Ewemove had never been able to hit their target Cost Per Lead and were close to giving up on PPC as a route to market.
They approached Fountain in early 2014 to manage AdWords for franchisee recruitment and their individual branches.
Exceptional Results for EweMove.com
Our Work
When we started working with them, EweMove had already started running Google AdWords to recruit new franchisees.
Each new recruit is extremely valuable to a franchise owner, and the more traditional routes to market, such as franchise shows, magazines and directories, can be extremely costly. With their audacious growth plans, EweMove were not happy with the volume of leads they were able to generate from AdWords.
We were able to restructure and scale up their campaign to meet and exceed EweMove’s growth targets. By expanding their audience and improving the conversion rate of their landing page, we were able to achieve this without impacting their cost per lead.
The table below shows where they were started in September 2014 before we took over the campaign, and where they are now:
The Future Just Got REALLY Exciting
As EweMove is taken over by Martin & Co, they are keeping the brand separate, and we will continue to run PPC for EweMove’s branches and franchisee recruitment and introduce new strategies on a regular basis.
We have also already started work on Martin & Co’s own digital marketing - we’re getting our teeth into their ‘Ask Martin’ campaign, and we already have a CRO audit of their website and landing pages underway. Our consultants are chomping at the bit to get to take over their branch PPC and get AdWords working for all 287 branches - and with EweMove as the case study for success, we’re confident it won’t be long!
FRANCHISEE RECRUITMENT
This case study embodies what it means to us to be a Google Premier Partner Agency;
Using our AdWords expertise to bring sustained client revenue growth, ultimately increasing our own client base, but never, ever taking our eyes off the goals of the businesses we help.
At Fountain, we take a thoroughly evidence-based approach to digital marketing to achieve ROI for our clients. While the franchise arena presents enormous challenges in some ways, our team were excited to apply our approach and adapt it for EweMove. We were able to trial a broad range of strategies, channels and tools as we grew the campaign.
The account has grown with the agency - and during that time there has been no compromise on values, quality or focus. Fountain’s team dynamic supports this - our fundamental values are not compromised to achieve our goals.
Our work has helped EweMove become one of the fastest growing franchises in the country - growing from 30 to over 90 branches in just 2 years. They have won national awards including “5 Star Rated Franchise” by Smith + Henderson,
Their success was recognised in the most concrete way when EweMove was bought by Martin & Co PLC, the UK’s largest estate agency franchise and the 4th biggest estate agent in the country, for £15 million in September 2016.
EweMove were ready to quit their AdWords campaigns for their branches when they came to us in October 2014. Their in-house team had run a small trial, but their cost per lead (CPL) was well over £100. It was looking like PPC was not going to be the channel they had hoped it would be for their franchisees - which would have put pressure on them to find leads elsewhere.
Fountain’s team took over their AdWords campaign in October 2014. By restructuring the campaign and refining their keywords lists, we were able to bring their CPL down to £28.37. In spite of this huge improvement, EweMove needed an even lower CPL to roll out AdWords to all their franchisees.
Our CRO experts undertook an extensive Conversion Rate Audit, applying our 8-step CRO methodology and creating a document of recommendations for overhauling their landing pages. As these changes were implemented, we were able to track a sure and steady increase in conversion - and a corresponding dive in CPL as shown in this table.
With the new strategy and landing pages delivering results, we trialled the campaign across 30 branches. As success proved steady, we rolled it out to the remaining campaigns in early 2015.
As the franchisee recruitment campaign bore fruit, we launched new campaigns for each new branch that was created. New strategies were added along the way - such as TrueView instream advertising to leverage their video content, expansion to Facebook and other channels, and most recently, the introduction of Gmail advertising.
The challenges of making small changes across 70+ branches has been met with innovation by our team - including the creation of a custom-built script that enables us to set up ad-split tests across all branches from a single spreadsheet.
And the benefits of running such a volume of similar campaigns has also supported our innovation. We have been able to trial, often for free, a strategy for just a handful of branches, then once we have refined it and proven success, it can be rolled out across the entire group. This is also a perfect model for trialling Google BETA products.
This year we supported EweMove in recruiting an in-house digital marketing executive who works alongside us, line managed by Fountain. This has helped EweMove keep their management fees at a reasonable level, while still benefiting from the innovation an agency brings. In June this year we brought EweMove’s marketing manager and marketing assistant with us to Google to meet the Pinnacle team, learn more about their industry online and generally have great day out.
Today, we regularly send over 20 high quality leads to each branch every month, delivering clear return on investment.
Keeping the Ball Rolling
Our three-stage "evidence-based" approach isn't a merely a USP designed to differentiate us from other agencies, it's a prime directive, keeping our team focussed on quantifiable outcomes and enhancing trust between us and our clients.
