A Natural Extension of Your Marketing Team

The Challenge

3PL Central hired SmartAcre, a HubSpot partner, to improve paid campaigns and accelerate marketing activities. Initially the priorities included the strategy and build out of campaigns and assets, improving the integration between HubSpot and Salesforce, and gathering and analyzing marketing and sales data to track ROI.

After learning more about the marketing challenges facing 3PL Central, SmartAcre realized lead acceleration and marketing automation weren’t the only marketing components that could be improved. Acting as an extension of the 3PL Central marketing team, SmartAcre recommended new campaigns, which led to the creation of new landing pages and design assets, ultimately sparking a conversation about improving the entire 3PL Central website.

“SmartAcre is a true partner to my marketing team and, more importantly, my business. From the smallest task to the largest campaign, I know SmartAcre will be by my side providing exceptional service. I trust SmartAcre everyday to help my team be the very best. From helping navigate day-to-day marketing operational needs to building new campaigns to managing our PPC or completely redesigning our website, I know SmartAcre is there. 

To me, SmartAcre is not an agency working with me, but a total extension of my team.”

Chelsea Levengood, Director of Marketing at 3PL Central

Our Approach

To build a solid foundation and deliver client value quickly and efficiently, SmartAcre leverages a 90-day onboarding approach.

The first 30-days consists of taking a client deep-dive to ensure client processes, systems, and challenges are clearly understood by SmartAcre. In doing so, SmartAcre can identify early roadblocks, focus on tactics that bring the most value, and launch campaigns quickly. For 3PL Central, SmartAcre:

• Audited the current buyer’s journey to understand tactics and identify opportunities/gaps for improvement.
• Conducted discovery interviews with internal stakeholders to refine and understand the marketing to sales process and 3PL Central’s key value propositions.
• Developed targeted personas to drive content and keyword recommendations.
• Audited marketing and sales technology stack to pinpoint reporting gaps and identify opportunities for improvement.

SmartAcre uses days 31-90 to focus on the implementation of all key data points uncovered during the first 30 days. For 3PL Central, SmartAcre:

• Created initial campaigns based on gaps identified in 3PL Central’s customer journey with specific goals to generate leads via new tactics not yet explored through paid advertising campaigns.
• Created content, assets, and logic for workflows in HubSpot to move leads through the funnel.
• Created email and landing page templates to improve conversion rates and support new campaigns – such as testing new offers in AdWords (free trial vs. live demo vs. consultation).

At 90-days in, SmartAcre has become a fully sufficient extension of the client’s marketing team. SmartAcre understands the overall strategy and can execute across a variety of tactics to deliver results. For 3PL Central, SmartAcre:

• Created monthly and quarterly account plans with defined goals, outlining the specific tactics to be managed by SmartAcre.
• Ran ongoing lead nurturing campaigns focused on a central piece of content, through multi-channel outreach across email, organic, social, and paid channels.
• Refined lead scoring and grading to pass high quality leads to sales.
• Provided ongoing monthly reporting including MOZ SEO report, CrazyEgg snapshots, and Google Data Studio dashboards to measure performance and influence the creation of net new strategies.

The Results

While efficient onboarding is crucial to any successful client engagement, SmartAcre prides itself on delivering results. As an agile extension of 3PL Central’s marketing team, SmartAcre was able to adapt to meet 3PL Central’s diverse set of needs. Since 2016, SmartAcre has helped 3PL Central achieve the following milestones after building a strong foundation:

• Created marketing roadmap including industry events, new content recommendations, and marketing campaigns.
• Developed initial personas and refined yearly, including updating all forms and segmenting persona data within HubSpot through workflows.
• Took over daily management of paid campaigns, increasing MRR from paid campaigns by 75% from 2016 to 2017.
• Overhaul of the 3PL Central Website resulting in 45% increase in organic traffic as well as a brand facelift complete with new colors, iconography, and corporate imagery.
• Provided new support with regard to data cleansing and lead attribution between 3PL Central’s HubSpot and Salesforce environments.
• Launched 7 ebook promotion plans, including the State of the Industry campaign which alone resulted in 7 opportunities and 2 won opportunities.
• Generated 75% increase in MRR from paid search.
• Re-engaged ~1,500 prospects leading to net new demo requests.
• Supported marketing pre and post-show for two industry events increasing brand awareness.
• Supported key product launches, including lead and demand gen product launch plan as well as PR/media outreach.

Conclusion

SmartAcre has a unique ability to effectively onboard new clients to not only tackle their initial challenges but also more thoroughly understand the ways in which they can improve the overall marketing and sales process. SmartAcre partnered with 3PL Central to deliver value and results aligned with their overall business goals, not just marketing metrics. By focusing on lead-to-revenue marketing across the buyer’s journey, SmartAcre is able to constantly identify new ideas and tactics, making SmartAcre an integral part of 3PL Central.