Disruptive Advertising

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-owner of a company that manufactures and sells streaming media players.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We hired them to manage and improve our Facebook advertising campaigns. We had been doing it on our own with good results, but a professional team was needed to take it to the next level.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to increase conversions while lowering conversion costs.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I went to a digital marketing comparison site and contacted the top three vendors that work with companies of our size. Disruptive seemed to offer the best value.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Disruptive has complete control of our Facebook marketing campaign. Jared (Marketing Consultant, Disruptive Advertising) helped us identify audiences that were receptive to our product offerings. He then implemented a dynamic retargeting campaign that has been extremely profitable.

What was the team composition?

Jared is our main point of contact. He also manages our account.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Disruptive has executed solid campaigns that have produced great results. Jared has helped lower the costs of our retargeting campaigns.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It is wonderful. The communication between us and Disruptive has been solid.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are extremely professional and friendly. They really care about their customers.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder and CEO of a growing startup in California.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We are ramping up our digital marketing and decided to partner with Disruptive to help us manage our digital marketing and drive results.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals are to increase customer acquisitions and decrease the overall cost per acquisition.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We evaluated several agency partners and but decided to go with Disruptive. Primarily, they provided the best audit of our existing marketing situation. They demonstrated their expertise and creativity. They also seemed to have a well-run business with happy employees. 

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

They processed an initial audit and then started the onboarding process. They worked with us to create a 90-day plan and got to work. Their team is currently creating high converting landing pages for the various campaigns. They are handling all the creative designs, development, and the analytics to track results. They operate autonomously but check in every week to review performance and discuss strategy. They continuously work to implement changes and run A/B tests— always looking for opportunities to improve our account.

What was the team composition?

I work with a strategist, a digital executor, a designer, and additional personnel as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We're are still working together, but we are relying on them as an extension of our marketing team and they have yet to disappoint. Our work has grown significantly and our KPIs show improvements so far. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Their communication and workflow are great. They are professionals and have great project management skills. They always clearly follow up after meetings and have a solid agenda before we start.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their value is great and their team's quality of work is amazing for the price I am paying. Other professionals of the same caliber would charge me two or three times more.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The team is managing other clients and are not only working on my project. I wish I was assigned more staff, but I can see that they are working hard to fulfill all their clients and their CEO said they are going to increase their staff's size. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the VP of Davinci Virtual Office Solutions. We provide offices, live answering services, and live web chat services in 1,500 locations worldwide.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Disruptive Advertising?

We have a healthy budget that we spend on paid marketing, so we wanted to leverage that budget, primarily with Google and Bing marketing platforms. In addition, we were looking to do social marketing on Facebook and Instagram. We started looking for a company that was agile and competent to help us develop marketing strategies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They oversee our social and paid marketing campaigns and do conversion rate optimization. They also help us with A/B testing based on the images and the look of our website: they make content changes to let customers experience an altered look and feel of the website based on the tests we're performing. Those changes are not permanent–Disruptive makes indirect changes through additional software.

What is the team composition?

We work with a large team that includes our main point of contact, marketing specialists for various platforms, an analyst, a video production team, and the owner. Their video team meets with us monthly to discuss different strategies and the performance of videos. In addition, we work closely with A/B testers.

How did you come to work with them?

We did a lot of research trying to find a local company. We also asked for recommendations from our partners. After 3–4 months of looking for the right vendor, we found Disruptive. They had the qualifications we needed, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent about $90,000–$92,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2017 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We're definitely on track with the project. We've established a marketing spend versus return point of view, which is based on the number of leads converted into customers, but that's still work in progress. After that, we're going to offer incentives based on the increased traffic and conversions.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

Every week we have a video conference with most of their team. They give us an executive report and have internal dashboard reports that they custom-built for us. In addition, we have access to Google AdWords, which is another dashboard for us to see the progress. Then, we use in-house tools to analyze that information and evaluate how many visitors are coming in and converting from a lead into a customer.

What did you find most impressive about them?

