Marketing So Good It Worked Twice

Business Challenge

New business venture poses new challenges for company principals.

Penn-Jersey Propane, a New Jersey-based propane company, was bought by Kauffman Gas in 2021.

Penn-Jersey already had a solid customer base across the state. They had a committed team eager to join the transition. 

But their operations—customer database, delivery automation processes, payment practices—were inefficient and out-of-date.

The Kauffman team knew they had the industry expertise to improve operations at Penn-Jersey. They were ready to deliver their trademark quality service to residents in the Garden State.

To grow the business and achieve ROI, Penn-Jersey couldn’t rely on word-of-mouth—they needed a solid marketing plan.

The problem: Penn-Jersey had little online presence or marketing strategy. 

Kauffman Gas knew the value of investing in digital marketing.  

In their 12 years working with BOT, Kauffman Gas has grown traffic and won hundreds of new customers. Marketing has delivered an impressive $23:1 ROI. 

Kauffman Gas could not maximize the potential they saw in Penn-Jersey without a marketing strategy. So, Kauffman Gas brought in Bright Orange Thread to help Penn-Jersey with Marketing.

Solution

A new website to increase visibility.

The quicker a web presence is established, the better. A high-quality website validates a business’s credibility and gives prospects a place to reach out.

Propane buyers want websites to offer:

• a place to access account information 
• answers to questions about propane 
• general information on their propane provider

Penn-Jersey’s original website was poorly designed and didn’t appear on search engines.

We focused on creating a website that compiled all the necessary resources in one user-friendly place, just like we had done for Kauffman Gas.

Website launches in two months thanks to existing assets.

Penn-Jersey and Kauffman Gas’s target audiences weren’t identical. But the general information Penn-Jersey’s website needed to convey was similar. 

And Kauffman Gas’s website had worked well in generating leads—no need to reinvent the conversion wheel for Penn-Jersey. 

So Kauffman’s website served as a solid starting point for Penn-Jersey. We saved time and money by repurposing content, workflows, and more, from the Kauffman website. The content was then adapted for a new target audience.  

Marketing Efforts Fill the Pipeline

Following the website launch, BOT focused on marketing strategies that had proven successful for Kauffman Gas. They included…

Blogging and backlinking to answer customer questions.

Blogging has the power to catapult website visits (see how we more than doubled Kauffman Gas’ website visits in one year).

Buyers scour the web to educate themselves before making a purchase decision. 

When you answer prospects’ questions well, search engines reward you with first-page rankings. 

Ranking high on the web drives more traffic to your website. 

Informative blog content to boost engagement. 

We used analytics to identify high-performing blog posts on the Kauffman Gas website. From those, we picked blog topics relevant to the Penn-Jersey target audience. 

This way we knew we were adding blogs to the Penn Jersey site that  would perform well for search engines and the target audience alike.

Penn-Jersey’s blog:

• Boosted Penn-Jersey’s credibility by sharing their industry expertise
• Ranks well for keywords 
• Incorporates Calls to Action (CTAs)
• Includes relevant links to other pages within the site to drive traffic

Enhancing Penn-Jersey’s business for local searches.

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for businesses that serve a specific area. 

We wanted to ensure that Penn-Jersey appeared at the top of Google’s listing when New Jersey residents searched for propane delivery.

Our first priority: claim and optimize a Google My Business (GMB) listing for Penn-Jersey.

Optimizing GMB included:

• Adding a business description optimized with keywords
• Inputting contact information
• Generating reviews left by customers to increase credibility

We built local service area pages to earn search engine value in towns beyond their physical offices. Residents in cities across New Jersey would find Penn-Jersey at the top of organic search results.

Email marketing to build trust with customers.

A lot of change comes with taking over a new company—so customers need to feel in the know.

Email marketing is a good way to keep in contact with customers and deliver value.

Customer email campaigns helped Penn-Jersey share new information with their existing clients. Deliberate and regular communication helped customers feel comfortable with the changes. 

Measuring conversions to measure ROI.

Driving traffic to the website is only the first step in winning business from the web. 

When prospects arrive, you want them to take action. 

And Penn-Jersey needed to know how many prospects were taking action to measure marketing ROI. 

Again, we used our expertise from helping Kauffman Gas to help Penn-Jersey. Using the same marketing automation tools we did for Kauffman Gas, we measured and tracked conversions. 

This tool helps us track…

• Website conversions 
• Prospects that became customers

Impact

$11:1 ROI of Marketing in First Year 

By investing in digital marketing, Penn-Jersey has seen successes similar to their parent company. 

In the past year…

• Traffic on the site has grown 150% year over year
• Website converted 3% of visitors to leads (2% industry standard)
• Dozens of customers were won from the web

Penn-Jersey can now focus on keeping customers warm while their pipeline automatically fills through ongoing marketing.