful, and relevant content to Penn Dutch’s site. We’ve also improved basic SEO elements, like meta titles and descriptions.
PPC
We’ve organized Penn Dutch’s PPC (pay-per-click) account into keyword-specific ad groups, allowing us to focus on relevant ad copy and landing pages for appropriate keywords. This allowed us to improve their overall quality scores for keywords across the account. The success of Penn Dutch’s PPC is driven by better targeting through Google Ads Audience Insights, improved landing page layouts, and consideration of UX (user experience) as a way of converting customers.
Email Marketing & Automation
We crafted email automation workflows to better segment Penn Dutch’s audience based on how contacts are acquired and which areas of the site they’re most interested in. We create and send out monthly newsletters targeting the most popular Penn Dutch structures within a given month, helping funnel users towards conversion. We’ve also incorporated exclusive coupon automations and added an email sign-up on Penn Dutch’s homepage.
Content Marketing
We create blogs for Penn Dutch on a monthly basis that identify and position them as experts in their industry. We’ve also updated many of their category and product pages to make them more robust and drive user engagement.
Social Media Advertising
We provide Penn Dutch with both organic and paid social media services to build brand awareness, improve engagement, and build relationships with their Facebook followers.
Total Budget / Marketing Strategy & Management
In our second year working with Penn Dutch, we began managing their entire marketing budget. We’ve continued in this capacity through the length of our partnership, pouring hours into management and strategy.
We vet media vendors for radio, print, and other traditional advertising avenues to determine who Penn Dutch should market with. We look at what the vendor offers, where they offer it, and their specific target audience. This enables Penn Dutch to partner with vendors in areas that have the right audience for their products.
Once Penn Dutch signs on with a vendor, we create a strategy around which ad spots to run. We figure out the best times to push their ads based on factors like seasonality or expected foot traffic. Then, we determine what the ads will consist of in their assigned spots. We do so by considering questions like:
SEO & Local SEO (Including Google My Business)
We perform monthly technical website crawls to identify any on-page crawl issues. This helps Penn Dutch maintain a healthy site with high crawlability and search performance. We also expanded the sheds section of the site to improve search performance for shed-style queries and serve users highly-targeted content.
We’ve worked on building out user flows to deliver relevant content to the prospect’s specific needs at multiple levels within the sales funnel. This was achieved by adding compelling, useful, and relevant content to Penn Dutch’s site. We’ve also improved basic SEO elements, like meta titles and descriptions.
PPC
We’ve organized Penn Dutch’s PPC (pay-per-click) account into keyword-specific ad groups, allowing us to focus on relevant ad copy and landing pages for appropriate keywords. This allowed us to improve their overall quality scores for keywords across the account. The success of Penn Dutch’s PPC is driven by better targeting through Google Ads Audience Insights, improved landing page layouts, and consideration of UX (user experience) as a way of converting customers.
Email Marketing & Automation
We crafted email automation workflows to better segment Penn Dutch’s audience based on how contacts are acquired and which areas of the site they’re most interested in. We create and send out monthly newsletters targeting the most popular Penn Dutch structures within a given month, helping funnel users towards conversion. We’ve also incorporated exclusive coupon automations and added an email sign-up on Penn Dutch’s homepage.
Content Marketing
We create blogs for Penn Dutch on a monthly basis that identify and position them as experts in their industry. We’ve also updated many of their category and product pages to make them more robust and drive user engagement.
Social Media Advertising
We provide Penn Dutch with both organic and paid social media services to build brand awareness, improve engagement, and build relationships with their Facebook followers.
Total Budget / Marketing Strategy & Management
In our second year working with Penn Dutch, we began managing their entire marketing budget. We’ve continued in this capacity through the length of our partnership, pouring hours into management and strategy.
We vet media vendors for radio, print, and other traditional advertising avenues to determine who Penn Dutch should market with. We look at what the vendor offers, where they offer it, and their specific target audience. This enables Penn Dutch to partner with vendors in areas that have the right audience for their products.
Once Penn Dutch signs on with a vendor, we create a strategy around which ad spots to run. We figure out the best times to push their ads based on factors like seasonality or expected foot traffic. Then, we determine what the ads will consist of in their assigned spots. We do so by considering questions like:
- What are the ad topics?
- What will encourage the most people to visit the website or the brick and mortar store?
- Should we push sales or exclusive products?
- Should we highlight a specific type of product right now, as opposed to another time?
The Results
The results of Penn Dutch’s internet marketing efforts continue to improve every year. Here’s a breakdown of the results yielded by organic search, paid search, and social media in 2019 vs. 2018:
Organic Search
Organic Search
- Organic leads for sheds increased by 226% (536 more leads).
- Organic traffic decreased by 5%. While traffic may have decreased, more traffic doesn’t equal more leads. Better quality traffic generates more leads, which was demonstrated here.
- Paid search leads increased by 153% (229 more leads).
- Paid search also increased the number of users visiting Penn Dutch’s site by 146% (8,400 more users).
- PPC continues to be the shining star of Penn Dutch’s internet marketing efforts. It continued to improve during COVID-19, which is unheard of.
- Ultimately, PPC produced the highest conversion rate of all of Penn Dutch’s digital marketing channels in 2019.
- Total social media traffic (both organic and paid) increased by 52% when we added paid social ads to Penn Dutch’s marketing mix.
- Paid social media helped increase their number of leads by 38%, or 110 more leads.
“Our team was able to pull together a foundation of organic internet marketing tactics and paid advertising, propelling Penn Dutch’s customer engagement, despite the uncertain times of a pandemic.”
Alyssa Gailey, Client Success Manager, Tower Marketing