This is the first time we've had a large team that is helping us reach our goals. Other agencies usually assigned one person to us who funneled everything to different team members. At Disruptive, each team member has their own purpose and responsibility, so we can work on five goals at a time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think so. We requested that we have video conferences with them and we would love them to have a video camera that would capture an entire room and all the team members. But that is a minor detail.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Push them from an analytical point of view from the start. They're an excellent team and we would use them again and again.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Security National Life Insurance Company provides affordable life insurance and annuity products to fund prearranged and prepaid funerals. Preneed products offer lifetime protection against funeral inflation costs by pre-planning and funding funerals at participating establishments before the need at time of death. Final expense services specialize in affordable and convenient products that “make sense” for a family to cover funeral costs and additional expenses. As marketing coordinator, I oversee the social media, online and print advertising, and marketing for the preneed and final expense divisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We hired Disruptive to manage our Google AdWords accounts.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to create and continue to increase a consistent flow of independent insurance agent leads to our in-house recruiter.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

After doing some online research, I set up several calls with a few companies in the area. Disruptive's presentation on how to achieve our goals far exceeded that of the other vendors. I was overwhelmingly impressed with their strategy and approach.

Describe the project in detail.

My sales rep, a dedicated market consultant, and myself met with them in person to go over goals, consumer types, and the state of our current efforts. They came back with a game plan that we discussed together and included landing pages for an A/B test. After approval, they dove in and started optimizing our campaigns.

What was the team composition?

I work directly with a marketing consultant. We have regularly scheduled calls during which he answers my questions, provides an account summary, and asks what I would like to see moving forward. He explains things in detail so that I feel like I'm a part of the effort. I feel comfortable that I can ask for further clarification without hesitation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any statistics or metrics that speak to the quality of their work and impact of the engagement?

Prior to working with Disruptive, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to give time and attention to the accounts. The lack of attention resulted in weeks of lead downturn. Disruptive has taken the workload off my plate and really improved the consistency and quality of each lead.

How did the Disruptive Advertising perform from a project management standpoint?

Disruptive is very open and communicative. My dedicated marketing consultant has gone above and beyond to provide me with valuable information that exceeds his scope. When considering alternative pay-per-click options, he is quick to offer his strategy for our company, provide assistance, and send me information that is key to the decision making process.

What impresses you about the Disruptive Advertising?

Disruptive's transparency and overall presentation continues to impress me. They are truly interested in creating a mutually beneficial and lasting partnership.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Our first representative wasn't quite hitting our goals. When we were reassigned to another rep, all the pieces fell into place.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the president of a medium-sized plumbing, heating, and air conditioning company located in New England. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We needed a vendor to create and manage a successful advertising campaign.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to bring new, high-quality leads to our company. 

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I spent hours researching various companies but couldn't find many that matched Disruptive Advertising’s reputation. After I spoke with their contact on the phone, I knew I’d called the right company.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

We had multiple conference calls with the team assigned to us and received a list of what they needed. Once I sent everything to them, the work happened quickly. They built awesome landing pages, created multiple campaigns with zip-code targeting, set up Google analytics, and worked with me to develop a budgeting plan that would benefit my company.

What was the team composition?

Adam (Senior Marketing Strategist, Disruptive Advertising) acts as our account manager and is an incredibly nice guy. He explained the benefits of having Disruptive Advertising build and manage my pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. Manny (UI Designer, Disruptive Advertising) built the landing pages, which work amazingly well.

Ashlynn (Marketing Consultant, Disruptive Advertising) built the campaign and continues to manage it; she is my go-to person for everything, I have biweekly phone calls with her for a half hour so we can update the campaign. I can’t praise her enough; she really is the best.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Senior Integrated Marketing Manager for a niche SaaS company. We show school districts how a software solution can work from the beginning of both their students’ and their educators’ careers to the end, which can be complex.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We needed to not only expand brand awareness, but to also use social and PPC ads to target audiences that we couldn't reach on our own. We also needed to reach audiences outside our specific, concentrated targets, for which we hadn’t accounted resources.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were simple. We just needed to tell people that we existed, publicize ourselves as a leader in the space, and tell our story. Working with Disruptive did just that.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Disruptive was recommended to us by our SEO agency.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Disruptive knew from the beginning that what we were looking to do wasn’t easy, even though it sounded like it would be. The market is weird, and it has a very long lead time. Disruptive came to the table with ideas and approaches that pointed us in the right direction to improve our brand awareness and audience segmentation.

