Flexport | Case Study
Building a Non-Brand Strategy
For B2B - Global Leader in Freight Forwarding.
Four15 aligned with Flexport on their digital campaign
needs: robust tracking and profitable lead growth.
Four15 rebuilt the existing SEM campaigns, and re-
worked every piece of ad copy to set up campaigns that would help identify:
- Queries and audiences that drove leads
- Offers and creative that improved ad clicks
When we took over management, Flexport had a robust branding campaign on paid search and had been testing a small remarketing campaign. However, non-brand had not been explored, with less than 20% of the budget going to two small non-brand campaigns. In all, very little testing and exploration beyond brand search had been undertaken.
We knew that the Flexport sales cycle was a lengthy one: multi-million dollar deals are not signed the same day a prospect clicks on an ad looking for a freight forwarding partner. While the current brand strategy succeeded at capturing leads that had already heard about the company, we knew that the best strategy for growth was to fill the top of the funnel with prospective leads: individuals that may have never heard of Flexport, but needed their services and had screen time across Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook properties.
Our strategy was to use the full Google stack to find these users through Search, YouTube, Display, and Gmail, identify those audience segments that would convert, then target that audience across as many channels as possible. Our plan was to start in concentric circles of relevance, from the most relevant to the least relevant audiences:
1.
Build out existing brand terms for greater coverage of recorded queries.
2.
Build out non-brand terms of high relevance, e.g. competitors terms, geo-modified terms.
3.
Prospect with top-of-funnel non-brand terms of medium relevance and high search volume, e.g. "freight companies".
4.
Expand the reach of remarketing to YouTube with discovery ads.
5.
Internationally with localized web content and campaigns.
We began by scaling existing campaigns, optimizing ad copy for higher click-through rates and broadening keyword sets with prospecting terms. We then layered in non-brand keywords such as competitor names and geo-specific terms based on customer interest to attract a wider, yet still relevant, audience.
With the remarketing campaign already performing well, we expanded its reach beyond banners and into YouTube using existing video creatives. This move greatly increased visibility. At the same time, we scaled back underperforming queries and ad variations to reallocate budget more efficiently.
Over the first few weeks, Four15 analyzed performance and identified top-converting non-brand segments as well as high-volume, low-conversion keywords. To improve ROI, we recommended creating new landing pages aligned with those search terms, enhancing the user journey and increasing conversions—allowing for greater budget allocation even on previously inefficient terms.
Once we stabilized CPL and saw slower growth in North America, we shifted focus internationally and introduced paid social media channels to continue driving qualified leads at scale.
Through steady testing and smart expansion into less obvious areas, we scaled Flexport’s non-brand paid search campaigns.
This included launching remarketing across three platforms and expanding into two new countries—all while lowering the cost per lead (CPL).
In just 10 months, paid search traffic grew by over 3000%, and CPL dropped by 14%. Paid search went from 3% of total site traffic to nearly 40% in a single year.
These results show that paid search can be a strong B2B channel, even without relying heavily on brand queries. Flexport and Four15 started with high-intent search terms and gradually expanded to broader audiences based on performance.
As growth continued, Flexport partnered with Four15 to run paid social campaigns. The same audience-first, data-driven strategy was applied to Facebook and LinkedIn, helping drive even more qualified leads.