How We Helped Dog Guard® of Wisconsin Achieve 5X ROI on Paid Advertising & Generate $337,925 in Web Generated Revenue in 2021

Dog Guard^® of Wisconsin wanted to grow their business, but a poor website held them back.

In the spring of 2019, Dog Guard of Wisconsin, a local electronic dog fencing franchise, was working to grow their business but struggled with digital marketing.

Their website—and by extension, the agency responsible for running it—wasn’t delivering business. What’s more, poor reporting obscured important metrics, making it difficult to see what wasn’t working.

In a previous role at another company, Terri Benisch, former co-owner of Dog Guard of Wisconsin, had worked with Madison Marketing Group to optimize multiple small business websites and implement low budget Google search and retargeting ad campaigns. She hoped we could do the same for Dog Guard of Wisconsin to improve the website and generate leads.

After partnering with MMG, Dog Guard of Wisconsin was able to:

• Produce $337,925 in web-generated revenue in 2021 alone (ecommerce sales excluded);
• Produce an estimated ROI of 5.1X on paid search advertising in 2021; and
• Generate $42,997 in ecommerce revenue in 2021 alone.

Read on to learn more about how we overcame Dog Guard of Wisconsin's challenges to help them produce these results.

Executing the campaign: new Google advertising campaigns

To generate leads, we created a new Google Ads campaign from scratch. This included:

• Keyword research and strategy;
• Campaign set-up, ad copywriting for four ad groups;
• The creation of a dedicated custom landing page; and
• Ongoing campaign management and reporting for tracking and optimizing campaign performance.

The totally re-built ad program featured a landing page optimized to solicit quote requests through clear, concise messaging and thoughtful product positioning.

The budget started low—about $500 per month—to help us test our strategy and campaign assets before investing more. This testing period would yield positive results, prompting us to increase our spend the following spring.

In addition to Google paid search ads, we launched a retargeting display ad campaign to re-engage individuals who had visited the site but left without converting.

Regular reporting check-ins and data dashboards kept the Dog Guard of Wisconsin team informed of campaign performance and progress toward the goals of:

• Driving inbound lead generation via the website;
• Increasing organic and paid search visibility around important unbranded search terms in local markets; and
• Enabling ecommerce product sales to streamline fulfillment processes.

Part II: Initial Results and Optimizations

Between September 2019 and March 2020, we saw the campaign yield some initially favorable results and areas for refinement.

Traffic to the website from unpaid search results had increased by 35% compared to the previous year, suggesting that efforts to boost search engine visibility had begun to produce results. At the same time, the site was generating an average of almost two leads per day (including all sources of traffic).

Meanwhile, the Google search ad campaign had generated 50 leads, each costing $50 to $60, but worth about $200 in customer value. Also, the ecommerce store had generated more than $7K in revenue in Q4 of 2019 and Q1 of 2020.

In contrast, display ads were not yielding favorable results, which prompted us to end that campaign and redirect the spend to the more fruitful Google search ads campaign.

As a result of the positive signals from Google search ads from Q2 of 2020, Dog Guard of Wisconsin started spending more per month on paid search advertising, raising the ad spend to over $1,000 per month.

Part III: Mid- to Long-term Results

In 2020 and 2021, likely due to a combination of effective strategy and more demand during the height of the pandemic, the success of Dog Guard of Wisconsin’s digital marketing program accelerated—a trend marked by a steady upward trend in average daily leads generated by the website from all sources. This included prospects who clicked on unpaid search results and ads, as measured by form submissions on paid search landing pages and the contact form.

The website went from producing under two leads per day, on average (September 2019 to March 2020) to 2.6 per day (March 2019 to March 2021) to 4.2 per day (March 2021 to December 2021).

Of these leads, in 2020, 80% came from organic search results or search ads. This suggested that:

1. Paid search and search engine optimization efforts (such as website improvements and search optimized content) were successful; and
2. There was a higher demand for these products during the pandemic.

While 2021 saw even more leads generated from digital marketing, organic search results and search ads accounted for fewer of them—67%. More leads were being generated from direct website traffic—those who type in or tap on the website URL rather than being referred from search or another source. This suggested greater brand awareness and possibly good results from other marketing motions, including word-of-mouth.

Lead Form Submissions, Oct. 2019-March 2022

These lead generation trends were accompanied by an improvement in web-generated revenue in 2020, which resulted in $193,204 by the end of the year. (This excluded ecommerce sales, which contributed an additional $30,755 in revenue by the end of 2020, and produced $42,997 in revenue in 2021.)

A positive trend established itself as revenue spiked in March of 2021 and remained strong throughout the year, resulting in $337,925 by the end of December—more than half again the revenue of 2020.

Web-Generated Revenue by Month (Excluding Ecommerce)

This was partly due to the wild success of paid search ads, which from April 2020–2021 contributed an estimated $68,850–$99,000 in revenue and provided an estimated ROI of 6.9X.

With the return of the warm weather in the spring of 2021, Dog Guard of Wisconsin’s busy season began, and the budget for paid search ads was increased again, spurred by stellar ROI paired with relatively stagnant costs per lead.

This investment resulted in an estimated $114,188–$162,000 in revenue from paid search advertising and an estimated ROI of 5.1X.

Final thoughts

Since they first partnered with us, Dog Guard of Wisconsin has grown, hiring new employees and enjoying a steady volume of business that keeps them busy.

In the future, Dog Guard of Wisconsin plans to continue to work with Madison Marketing Group to turn their investments in paid search advertising and SEO into leads interested in buying fences and their other products.

Reach out today to learn how you can generate more leads with custom digital marketing solutions.