Marygrove Awnings has made major inroads in 2020 on its plans to widely expand its business outside the Midwest, with the 5K | Formerly Conklin Media team helping strategically grow the company in major cities in a profitable fashion.
Maker of world-class residential awnings and commercial awnings, Marygrove Awnings has earned a top-notch reputation throughout its home state of Michigan. For more than 20 years, the Marygrove Awnings team has built and installed premier fixed awnings, retractable awnings, window shades and solar screens, louvered roof systems as well as storefront awnings, metal standing seam awnings, outdoor seating awnings, smoking shelters, and rolling shutters.
Marygrove Awnings was slowly building its business with another digital marketing agency but was not optimized for full-scale growth, said Josh Eberly, the agency’s chief operating officer.
Marygrove Awnings Teams With 5K | Formerly Conklin Media to Get Optimized for Expansion
Marygrove Awnings and 5K | Formerly Conklin Media united forces in late 2018, with the business growth agency taking over website content marketing and design, SEO and advertising from the awning company’s previous agency. Conklin Media quickly added conversion tracking and link building to the lineup.
As Marygrove Awnings got better-equipped for growth, Eberly was able to tap into powerful data to reveal metrics on cost per appointment and cost per conversion. This insight helped him navigate growth prospects safely, affordably and profitably.
The 5K | Formerly Conklin Media team also opened up new sales lead opportunities through HomeAdvisor.com while getting external systems such as this one hooked up to the company’s internal systems. This addition helped grow Marygrove Awnings’ business to $16.3 million in sales in the year to date, through late October 2020.
“We have experienced extraordinary growth this past year,” said Jessy Nehro, Marygrove Awnings’ director of marketing. “One of the biggest contributors to our growth was to allow the voice of the customer to speak to the market about their experience with the Marygrove Awnings team. Conklin Media designed a program for us to provide the customer with a platform for leaving us reviews. With over 500 reviews, we continually rank at 4.9 stars, and we know our prospects read these reviews prior to making a decision to partner with us for their shade solutions.”
Marygrove Awnings Extends Services to Chicago, Columbus and North Jersey Homes and Businesses
With 5K | Formerly Conklin Media serving as Marygrove Awnings’ holistic digital marketing arm, the Livonia, Michigan-based company was primed to expand to nearby Chicago in 2019, introducing a potentially large revenue stream. Come this year, Marygrove Awnings brought its world-class products and services to Columbus, Ohio, (it had served Toledo, Ohio, close to Detroit, for several years) and is preparing to expand in North Jersey in early 2021.
Behind the scenes, Eberly hammered out a system for expansion that could position Marygrove Awnings for success in new markets without having the company face tremendous expenses.
“We expanded in Chicago and didn’t increase any ad spend,” Eberly said. “We took the same amount of money we were spending in Detroit the year before and spent it in Chicago and Detroit and had to hit higher benchmarks, which we were able to do.”
With the Chicago expansion and Marygrove Awnings’ strong digital marketing campaign, a competitor with a quarter-century foothold in the Windy City closed its doors, Eberly said. This competitor was not able to adapt quickly enough to harness the power of the growing and highly effective digital marketing approach.
With the expansion into North Jersey, Eberly ensured the area was flush with the kind of target avatar that checks all the boxes for Marygrove Awnings: older population, disposable income and existing competitors, among others.
Marygrove Awnings’ Sales Blossom During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Once the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and quarantine guidelines were delivered, people wound up spending more time at home than they have in years or perhaps ever. As a result, some businesses, including Marygrove Awnings, blossomed.
“People are staying home more and are investing more in their homes and properties,” Eberly said.
Getting Marygrove Awnings positioned to be right in front of buyers looking for local awning companies via local SEO efforts have paid dividends, he said. “We’re going after keywords that are locally based.”
As of late October 2020, Marygrove Awnings has enjoyed sales of $11.2 million in retractable awnings, almost doubling last year’s sales, and $1.3 million in louvered roofs, almost tripling last year’s sales—with two months of sales to go.
“Working with 5K | Formerly Conklin Media is very enjoyable, easy and exciting,” Nehro said. “They are the experts and our true partners. They guide us in making the best decisions to grow our business, and we are truly thankful.”
The 5K | Formerly Conklin Media Team Serves As an Extension of Marygrove Awnings
With Eberly leading the way, the 5K | Formerly Conklin Media team is able to provide Marygrove Awnings not only strategic digital marketing and business growth guidance and execution but recommendations to the company’s development and IT staffs, helping improve the business overall.
“We’re a one-stop solution for them and have such deep integrated knowledge of their systems and their data, that we’re almost like an internal employee,” Eberly said. “We make it easy for them not to have to worry about lead generation and digital marketing but instead focus on sales and customer service, which they’re really good at.”
