Inbound marketing program helps DPHA members gather digital leads

In April of 2022, ShowroomMarketing.com and The Decorative Plumbing and Hardware Association (the DPHA) agreed to put in motion an online-based, business development program the residential plumbing distribution world has ever seen.

This program ended up being called the “Digital Marketing Program for DPHA Dealers,” and the premise of the program was simple: To attract searchers going to Google who were looking for a brick-and-mortar shopping experience and sway them to Self-Select a DPHA member's place of business, to inquire, and then hopefully purchase the products they needed for their home remodeling project.

Here are the specifics of the program

Step 1: Place enticing Ads on Google to attract homeowners, specifiers (interior designers and architects), and businesses in the trades (builders and plumbers) searching in specific zip codes for a showroom experience they could warm up to and count on to bring them the products they wanted most for their remodeling project.

The DPHA allocated $80 per member towards this program for advertising on Google and ShowroomMarketing.com matched them to do the same.

In total, $160 per member was budgeted for what was essentially a Co-Op Program between the association and one of its service provider members.

Step 2: Construct a personalized Landing Page for each DPHA showroom participating in the program, so that every action taken on behalf of their company was 100% Measured, Tracked, Recorded, and Reported to each dealer so they could understand the value they were receiving from the program, for free.

Here are a few of the Landing Pages that were used for this program:

This page was for Belmont Hardware, a DPHA member with six retail showrooms located throughout Northern California.

This page was for ProSource Supply, a DPHA member with 7 retail and wholesale showrooms and supply houses located throughout North and South Carolina.

Step 3: When an inquiry was received (I.e., a phone call or form fill-out), the contact of record at the company was notified immediately.  

They either had the Caller ID Details sent to them (after it was verified to be a viable lead) or the Contact Form Fill-Out notification was sent.

Step 4: For the members of the association, the Results Reporting deliverable for The Digital Marketing Program for DPHA Dealers included a "Deed Card" - which is a 1-page summary sheet that looks similar to what the game of Monopoly uses to show the value of each property on the gameboard.

The metrics that were tracked for each of the 4 rounds of advertising were:

• Advertising Spend;
• Google Ad Clicks Received;
• Total Searches Done In Your Market;
• Searches That You Showed Up For;
• Click-Through Rate For Your Ads;
• Phone Calls Received;
• Form Fill-Outs Received; and
• Clicks To Your Company's Website

For the Decorative Plumbing and Hardware Association and the board members, ShowroomMarkering.com created a customized Business Intelligence Dashboard that had global data for all 63 DPHA members included, as well as an individual dashboard for each member. 

This dashboard contains the 20% of the "metrics that matter most" for turning web browsers into sale opportunities:

Step 5: At the end of the 3rd of 4th rounds of advertising, Phil Hotarek of Lutz Plumbing in San Francisco and an Executive Committee member of the DPHA, thought it would be beneficial for the association to film a video of Phil walking through the Business Intelligence Dashboard with Austin Pike, Director of Marketing Conversion at ShowroomMarketing.com.

Phil was also kind enough to put his passion for this program into a blog post that the DPHA published.

From the information captured by the Google Analytics account from the DPHA's website, the membership is very interested in knowing more about, “How to win more Inquiries and Sales and Control more Market Share through the Internet Channel.  This blog post was one of the most viewed pages on the DPHA website in quite some time!

Results of the program

There was a total of $9,176 invested in DPHA showrooms across North America over a 10-month period. From that investment, a total of 3,403 clicks came from the program from Google searchers who were specifically looking for a brick-and-mortar showroom to view and purchase products. The cost-per-click for this campaign, across the board, was $2.70.

This number falls right in line with what ShowroomMarketing.com sees across North America for the dozens of plumbing showrooms and supply houses they work with every month to administer programming similar to what this Digital Marketing Program for DPHA Dealers did for these 63 showrooms.

There were a total of 427 (through 4 rounds) Phone Calls (298), Contact Form Fill-Outs (6), and people who clicked to Find Directions to a DPHA showroom. This means that there was 1 inquiry for every 8 clicks that came from this program.

Again, this number aligns with what ShowroomMarketing.com sees across North America for the dozens of plumbing showrooms and supply houses they work with every month.

Regarding the specific search terms typed into Google by a searcher who was looking for what a DPHA showroom offers, there were hundreds of phrases used to connect searchers to the ads submitted to Google.  The moral of the story is there was A TON of marketing and sales intelligence gained across North America from this program that was tracked in one global Google Analytics account.

There were Google ads running in over 125 of the top 200 cities in the USA with this program. This data can (and will) be used to help a showroom or supply house in any market in the USA and Canada to know exactly how much market share there is for them to capture and control.

One of the best benefits of this program is that we used competitive information from the ads accounts of Ferguson, Build, Wayfair, Amazon and hundreds of other independents to make Insight, Data-Driven, Disciplined Decisions at every step of the way with this program. 

The ability to improve the quality of customer service and client experience at each showroom and business involved in this program has increased 10X. Because each call from this program was recorded, we learned that the folks answering the phones at the showrooms could be more effective in how they handled the inquiries.

In summary, this program validated there is more to you and your company by not employing an inbound marketing program at your business.