Jun 11, 2020
Conduit Digital has consistently created incredible results for our clients and their campaigns.
Do you want to know the secrets to growing your agency’s revenue?
It may be easier than you think!
At Conduit, we believe in the Land and Expand method.
Using this method has enabled us to grow accounts from $200,000 to $4.8million in monthly billing!
Our Director of Client Experience Tim C. Burke, Director of Products Rob Burke, PPC Manager Mike Gibson, and Programmatic Team Lead John Smithson sat down to discuss the Land and Expand method and how it has enabled us to become one of the fastest-growing agencies in the world.
What is Land and Expand?
Land and Expand is a concept that we live by at Conduit Digital.
When you successfully Land and Expand a client, you are “landing” on the deliverables of their campaign and then “expanding” their campaigns into multi-product campaigns.
There are 3 key elements into how we make Land and Expand work for our clients.
1. Data-Driven Results
When we get an account in, through data-driven results, we grow it to the moon.
We provide our clients with unique, critical data that they may have not had access to.
Whether it be competitor data, market data; any data that we can deploy a digital campaign around.
It is about creating a baseline for growth.
2. Provide Account ROI
Over the course of our relationship with our partners and clients, we continuously provide account ROI.
If we can prove that what they’re doing with us is working and the ad spend is working, that sets the baseline of trust and credibility.
This sets a nice foundation for us to really expand that account and grow that account.
Because they know that we’re already proving results, they can trust us to continue to improve those results.
3. Paint a Vision For The Future
Since we know that we are driving results at a particular level in a market, as the client looks to expand to different facilities and different markets we can utilize that baseline of data-driven results of the entirety of the account to take it to the next level.
We are able to forecast and show that forward-thinking data-driven results will be able to drive results in the future.
Time and time again we have proven the Land and Expand method.
In fact, here are some real-life examples of how we took this approach, applied it to our clients’ campaigns, and saw incredible success for us and the client.
Regional Cancer Center
We started with the Cancer Center in early 2017.
They told us the number of leads they were hoping to reach with their campaign.
From there, we worked backward to help them reach their goal.
The first step before landing and expanding is to build the foundations to grow an account.
Don't Be Afraid To Start Small
Our most successful land and expand accounts have started with a $2,000-$3,000 monthly spend.
To many agencies, that may not seem like a lot of money.
But at Conduit, we believe that every dollar matters for every single client.
Conduit Digital analysts take the approach to take that monthly spend as if it were their own.
As an agency, when you take on that responsibility and apply that to your accounts, that builds trust and credibility.
That is what allows you to take that smaller account to the moon.
Land and Expand is not about putting your hand in your client’s pocket and taking money out.
It is about helping your clients realize the opportunity they have.
Whether that opportunity is on one platform or several platforms and helping them reach that opportunity.
Growing To The Moon
When we started with this regional cancer center, it started out as a single-market, $3,000 per month programmatic client.
After studying the data, we saw the opportunity for them to succeed with paid search.
This success led us to take over the entire digital marketing operations of one of their locations, bringing their monthly spend from $3,000 per month to $30,000.
After seeing the success that these multi-product campaigns were bringing this location, we applied the same strategies to expand into the client’s other locations.
Over the 3 years we have worked with them, they have now grown to a $90,000 per month monthly spend.
It's Not About Spending More Money
The win with this client is not that we were able to get them to increase their monthly spend, the win is that they were driving better results.
They offer a great service.
We were able to educate the market, drive results, and create success for both themselves and us as an agency.
When we expanded into new markets, it requires adjusting concepts and messaging to the specific market using data we have gathered through working with other clients in similar verticals and markets.
It is all about helping our clients’ team go from lead to filling beds in their facilities.
We can bring as many people to the door as possible, but what is happening on the sales process side?
Having that conversation and being an extension of their team has allowed us to leverage that back-end sales data with our marketing data.
And that is what it is all about.
Not just the marketing aspect, but growth for the entirety of the account.
Start With Tangible Results
It always comes back to return on ad spend.
You’re never going to grow a client from $3,000 to $90,000 because of click-through-rate.
While CTR is a good performance barometer early on for their campaign when it comes to long-term success you have to link it to tangible results.
It’s about proving that when your clients spend money with you, you are really moving the needle for their business. It makes it real.
Take it from theory to real return for your clients.
Global Beverage Distributor
Another great example of how we Land and Expand our clients is the work we have done with a global beverage distributor.
This client was looking to increase the amount of qualified applicants for their distribution side.
The way that we approached this was to develop a complete marketing plan around these frontline jobs, whether it be a merchandiser, a warehouse worker, or a CDL driver.
When we started, the client had no data on the potential applicants they were looking for.
That is why we set up a Data Beta.
Data Beta
When your clients have little to no data on what their digital goals are, it is important to set up a data beta to gauge the market and determine best practices for a successful campaign.
For this global beverage distributor, we set up a data beta in 10 of the potential markets they wanted to advertise in.
By maximizing the customer data, we started finding certain insights that would prove useful in the client’s campaign execution.
If your client has first party data of their target audience, utilize that! It’s one of the easiest ways to increase the ROI for your client.
We discovered the best way was to take a proactive and reactive approach.
In terms of proactivity, you want to go out and get qualified leads.
They may not necessarily be looking for a job, they may even be working for a competitor.
However, the goal of the data beta is to discover who out of that target demographic is most likely to be interested in joining our client’s team instead.
This targeted audience may not actively be looking for a job, but thanks to our targeted campaigns, they now know they have the option.
Think Strategically and Creatively
When approaching a campaign in the data aggregation phase, creativity and strategy are so important.
With automation becoming more prevalent to fill campaigns, people are coming to agencies for more than just fulfillment.
They are looking for advice and strategy.
For example, around the time we started this campaign Toys R Us was going out of business.
So we had the idea to geo-fence all relevant Toys R Us locations with targeted ads to let the warehouse workers, who would soon be out of a job, know that our client was hiring.
The impact that we saw from that was pretty significant.
More Than Just Marketing Campaigns
We are doing so much more than just running product marketing campaigns.
We aren’t just running a PPC campaign and reporting on it. Nor are we just running a programmatic campaign and reporting on it.
It’s all about the overarching strategy behind it. It’s about building a relationship, developing the strategy, and then bringing the team together to be singularly focused toward executing that strategy.
Now that a client sees the hard work that has been put into their campaigns, and the results that have been generated, they are more likely to put more money and more resources in their market.
Have an Engaged Client
Big name, multi-location clients are a huge opportunity. Ultimately, having an engaged client is key.
When you have a marketing manager or an account executive who wants to crush it but just doesn’t really know the digital side of it, that is where we can really have success.
By having effective communication, you will not only have a happy client but will also set a foundation for trust.
They know that they can come to us for strategic guidance, whether that means expanding to other products or increasing their spend, they trust that we will work with them to develop a strategy that sees the best results.
Conclusion
Whether your client has a monthly spend of a few hundred dollars or thousands of dollars, treat every dollar as if it were your own.
When working with clients, take a Land and Expand approach.
Develop strategies based on aggregated data collected through data betas.
Discuss expectations and prove results that result in more than just higher CTRs; create real ROI for your clients!
By using these approaches, expand your clients into new markets and replicate the success.
Using this method has enabled Conduit Digital to grow accounts from a few thousand dollars in monthly spend to over $4.8 million!
Want To Implement Land and Expand For Your Clients? Contact Us Today.
