Grangetto’s Farm & Garden
Case study
“We knew we needed to drastically improve our marketing efforts, but we didn’t know where to start.
Aware of i9media’s reputation, we brought them in for a consultation. It was obvious immediately that Andre and his team had the knowledge, experience, and tools that we needed to bring our marketing into the 21st Century. They have been transparent, communicative, available, and effective. We have seen exponential growth in every metric you can think of, including website visits, newsletter subscriptions, and more. Further, we ascended the search rankings for our industry. i9media’s team has been a game changer for us and I can’t recommend them enough.”
–Andrew Varney, Grangetto’s Comptroller
Overview
Grangetto’s business was almost entirely predicated on the legacy location of its 4 stores. From that, it leveraged foot traffic and the familiarity of the locals and commercial contractors. With the shock that COVID-19 inflicted on consumer behavior, the online experience became the primary (and in many cases, the exclusive) interface customers had to purchase goods and services, especially with foot traffic legally limited in nearly all locations. In light of that radical shift, the Grangetto’s team realized the need to overhaul its online presence, making it more interactive, informative, and engaging with the local community and its target customers. Prior to i9media, Grangetto’s ran four separate websites, with no roadmap to lead acquisition, and almost none of its digital assets were mobile friendly. i9media started by delivering a comprehensive update to Grangetto’s branding, ranging from website, newsletter, social media, and beyond. Next, i9media launched a fully integrated and multi-channel campaign with clear initiatives to support the entirety of the consumer journey, raising the company’s brand awareness in the community, converting visitors into leads, nurturing them through educational resources, and serving a range of calls to action to contact and visit the stores. Within a short time, Grangetto’s has consistently set all-time records on all its key performance indicators, from record website visits, social following, newsletter subscribers, and even ranking #1 locally and nationally on search engine results for its key services: garden and farm supplies.
Services
Website
SEO
Advertising
Lead Generation
Email Marketing
Social Media
Copywriting
Media Production
Creative
Systems Integration
Website
Before i9media became involved, Grangetto’s Farm and Garden had a very dysfunctional website hosted on three different domains on an open source platform with an endless amount of issues/bugs. i9media took this website, simplified it to one website domain, streamlined the user experience, and turned it into an educational and lead generation platform. The Grangetto’s website is seeing unprecedented results. Traffic has increased by 10x, time on the website increased, and bounce rate dropped by 28%. And even more importantly, the new UX/UI was designed to introduce and nurture visitors along the different touch-points with the brand. After several years with a stagnant number of subscribers on its email database, Grangetto’s now has a thriving list of customers engaged with the brand and getting educated on farming and gardening.
10x
Website traffic increase
Search Engine Optimization
Before i9media, Grangetto’s had no SEO efforts in place mixed with an incredibly outdated and archaic digital strategy. Once i9media got involved, the i9media team completely overhauled the Grangetto’s website and in tandem worked on their SEO strategy. Fast forward 3 years later and Grangetto’s ranks #1 nationally for keywords related to both their consumer AND commercial business.
#1
on organic search
Advertising
Before i9media partnered with Grangetto’s there was no plan or strategy in place to use advertising to drive customers to stores. The only ad campaign in place was with an endemic partner. However, without internal resources available to support that partnership, money was being spent but the partnership was under leveraged. Once i9media got involved, the plan was drafted and the resources were allocated to advertising across the board. Through i9media’s advertising plan and execution, Grangetto’s put in place a full-fledged multi-channel ad campaign. It activated ad accounts across multiple platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Google) and allocated bandwidth to support the endemic partnerships. In the first year of ad management alone, i9media’s efforts generated more than 5.5 million impressions to a highly qualified and targeted customer base, delivering 17K+ clicks and 450+ high quality leads. Since that first year, i9media has doubled the number of high quality leads annually and increased the number of clicks by 21% each year. All of that on a highly conservative advertising budget. Additionally, i9media worked with Grangetto’s endemic partners to secure several brand placements on their platforms, further increasing Grangetto’s reach and improving its SEO by inserting links back to Grangetto’s website.