Disruptive was always thinking about what else could be done next. They produced various Facebook and Instagram ads, as well as our online ad marketplace ads, which helped with various asset initiatives that we were producing. Timing was critical, and it was well received by the audience.

What was the team composition?

We are smaller, so the "team" consisted of myself along with Jared and Brad from Disruptive.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our bar was low for any type of results. Although our audience is slow to act, we gained ground in digital asset downloads and improved our market share in the industry.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We agreed to bi-weekly calls. Although we were slow in producing, Disruptive always prodded us along and presented tasks we could complete. The talks always had laughs and understanding, two important things when working in niche markets. Communication with Disruptive was always welcomed and productive.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The way Disruptive communicated with me about the results of the campaigns. They were interested in what we were doing as a company, and also in me personally. I felt like I was working with friends, and their knowledge of the industry was refreshing. I could keep the project off my plate knowing that they were doing the best they could with what we gave them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are very satisfied with Disruptive, and will continue to be an advocate of their services.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of a logistics platform provider and a logistics company based in Chicago. We serve customers across all of North America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We needed help with our online presence.

What were your goals for this project?

Our first project was to increase the transportation company’s online presence and advertise it as a great workplace for potential drivers. After a very successful campaign, we started another one for showing the company’s services to potential customers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We contacted a few providers after searching online. Disruptive Advertising presented themselves in the most professional way. We were also impressed by their portfolio and the fact that they had prior experience in the very niche market we wanted to advertise in.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

After selecting them as our vendor, we had a couple of exploratory meetings where they tried to understand as much about us and our vision as possible. After we covered our goals, they built the initial campaign and published it. They closely monitored the results and would check in with us on a regular basis. Based on our feedback and the data collected, they keep adjusting the campaign parameters to get the best possible results.

What was the team composition?

We work with Reed on the overall strategy, who is a marketing consultant in the company. He then delegates tasks to a team of developers and designers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Since we started working with Disruptive Advertising, we’ve managed to improve our lead quality significantly. Also, by directly advertising our company to drivers, we’ve increased the hiring rate by 300% for a fraction of the cost of working with middlemen.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Working with Disruptive Advertising, and with Reed specifically, has been a breeze. He’s always explaining in detail what they are doing and why they are doing it. He’s also very proactive in the development process, giving us access to their resources and guiding us when we have to implement something ourselves.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We’re really impressed by the expertise that they bring to our business as well as the dedication of their team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Our company has no experience in marketing and advertising, so I’m not competent enough to comment on areas for improvement. I’m sure there are some, but the results have exceeded our expectations, so there is really nothing I can add here.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am one of the owners of two e-commerce jewelry retailers; eWeddingBands and Luvari.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We wanted help on two distinct projects, one for eWeddingBands and one for Luvari. eWeddingBands is a 20-year-old brand that needed better e-commerce results, so wanted to improve our PPC advertising to optimize our conversion rate.

Luvari, however, is a new brand, so we wanted to improve our Facebook advertising, conversion rate optimization, and video commercial production.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to increase returns from ad spending for eWeddingBands and increase overall conversion rates. For Luvari, we aimed at targeting Facebook audiences and launching a new brand through videos on Facebook.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were referred to Disruptive Advertising by a good friend. Although it was referral-based, we were impressed with initial results of one of our PPC campaigns. Because of this, we expanded the engagement into video creation, Facebook advertisements, and conversion rate optimization.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

They are helping us increase our PPC results and to make our website more effective at producing sales. Since we are releasing our new brand, they're also creating a video commercial and media surrounding its release on Facebook. They are also generating new leads for Luvari.

What was the team composition?

