Abstract
Brand: A sip or class + Southrn’ Spice
Specific projects: Google Ads & marketing automation
Client Budget: $12,000 (Ad spend not included)
Client Timeline: 12 months
A sip of Class is a Washington D.C. based catering company specializing in southern soul food cuisine.
Most recently, they’ve expanded and become established in Baltimore, Maryland with a restaurant and food truck that specializes in southern cuisine called “Southrn Spice”.
The founder, Rex Murray, is a retired veteran and professional chef seeking to expand his company's reach, grow his clientele and raise brand awareness.
Up until our partnership, the company was doing well in terms of having repeat customers which allowed them to remain sustainable. However, they struggled with balancing their current customer load and expanding without the proper marketing systems.
So, when they would try to expand other areas of their business would suffer due to lack of planning and strategy with foresight.
The client had 4 top priority goals
1. Developing a new company website that was friendly, easy to use and could handle online ordering.
2. Building a company email list
3. Driving targeted website traffic of people ready to buy
4. Ensuring full booking capacity for all major holidays and during wedding and graduation seasons
My Top Recommendations for the client
1. To build an immersive, but simple WordPress website that supported third party plugins dedicated to catering and food based companies.
2. Invest into building email funnels for a new welcome series, loyal customers, abandoned carts, and location based upcoming sales.
3. Start using Google Ads to ensure potential customers finding their brand are in the transactional (T) phase of their research and ready to book a catering service.
4. Automating their customer experience & food exchange processes to reduce the CEO’s hand in day to day business operations that would allow them to focus on scaling.
I recommended these strategies because they could directly help solve each of the clients needs, were in their budget and they had adequate time in their project timeline to complete each of them successfully.
Additionally, they would allow us to maximize their budget and ensure that once advertising implementation began, we would have the systems to track results, identify new customers and identify weaknesses that could be improved with ease.
Results + Data
The website was built to redirect all visitors to the orders and menu page. The website also used geolocation features to ensure google pushed it to local customers. As well as vibrant well lit photography with an easy to use ordering system to made inventory tracking automated and easy to keep up with for the owners.
The client opted to outsource their email marketing to a more affordable alternative that helped them stay in their budget. While I did submit feedback and suggestions for software and workflow ideas, it was ultimately up to the developer and copywriter what was published as final.
We ran 3 Google Ads campaigns for the most important holiday periods: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Eve.
Google Ad for catering Services
Budget: $25 a day // $750 a month // $2250 for 3 months
Duration: 3 months (october - December)
Targeted location: Baltimore, Washington D.C., and everything with a 60 mile radius or less
Clicks: 365 a month // 1100 for 3 months
Avg CPC: $2.05
Sales: $3,000 a month // $9,000 for 3 months
Keywords strategy: I used location based keywords for Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland + longtail keyphrases with a high search volume and low competitive ranking with customers in the transactional phase of their research.
Google Ad for food prep on holidays
Budget: $15 a day // $450 a month // $1350 for 3 months
Duration: 3 months (october - December)
Targeted location: Baltimore, Washington D.C., and everything with a 60 mile radius or less
Clicks: 150 a month // 450 for 3 months
Avg CPC: $3
Sales: $1700 a month // $5,100 for 3 months
Keywords strategy: I used location based keywords for Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland + long-tail key-phrases with a high search volume and low competitive ranking with customers in the transactional phase of their research.
Google Ad for Restaurant holiday dine in reservations
Budget: $10 a day // $300 a month // $900 for 3 months
Duration: 3 months (october - December)
Targeted location: Baltimore, MD + everything within a 30 mile radius or less
Clicks: 181 a month // 545
Avg CPC: $1.65
Sales: $1250 a month // $3,750 for 3 months
Keywords strategy: I used location based keywords for Baltimore, Maryland + long-tail key phrases with a high search volume and low competitive ranking with customers in the transactional phase of their research.
Final campaign highlights
I worked closely with the client to implement Dubsado for building systems and automations that helped them better track their processes and improve customer experiences long-term.
The client was able to onboard 20% more clients without an increasing complaint of customer service.
The client experienced a steady flow of referrals from the new happy customers entering the automations.
The client was able to hire 3 additional part time seasonal staff members to help with orders, which increased order completion times by 35%.
