ONE-TO-ONE

Reaching the right people with the right message to maximize results.

Helping clients reach the right customers with the right message at the right time is at the very heart of our personalized marketing approach. By tracking customer interests and buying patterns, we help clients maximize their marketing dollars by communicating highly targeted messaging to only those customers with the highest propensity to purchase.

This customer relationship management (CRM) strategy of emphasizing personalized interactions not only fosters greater customer loyalty and better return on investment (ROI), it lets us continually track and measure purchase intent and conversion rates.

In today’s increasingly competitive and fragmented marketplace, this one-to-one approach offers advertisers a highly effective way to engage their prime customers while greatly reducing waste. Digital overhaul leading to big results: Yamaha Motor Corporation USA

YAMAHA DIGITAL OVERHAUL LEADING TO BIG RESULTS

In February 2014, GearShift Advertising and our media partner ymarketing took over for Yamaha’s previous, long-time agency, and was given the client mandate to attach ROI metrics to future advertising.

Among the many challenges we faced, Yamaha’s website, CRM and lead management systems were not nearly as connected as they could be, and not optimally set up for sales tracking. This is because Yamaha had historically focused on awareness TV and print media – with lower-funnel, close-to-sale actions not measured, nor ever an integral part of the culture up till that time. In short, Yamaha’s advertising had never been geared for data capture, and their website-generated dealer leads trailed competitors, leaving huge room for improvement.

We quickly realized a complete digital overhaul would be required to overcome inertia and deliver the accountability and efficiencies that Yamaha desired. Our campaign involved strategic and creative solutions across many fronts –requiring new levels of coordination between the agency’s and client’s marketing web development and CRM teams.

Among our many strategic solutions, we increased Yamaha’s media mix from 35% digital to over 50% digital. We also set up the client’s first-ever Paid Search campaigns across all product lines, bidding on over 82,000 keywords, incorporating Paid Social as a lead-driving tactic, instead of just community-building. We also added new forms of targeting and remarketing for display media. Lastly, we established a new tagging structure and KPIs for online lead forms, dealer locates, zip code searches, finance inquiries, brochure downloads, and video views, Creative-wise, we built a series of 14 responsive-design landing pages themed around individual models and product groups, with sales lead form, videos and dealer locator tools. We also customized online videos by dealer location and audience segment (using previously-untapped CRM data), tested different offers and CTA’s on display banners and landing pages, and added Google keyword call-outs to traditional media forms, such as radio scripts. Additionally, we matched creative to audience segment – for example, delivering different ATV ads to hunters, farmers, enthusiasts, and heavy industry users.

Since the creative and landing pages were new and unproven, as a part of a continuous testing process, we boosted results by: 1) Optimizing the CTA messaging on the landing pages and digital ads, 2) Analyzing the behavior of visitors who abandoned the lead form, removing several fields and condensing into a one-step process, and 3) Adding a catch-all generic landing page for category keywords, such as “dirtbikes.” Over a two-week period, these optimizations drove a +123% increase in total leads.

The results of our campaign were dramatic: From May-Dec 2014, despite relatively flat annual budgets, Yamaha experienced an 880% increase in YOY dealer leads. Over the same time period, we helped Yamaha reduce their cost per lead by 87%. During the subsequent 12 months, Yamaha’s Motorcycle division gained 1.5% share of sales, while key competitors Honda, Harley-Davidson, Kawasaki and Suzuki all lost share.

Today, all advertising tracking information (search keyword, banner ad vendor, sales offer, call-to-action) is passed into Yamaha’s database and lead management systems – and is then matched against sales registration data. From August 2014– January, 2015 more than 300 sales matched back to online leads generated from the new landing pages.

    Work created by GearShift for Yamaha and Star Motorcycles shown with permission from Yamaha Motor Corporation.

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