890+
Leads from Ads Annually
Lead Genereation
As a family-owned and operated local business it’s imperative that Grangetto’s stay competitive and relevant with well-known big box competitors like Home Depot and Lowes. Lead generation and customer retention is crucial to their survival as a small business. Prior to i9media’s involvement there were no efforts in place from Grangetto’s to find new customers in their area and nurture a relationship as a form of competitive advantage. Once i9media became involved, the i9media team immediately started working on this front. We built advertising campaigns reaching new customers, optimized the website to convert new visitors into newsletter subscribers, and launched a mix of nurturing email automations and manually built newsletters to deliver a value-add and resource-based channel of communication. Since then, Grangetto’s has set all-time records in new visitors to its website, as well as clocking an increasingly larger customer data base, which is highly engaged with its communication channels.
100+
New Leads Monthly
Email Marketing
Before i9media, Grangetto’s worked with an agency that handled their email marketing via a private server that delivered no data or insights. The email lists were stagnant with no growth. Once i9media got onboard, the i9media team set up Grangetto’s’ email marketing on Mailchimp, a robust email marketing platform. i9media built mobile-friendly email templates from scratch to match the Grangetto’s branding, built email automations and integrated the account with other platforms for optimal data and insights. The i9media team also curated and planned topics for weekly blasts, executing these newsletter builds solely in house. i9media sourced and created all content for each newsletter. As a result, the Grangetto’s email list now grows on average by about 2% each month and has on average a 3% click rate and 41.4% open rate on all emails sent which is above industry averages for its subscriber count.
41.4%
newsletter open rate
Social Media
When i9media first started working with Grangetto’s, social media was essentially an afterthought. Accounts weren’t being posted on regularly, no strategies or schedules were in place and management of the accounts were neglected. Once i9media took over Grangetto’s social media accounts things started to change for the better. In just over 1 year, i9media grew Grangetto’s’ social audience by 65%, increased social impressions by 448% and also increased engagement on its social platforms by 195%.
448%
increase in social impressions
Copywriting
Prior to i9media, Grangetto’s had an existing partnership with an endemic media outlet that required the Grangetto’s team to provide written articles to post on their website. Problem is, there were no allocated resources on the Grangetto’s team to execute on this deliverable. Once i9media became involved, the i9media in-house copywriting team stepped up to the plate and got the job done, writing quality, educational articles that exposed the brand to a key audience. Additionally, the i9media team also wrote and continues to write SEO-specific articles on the Grangetto’s website that contribute to Grangetto’s’ exceptional ranking on organic search for related topics
Media Production
Before i9media started with Grangetto’s, the Grangetto’s team had no quality media assets (photo/video), not even a basic media library to build marketing assets. The i9media team took this challenge head on and created a brand-owned media library that holds thousands of photo and video assets for Grangetto’s to use for years to come. Our in-house team went to each of Grangetto’s’ four locations, capturing high-quality content that is now used across all of Grangetto’s’ digital platforms. And since brand-owned media typically outperforms stock content, several of the record performances on the website, social media, newsletters and more are largely due to that newly created content.
3,000+
Professional photos
Creative
When i9media partnered with Grangetto’s, Grangetto’s graphics were outdated and subpar as they had no in-house team or source for graphic design. i9media turned this around and built branded assets for Grangetto’s to use. Our creative capabilities have provided Grangetto’s with many assets, such as high-quality website graphics, print and digital ads, newsletter templates, social media graphics and more.
Systems Integrations
Before i9media’s partnership with Grangetto’s, the Grangetto’s website wasn’t even connected to their Google Analytics account leaving the brand in the dark on how their website was performing for a number of months. Additionally, the Grangetto’s team had lost access to their Google My Business pages and were unable to manage their own business listings. Immediately after starting with Grangetto’s, i9media re-connected Google Analytics with their old website to start gathering data while building their new site and quickly stepped in and worked with Google to reclaim access to all 4 business location pages. From integrations with Google Analytics, Google Ads, Ecom Setup, Google My Business and more, with i9media’s knowhow and expertise, i9media implemented systems and protocols which allowed for efficiency and analytics insights to move the Grangetto’s brand forward and set up for success.
