Case Study: Custom Exteriors Sees 23:1 ROI on PPC Since Partnering with Socius
Initial Challenge
After their website crashed, the Custom Exteriors team sought a new agency that could bring their site back online and help revive their lead pipeline.
Background
Custom Exteriors is a family-run business located in Pleasanton, California that has been serving the San Francisco Bay Area for around 27 years. Their services include windows, siding and doors, and they have successfully completed over 26,000 projects.
The Challenge
Prior to working with Socius, Custom Exteriors had been working with another marketing agency. When their website went down, their previous marketing company was unable to fix the problem, which severely impacted their lead generation and business operations.
Kevin Gundry, CFO and Owner of Custom Exteriors recalls “Essentially we were out of work, we were out of business because we weren’t getting leads and we weren’t able to create business.”
The Solution
Socius was able to reinstate their old website to get it back online and functioning properly. Socius then worked with Custom Exteriors on building a new website with improved features like better city-specific pages to drive more local traffic. This helped increase both their paid and organic search traffic and leads.
“After Socius got the site back up and running, then they went behind the scenes to create a whole new website for us that would function better than the one that we had,” says Kevin.
In addition to website improvements, Custom Exteriors also works with Socius for SEO (search engine optimization), content services and PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. They have also recently added organic social to their program.
The Results
Most recently, Custom Exteriors doubled their investment in pay-per-click advertising with Socius. Part of their decision to increase PPC spending was due to a strong 23:1 return on investment.
Not only are their net sales and volume of sales are up around 15% year-over-year, they are also seeing higher quality, more serious leads. They attribute the quality leads in part to better lead qualification and their sales team being more focused on fewer appointments.
Kevin added, “I’ll tell you, the price point has been good too. Who we were using before, I felt like I was being taken advantage of. The better we would do the price on services would go up…. I felt like Socius was able to bring more to the table and do a better job with our website at a much more competitive price of what I was paying before.”
A True Partnership
Custom Exteriors has a close relationship with the team at Socius, and their dedicated account manager and PPC strategist consistently provide feedback in monthly meetings on campaign performance and messaging. This collaborative process allows Socius to make data-driven optimizations to improve results, and allows Custom Exteriors to know exactly where things stand at any given time.
“I’m seeing that when I get my invoices, I see the exact amount of time that’s spent on each category. So I believe that I’m getting the work that I paid for and that helps a lot. Sales are good,” Kevin states.
Looking to the Future
Going into 2025, Custom Exteriors will be partnering with Costco, which is expected to increase their revenue by $5-6 million next year, over a 50% increase on current $10 million revenue.
Custom Exteriors is one of the few companies in the area that sells high-quality fiberglass frame windows from Marvin, which are becoming more popular than vinyl windows
In the future, Kevin sees social media playing a role in branding their company with the Costco partnership and targeting the right customers for their Infinity from Marvin products. He hopes to collaborate with Socius closely to add that Costco partnership branding across the Custom Exteriors social and website.
Kevin aims to keep an eye on the numbers, make tweaks as needed, and maintain a reasonable marketing spend of around 5.5-6% of total sales, which is lower than the industry average of 10-20%. Kevin ended the discussion by stating, “I’m a big believer in not changing what’s working, and Socius is what really works for us.” in the competitive home improvement space.
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