Rinnai Increases Online Leads 433% with Search Marketing

Here’s how Sherpa client Rinnai is defending its digital market share from competitors’ mimicry.

Winning the lion’s share of a specific digital market is only half the battle. Once secured, digital market share must be defended from competitors’ mimicry and the risk of best practices failing to evolve.

Case in point: Rinnai, the #1 selling tankless water heater in North America, successfully fought to ensure its online performance reflected its top offline ranking. Competition, however, sought to copycat the fruits of their labor and began encroaching on the company’s success.

Rinnai Responds with Holistic Search Engine Marketing

The search marketing specialists at Sherpa! Web Studios implemented the following SEM strategies to keep Rinnai’s top-rankings, like its products’ hot water flow, constant. The primary goal: increase number of leads while reducing the cost per lead.

The company established the following expectations to guide and measure the investment:

1. Dominate and rank within the top 10 on all tier 1 search engines for highest-value non-branded keyphrases
2. Increase non-branded organic search engine traffic 20%
3. Increase use of their site’s dealer search feature to increase leads 25%, thus driving additional unit sales.
4. Reduce cost-per-lead 33%

Improve Content Marketing Efforts

Content marketing expanded via two new lead generation properties. Data analysis found search users were less likely to click on a brand name in organic search results. Subsequently, a non-branded tankless water heater buyers guide was created and served to that audience via a website with a non-branded version of Rinnai's dealer search (www.tanklessbuyersguide.com).

Second, a blog called Think Tankless delivered content with info crafted to satisfy queries of searchers. Posts were distributed across targeted social media channels, notably Facebook and Twitter.

Maximize Paid Search Investment

Next, paid search campaigns were configured to target top-selling regions in the U.S. with city-specific ad copy. In addition, campaigns targeted specific devices (desktop vs. tablet vs. mobile) to compare search behavior and adjust accordingly. Finally, a new search landing page greeted searchers with region-specific content, notably a list of dealers in the user’s GeoIP zipcode.

Increase Opportunities for Data Capture Conversions

Additional strategies included deployments of a dealer search “quick form,” which emailed the buyer’s guide, info on three top-rated local dealers, and $100 coupon with one click, and a lead nurturing program that pinged users with tankless info and prompted them to various actions like using the Energy Savings Calculator or Rebate Finder.

Rinnai Heats Up the Results

Rinnai’s improved SEM program greatly surpassed every goal it had set.

• Rinnai skyrocketed to the top five spots for highest traffic-driving and converting terms on all three search engines. Increasing non-branded organic traffic saved the equivalent of $150,000+ in monthly ad spend monthly by avoiding the paid search pay-per-click fee.
• Non-branded organic traffic nearly doubled, driving 194% more searchers to the site, thanks to organic ranking improvement and expansion of high-volume traffic keywords.
• Ultimately, there was a 433% increase in leads over the six-month period prior. The majority of these derived from non-branded organic search, the source of currently more than half of all leads. At the peak of program, more than 1/3 of all visitors engaged the dealer search, and the lead-capture conversion rate increased a whopping 700%.
• The optimized conversion rate realized a paid search cost-per-lead of 1/10 the baseline cost. Highly targeted keyphrases avoided wasteful clicks, region-targeting improved click-through-rates, relevant landing pages reduced the bounce rate, and personalized content drove increased leads.

Moving into 2012, Rinnai's investment secured their position as first-to-mind, top-ranked, and top-selling leader for tankless water heaters. The plan garnered an award from the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association as one of only three Finalists for the 2011 Most Effective Search Engine Marketing Program.