Blueovaltruckparts.com is an ecommerce store for all Ford truck parts from the 40s to the 90s. When we first sat down with them, they already had a functional website and were making money. However the competition was on the rise and they wanted to maintain their standing in the Ford community as a preeminent online supplier.
As expected, this was a highly competitive market online. There was a wide assortment of competitors including some of the largest auto part stores in the world. With competition like this, the standard SEO and online ad buys had already proven to be too costly.
We decided to focus on the community aspect of Ford Truck owners. Using social media we were able to build a solid community of like minded individuals who loved posting pictures of their “project trucks”. From there we took the data we collected and used this to cater an online ad buy program around specific content and demographics.
We built a relatively affordable online ad buy program centered more around Branding than direct sales. The idea was, put the Blue Oval logo and website in front of as many eyes as possible, without having to pay every time it was seen. To accomplish this, our online display ads were distributed on a pay per click basis rather than a pay per impression basis. We also ran a Pay Per Click Search Engine (Google Adwords) campaign centered around specific parts. We did this because we knew that generalizing the google ads would prove cost prohibitive.
With the increase in visibility and brand awareness, it was clear that the website needed to be updated. We built them a Magento system site, refreshed their logo and look, and transferred their thousands of item numbers and pictures. Now they offer a much more user friendly experience with much greater potential and efficiency.
We built a large community on social media, taking the brand from nothing to over 11 Thousand followers, and typical reach of a social media post around 20K, sometime as much as 50K. This did not happen overnight. It took years because we were focused on a truly organic and interactive crowd. Speaking solely with regards to social media, we did not do any paid ads. It was 100% grass roots. Number of followers increased at a constant rate of 15%-20% month after month.
The online ad campaign was successful at both driving traffic and converting sales. Our display ads performed exceptionally considering a budget of around $300-$500 per month, they were typically bringing in 55K-75K impressions. That means these ads were viewed 55 thousand times and only cost our client a few hundred dollars. The Search Engine ads were more specific and served to drive traffic straight to sales. We tracked conversion rates along with this and saw a rate that hovered around 3.5%. Typically websites convert around 1%-2%.