Disruptive Advertising provided more than five employees to work on our projects. Each person has specific specialties including Facebook advertising, conversion rate optimization and video production. We also have an account manager that helps coordinate everything.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our return on advertising sales have continued to improve, along with our PPC campaigns and website conversion rates. We've also received a ton of leads from our Facebook campaigns.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our workflow was excellent. The constant communication has been amazing. It's been easy to establish expectations and merge work styles.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They really care about us. Not only that, they use concrete data to help us make strategic decisions.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder of a wellness brand that helps people live healthier lives through nutrition and supplements. We sell products online and in the United States.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Disruptive Advertising?

We hired Disruptive Advertising to grow and manage our Facebook marketing campaigns.

What were your goals for this project?

Through these campaigns, we wanted to drive sales and boost revenue. We had a target customer-acquisition cost to reach for the various campaigns, including re-targeting, acquisition, and dynamic ads. 

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found a few agencies that met our criteria, which primarily involved experience in the health and wellness space for e-commerce retailers. Disruptive Advertising was confident that with their background they would be able to meet our goals.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

We had a kick-off call to discuss the strategy for our ad campaigns. We worked with their creative team to come up with ideas for assets. We selected a few primary products, and they built campaigns around those products. They were also responsible for setting up the dynamic re-targeting ads.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we worked with a primary account manager and his associate manager. After two months, we were shifted to just the associate manager. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We did not reach our goals, and nearly all the campaigns failed to reach profitability or break even. After including their management fee, our return on investment was a significant loss.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had consistent communication through email messages and phone calls every two weeks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They communicated clearly with me and were reachable throughout the project. If I couldn't immediately contact them, they would get back to me within 24–48 hours.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They used generic stock images and ineffective ad templates. Using current ad strategies, videos, and engaging content would have made a significant difference in the campaigns’ performance. 

Company Responses

We're glad to hear your relationship and communication with the team was positive but that does not make up for the lack of results you were looking for. We take seriously leaving everything on the table to help our clients be successful so that even if you weren't satisfied with the results you'd still be willing to recommend us; obviously, that is not the case here and we'd love the opportunity to make it right. Please reach out through your contact at Disruptive and let us know how we can do that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

U.S. LawShield is a legal services company based in Houston, Texas. We provide legal protection and education resources for concealed-carry types (i.e. any legal use of force in a self-defense situation). We’re a prepaid legal service that allows people to forego the financial risks of having to defend themselves. I’m the director of marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Disruptive Advertising?

We needed to completely revitalive our advertising.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Disruptive has helped us with paid advertising, including PPC campaigns, Google Adwords, display ads, and Facebook ads. They’ve also helped with conversion rate optimization testing for our website. There hadn’t been a lot of SEO work done before my arrival, so we leveraged Disruptive to make sure we were making progress on both fronts.

We do a lot of events advertising via Facebook for educational seminars and workshops across the country. Logistically, it’s a challenge to ensure that those ads are being served to current and potential customers in different geographical areas. We hold 150–200 events per month.

Disruptive has also helped us increase our digital net and brand awareness for a rebranding initiative. There’s been a lot of foundational marketing work taking place since I came on, including building customer segments and driving more digital traffic.

They also helped refine our targeting, get our ad campaigns more organized, and move away from our old method of tracking performance in order to match our new campaign structure. We had to consider many aspects of the infrastructure in order to get things cleaned up. The infrastructure was poorly executed before, so Disruptive helped us build something that made more sense.

There’s no universal gun law, so we have to customize our event promotion according to state-specific information. It took quite a while, but we were able to go through all of our Facebook Ad Manager assets and set things up to accommodate this, which made it much easier to execute the ongoing support for events advertising. We also needed to get tracking elements set up on our website, which took about two months.

We didn’t have a CMS when I started, and we still don’t have one fully implemented. We had a custom, hard-coded PHP website, so things like conversions, revenue tracking, and getting the Facebook pixel to fire on our site were problematic for our IT department. Disruptive was vital in rapidly streamlining these processes so that we could start targeting and remarketing in a more effective way.