Results
Website
SEO
Advertising
Lead Generation
Email Marketing
Social Media
Copywriting
Media Production
Creative
Systems Integration
10x
#1
Website traffic increase
on organic search
890+
100+
Leads from Ads Annually
New Leads Monthly
41.4%
448%
newsletter open rate
increase in social impressions
3,000+
Professional photos
Conclusion
In early 2020, Grangetto’s Farm and Garden Supply was essentially non-existent in the digital age. Their website was archaic, their organic search ranking was subpar, their social media was neglected, their advertising was minimal, their email lists were stagnant, they had no media assets and their systems integrations were broken. After bringing i9media on to help Grangetto’s saw a digital transformation. From a brand new website, to successful lead generating ad campaigns, to top placement on organic search, to a vast media library, graphic design and I.T., the i9media team truly brought Grangetto’s into the digital age with a bang.
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FAQs
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Businesses where we can add value. Whether you're looking for an agency of record to help you handle all your marketing needs or you're in need of a single service to fill an operational gap, we're available to service where we can add value. And if we're not a fit, we will tell you. Our priority is the long game, so much like you, let's focus on the work and identify the opportunities where we can help you drive the business forward. Our experience ranges from working with businesses large and small, wholesale, retail, and startup, from lifestyle and software to manufacturing and lodging.
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Branding and performance marketing, from strategic to tactical. We start with a market competitive analysis, running a discovery to inform all the downstream work, using those business insights to give you an edge to gain market share over your competitors. Making things pretty and a proper technology stack are not enough. The business needs to polish its unique value propositions and properly align with the addressable target market. From there, our branding services include the full gamut of design, from logo and typography to digital and physical assets, like websites, flyers, tradeshow booths and beyond. On performance marketing services include advertising, e-commerce, email marketing, social media, website management, and more, setting clear objectives and repeatedly assessing results and identifying optimization opportunities.
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We start with a discovery, which includes a competitive analysis of your 3-5 competitors, both head-to head and aspirational, looking at key performance indicators on multiple marketing channels, from website and advertising to reputation and beyond. Next is using those parameters to sharpen your positioning with clearly stated unique value propositions and communication guidelines for your product and service catalog, boosting your competitive edge. Lastly, drawing on that strategy, it's a plan of execution, and resource allocation, right-sizing on budget to the scale of the business and the success criteria requirements.
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If we believe we can outperform your current efforts. We have lots of experience to draw from, which gives enormous insights on the expertise and work-hour requirements to perform at different levels. We've seen a lot, from teams having the humility to seek help to boost performance to teams being overly enthusiastic about mediocre performance. We don't want to waste either your or our time. We'll take a look at your marketing efforts and if we believe we can give you more productivity and profitability cost-effectively, we'll tell you. And if we can't, we'll tell you.
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Our benefit is exactly in our range, from local to global and small to enterprise, serving various industries, which helps us avoid blindspots and gives us fresh perspectives to approach different industries. Our past industries include but are not limited to technology, manufacturing, biosafety, software, automotive, military, lifestyle, farming and gardening, accessories, aviation, and more.
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Contact us for a free consultation and we’ll walk you through our method and whether we think there is a fit, where and the type. If we don’t see an opportunity to add value, we ‘ll tell you. For us, performance matters more than simply signing a new client. Our goal is retention. For that, we look for fits to drive results. Email or call and we’ll help get you started if the opportunity to add value is there.
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Yes but also one-time services. You may need a comprehensive marketing solution or just a one-off service, such as a new website build or some branding assets, for instance. We’ll listen to what you are looking for but then also give you our insight on where we think you may most benefit from an engagement with us.
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Net sales increase on lower discount rates and smaller advertising budgets with a cost-effective solution – that’s our preferred key performance indicator. Money in the bank. But sometimes the marketing is not performance, it’s branding. In that case, marketing assets must be inspirational, informative, and drive an inquisitive behavior to covert, retain and advocate to new prospect clients, building the momentum for growth.
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