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We started using Geek Powered Studios in 2011 after interviewing several firms. We made a wise decision and we are very pleased.
John Williams
Stan's CEO
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When the team at Stan’s Heating, Air, Plumbing, and Electrical commissioned us to kickstart their digital marketing strategy in 2011, no one would have thought the move would help the business become a household name. But, my oh my, things have changed.
Fast forward to today, and Stan’s has since leapfrogged their way to being the leading HVAC and plumbing service provider in all of Austin—servicing not only the city, but surrounding areas as far as Georgetown and Buda, as well.
After 55 years of relying on nothing but billboards and word of mouth, the team at Stan’s decided it was finally time to enter the digital marketing space in 2011. While the business had grown tremendously since their start in 1954, they recognized that hundreds of Austinites were still unaware of the business, and felt that digital marketing was the best way to spread the word. That’s when the team at Stan’s decided to reach out to Geek Powered Studios—then an up and coming digital marketing agency, with a track record of success—to help kick start their growth.
Despite their enormous success via word of mouth, Stan’s was a relatively small fish in a big pond when it came to digital marketing in 2011. Without a properly optimized website, they were finding it increasingly hard to rank in local search, making it difficult for them to reach Austin’s large local audience. This dilemma, combined with the fact that new businesses were starting to compete for a share of the market, meant that Stan’s had to work overtime to help new customers find them.
That’s why we developed a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that included a full gamut of marketing services, including SEO, PPC advertising, social media marketing, and website design and development, to fully realize the potential of the business. We knew that only by implementing all of these marketing strategies could Stan’s meet their goals to reach more customers, despite their tough competition.
Another key component of Stan’s success was their ability to pivot with the times—constantly updating their website as customer needs and preferences changed. In fact, Stan's was one of the first HVAC companies to move their business online, allowing customers to purchase schedule HVAC services from the comfort of their own homes. We’ve since helped them implement a variety of website redesigns, each of which has built on the success of each other, to further improve their customer experience.
For Stan's latest website redesign, we chose to move their website from the Wordpress to Webflow, since we knew the newer platform would contribute in faster page speeds and better usability overall. Stan's wanted to maintain their recognizable brand aesthetic while incorporating elements from a recent rebrand that they used on their service vans. We found a way to make it work, while incorporating new features to enhance their user experience, resulting in a website that was both aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate.
One new feature that significantly improved Stan’s lead conversions was a simplified multi-step form, which routes users to the appropriate department based on their needs. We also created components for each of Stan's seasonal specials. This convenient feature allows the team to quickly edit promotions and place them on multiple parts of the website, making it easy to manage the users' digital experience and the business from one central location.
Since local SEO helps businesses appear more prominently in local search engine results, and Stan’s was a local business, we knew that Stan’s could benefit tremendously from it. That’s why as soon as we began working with them, we began optimizing their website for local search. This involved a mix of location targeting using custom location pages, local citation building to improve local signaling, and GMB and service page optimizations to further their local visibility in the SERPs.
With nearly a dozen service areas, we knew that Stan’s could benefit from better location targeting, to help their many customers find their services, regardless of their part of town. That’s why we created custom location pages for each of Stan's service areas, which featured relevant content about the service area, as well as detailed directions, opening hours, contact information, and a local map. We also optimized the pages with local keywords and citations, which helped to increase the visibility of each page in its respected local search engine results. These optimizations further improved Stan's local SEO and online visibility.
Another tactic we implemented to help improve Stan’s local visibility was to build local citations. This involved identifying local directories and websites that were relevant to Stan's business and that were likely to provide high-value mentions. From there, we worked to ensure that the business was listed in each directory and that the information was accurate and complete with the correct address and contact information, images, and description of the business. We’ve since monitored the listings on a regular basis to ensure that they remained accurate and up to date.
GMB (Google My Business) is a free tool that helps businesses easily manage their online presence across Google, including Google Search and Google Maps. This makes it one of the best ways to not only reach more local customers, but manage customer reviews and ratings, and connect with customers through messaging. That’s why we performed a complete and comprehensive GMB overhaul when we started working with Stan’s, and have since regularly updated the listing over time.
This optimization began by ensuring the listing had accurate and up-to-date information. From there, we added relevant products and services, with descriptions, and added relevant photos and videos to the profile. Over time, we’ve also optimized the profile further with Google Posts, allowing Stan’s to share news, promotions, and other updates with their local customers, and helped the Stan’s team better manage their reviews and messages to maximize the potential of the listing.
For local service businesses like Stan’s, we knew that improving the local visibility with service page optimizations was essential. After all, the SEO work would be ineffective if the people who land on your page don’t live in the area you service. That’s why in addition to location targeting and citation building, we helped Stan’s ensure that every one of their service pages was optimized for the location where the service was provided.
This meant ensuring that the pages themselves included the proper meta tags, page titles, header tags, and content, as well as local reviews, maps, frequently asked questions, and internal and external links—to improve local visibility for each page.
After nearly a year of collaborating with the SEO experts at Geek Powered Studios, Stan's website began to rank in the top 10 organic search positions for nearly a dozen intent-driven keywords that would likely to lead to sales. Since their lead conversion rates were continuing to increase, we also knew the content was working as intended. This gave us the assurance we needed to decide to broaden Stan's services and service areas, allowing them to access an even larger customer base.
After working with the Geeks for more than a decade, Stan's now ranks for nearly 200 keywords related to their services and the locations those services are offered. Each month, these quality keyword rankings help to fuel Stan's sustained growth of organic search traffic which has been a major factor in the company's overall success year after year.
This steady influx of traffic has allowed Stan's to not only stay busy, but expand exponentially in recent years. For example, they more than quadrupled their plumbing division since its inception in 2020, and have more than 10x the HVAC division, which now offers everything from tankless water heater installations to HVAC maintenance and emergency repair.
The name of the game for Stan’s Heating, Air and Plumbing was creating a structure that allowed us to see clear attribution of success. With the demand for HVAC and plumbing services in Austin being high, and a large budget requirement to be competitive in the already saturated industry, we knew that in order to find real, impactful, and sustainable growth, we needed to pinpoint Stan’s areas of strength and opportunities. By hyper-segmenting campaigns, we were able to analyze areas of high return on ad spend - these were Stan's areas of strength that we could continue to capitalize on through budget allocation strategies. Areas of opportunity were discovered by way of matchback reports in which we analyzed ad spend, lead quality, lead close rate, and finally, average value per closed service. Our hyper-segmentation was outlined by a three pronged approach - targeting angle, services, and seasonality - coupled with a bit of applied psychology. For example, users are more likely to search for HVAC services using “heating” or “furnace” aligned keywords in colder months vs HVAC or A/C keywords. We then segmented these keywords based on multiple targeting angles and then applied those targeting strategies to individual services. The results of these strategies are as follows:
With plumbing and HVAC services being a demand based service, Geek Powered Studios was tasked with creating demand through Facebook advertising. Stan’s Heating, Air and Plumbing has been an Austin staple since 1954 but they recently added plumbing in 2020. Through constant audience testing, refreshing of ads, and working with them on audits, Stan’s has been able to see ROI from a typically passive channel. Stan’s is now acquiring volume and is seeing leads for less than $50 a lead.
Speak to a Geek today about how we can help grow your business online.