They also consulted us on website changes concerning events marketing. Their input was critical so that all of the moving parts could work together. They weren’t directly working on the website, but some of their testing and findings played critical roles in allowing us to get attribution.

Disruptive also brought their developers in to help us solve some coding issues. When it came to 100% attribution, we were duplicating fires on our Facebook Pixel for conversion tracking and incorrect revenue values. They helped us work through these issues and also got the developer on our team at the same level of understanding so that we could actually get some usable data.

We worked with Google AdWords, Facebook Ad Manager, Facebook Audience Insights, Google Analytics, SEMrush, and a third-party email matching service called Tower Data for building customer profiles. There may have been other tools involved, but these were the most prominent ones.

What is the team composition?

Our internal team included me and our ad manager. Disruptive assigned a senior account strategist who was our main point of contact. We also had primary contact with the CRO on their side. I also talked to Daryl [Director, Disruptive Advertising] initially before becoming involved with other team members. He is one of the senior client strategy people at their company.

How did you come to work with Disruptive Advertising?

I searched Google for PPC companies in the country. It was a challenge for us because we’d accumulated around 13,000 ads over 9 years of business which all had to be gone through in order to move away from the old tracking methods.

I completely built our team, so I needed someone who could work well with us, offer a level of guidance for the junior marketers I was bringing on, and make sure we got the work done.

I stumbled across an article in Inc. Magazine that talked about PPC firms in the U.S., which is where I found Disruptive. I reached out to a couple of companies, but I had a good feeling about Disruptive after speaking with Daryl a couple times. Those initial interactions were a deciding factor. It was easy to talk to them about our problem, which indicated that we would have a good business relationship and partnership.

How much have you invested with them?

Their management fee is $16,000 per month, which includes ad spending and CRO testing. Our ad spending is somewhere between $80,000–$100,000 per month, so the management fee for it is between $10,000–$11,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking with them in July 2017, and officially started the program in August.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since we began working with them, we’ve been able to get online sales up by 82.5%, and we’ve cut our ad spend by 40%. We increased the ROI on our digital sales by 65% in 30 days. We’re now getting 415% ROI on our digital spend, which is extremely good.

I’ve reached out to Jacob [CEO, Disruptive] and told him what a positive experience we’ve had. I let him know what a great job the team was doing.

How did Disruptive Advertising perform from a project management standpoint?

I talk to our account manager two or three times per week at minimum. At the very least, we have a static weekly call to discuss issues. The calls were much more frequent in the beginning as we were trying to streamline and clean up past issues. Disruptive is involved, willing to help, and positive.

They have an intimate communication style. The process is never frantic, even though we’re one of their bigger clients. They are involved and active in participation. I’m happy with their project management. It’s very effective.

I’ve never had a problem with availability. They’re always responsive, but we have had to adjust schedules. It’s never hindered our operation.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to understand complex business challenges is impressive. They do very well in translating business goals and challenges into actionable strategies and methods, despite being involved in an outsourced engagement.

They’ve been able to look at the lack of infrastructure and work with us on getting some short and long-term goals in place. We’ve been in build mode, so I know they don’t have many things at their disposal that we would normally expect to see in a traditional marketing program. I appreciate their flexibility and expertise.

Any marketer who is getting good results will use data, and they’ve been reliable in this sense. A part of their process is their unwillingness to compromise on the data aspect. Their decisions are always supported.

We’re spending a lot of money, and scaling up to spending $1 million per quarter would mean paying $40,000 per month in management fees. Disruptive was invested in our relationship, so they proposed capping the management fee. This shows another layer of professionalism in their service—they were here for the long-term, and weren’t going to stick to a percentage-based structure.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The impact we’ve been able to create has been astonishing, and I can’t think of a weakness at this point.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

My advice is to trust the team. I find that one of the big frustrations marketers and business owners face is being able to trust a company, even if they’re brought in for their expertise. The best thing a potential client can do is trust Disruptive to do their job. They have a proven track record of performance. They test and measure everything, and this is what ultimately drives results in a marketing program.