Cappstone | Case Study
Building an Enterprise Level Marketing Presence
Optimizing ads for SMB growth.
Cappstone did not have a significant digital footprint relative to their competition prior to working with Four15 Digital.
They needed a partner that could help drive digital strategy and grow their online presence.
Cappstone needed a customized and targeted strategy that would allow them to compete with much larger organizations with much larger marketing budgets, over a relatively small geographic area.
To remain nimble, Four15 had to structure paid campaigns to provide important insights about the target audience and be built for limited budgets. This meant the strategy had to focus on the bottom-of- funnel audience and marketing tactics that had been ignored by their previous agencies.
Phase 01
Site Updates And Tracking Instrumentation
Before spending any money, Four15 had to ensure the site was optimized with updates to focus on new customer acquisition. This meant customized landing pages, additional site content, and SEO improvements, as well as the instrumentation of Analytics and ads channel tracking to understand where customers were coming from.
Phase 02
Campaign Build-outs And Testing
With the site in a good place to receive paid traffic, existing SEM campaigns were built out to incorporate ad copy message testing and non-brand keyword exploration.
Phase 03
Use learnings from paid on free, under-utilized channels
With Search learning started, Four15 began active management of Cappstone’s social presence.
Since budgets and audiences were limited, we started with the channel that was expected to receive the best initial results: Paid Search.
Starting Smart with Paid Search
Our goal was for it to do more than just generate lead, it also needed to provide demographic insights on qualified prospects and help shape messaging strategies for use across other digital platforms.
Cappstone’s geographic reach was limited, which meant lower traffic volume compared to the national or international brands Four15 typically works with. Combined with a lack of historical data, it was clear this would require patience and careful optimization. The first three months of the engagement focused on testing and learning, laying the foundation for future growth.
We launched search campaigns, implemented Display Remarketing, and used the remaining budget to test banner ads through the Google Display Network (GDN).
While waiting for paid campaign data, we turned our attention to SEO and uncovered several neglected opportunities. These included strengthening thought leadership content, optimizing Google My Business, and boosting visibility on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Cappstone had a solid library of blog posts, but wasn’t actively sharing them. We collaborated with their team to develop a blog calendar and took over publishing responsibilities. New posts were consistently shared across key platforms, including their Facebook Business Page and Google My Business listing.
Google My Business offered a free and highly effective way to reach local customers via Google Search and Maps. We tailored the listing using insights from the paid campaigns, updating it with content that addressed common customer questions and ensuring all business information was complete and accurate. Blog posts were also regularly distributed through this channel.
With organic Facebook activity underway, we began testing Facebook Ads, especially the new Lead Gen ad format. Our strategy was twofold: first, we used insights from Google campaigns to build lookalike and remarketing audiences. Second, we leveraged Facebook’s audience segmentation to identify new demographic and psychographic groups with potential.
This approach allowed us to concentrate limited ad spend on high-potential segments. If those groups didn’t convert, we could reasonably conclude that Facebook wasn’t the right fit for Cappstone at that stage.
The results of our paid search strategy were outstanding. In just the first three months, we achieved significant gains in visibility and lead generation while maintaining cost efficiency.
Sustained growth:
Over the next nine months, the volume of these conversion actions grew by an additional 113%.
Raw lead numbers were only part of our success story. While our primary goals were to build awareness and increase lead volume, we also made it a priority to track qualified leads, ensuring we weren’t just generating leads, but the right leads.
This confirmed that our test-and-learn approach was effective, not just within Google Ads, but also when applied to Google My Business.
On the organic side, basic SEO improvements and consistent content, on-site and via GMB, helped Cappstone stay visible on top search queries informed by SEM insights.
Paid search is often a go-to method for advertising online because of its high-intent, however it can’t be the sole channel if you want to punch up and grow your business.
Cappstone and Four15 had successfully taken on search and turned it into a winning channel – but we didn’t stop there. Using our audience and messaging learnings, next was Facebook. Starting with free organic posts, moving to boosted posts, and finally full fledged ad campaigns.
Early results show our Facebook ads have also come out of the gate swinging with over 30% of the leads generated being highly qualified and 33% of those qualified leads having already resulted in closed deals. Not only that, cost per lead on Facebook ads remained below goal since going live.
Success came in a large part from the learnings from Analytics and paid campaigns, but also by using the Facebook Lead Gen Ads. These ads allow potential customers to fill out a lead form directly in the Facebook ad. The benefit being that the user does not leave Facebook, which is typically an interruptive process. In total, this ad type resulted in 70% of all leads generated by Facebook.
As we gather more insights, we continue to look to expand into any and all areas online where potential customers may be located, and make sure Cappstone is present and ready to help. Next up: Linkedin!
