Bundilla Pest Control is a family-owned business that exterminates pests in Australia. There are a lot of creepy crawlies down under, which means there’s a lot of business to be had — but also a lot of competition. After one of his employees started their own pest control company Beau, the General Manager, didn’t want his company to falter. He knew his online presence could be improved and was looking for a partner who could help him grow long-term and build his business.
Beau had a limited budget, so our original proposal included three different stages — now, soon, and later — with our recommendation on what was the highest priority and should be done right away, along with items that could be completed later when he had more budget.
First Steps
The first part of our work was Google Ads setup and management, keyword research (for Google Ads, future content, and SEO work), and reporting and analytics (so we could track conversions from the new campaigns).
Since Bundilla Pest Control serves the Sunshine Coast, our Google Ads campaigns were targeting very specific locations in their service area. We set up ads for general pest control searches, each of his different services (ants, bed bugs, cockroaches, etc), and also set up a brand campaign so we could protect his brand from encroaching competitors. After a few months of us managing his campaigns, we trained Beau on how to manage Google Ads on his own so he could save on our management fee. With a starting budget of $1,500 AUD a month, the campaigns were able to give his business a boost — with new leads and by saving on management fees, Beau was able to invest more in improving his digital presence.
Moving Forward
With more budget available to invest in marketing, we got to work on the next pieces that were outlined in the proposal — a brand voice and content strategy.
A brand voice was important to create sooner rather than later, as Bundilla was getting a new logo and collateral, their communications needed to be strong and consistent to match their new visual identity. Having a brand voice meant that more communications tasks could be delegated to staff, as they’d have a document to guide them.
A content strategy was essential so they could improve the content of their website — our strategy outlined their audience, content writing basics, and recommendations for improving current evergreen content and writing new blog posts. Beau knew he needed a new site, but the timing wasn’t right. In the meantime, improving current content would still be beneficial, as it could be carried over to the new site in the future.
Later on, Beau asked us to manage his Google Ads campaigns again, as his team was too busy to manage and he knew he could get more bang for his buck if we took over. While we always encourage and support clients to take work in-house so they don’t have to rely on an agency and pay fees forever, we understand that sometimes it’s just not feasible for small businesses if they don’t have a dedicated marketing person on their team. We value the trust that Beau puts in us!
A New Website… Or Two
When we first started working together, Bundilla Pest Control had a Wix site. There were multiple roadblocks that we encountered with Wix — the main one being that Wix had many analytics limitations. We weren’t able to implement call tracking or Google Tag Manager, which are both instrumental to helping us better understand what actions people take when visiting the site.
Beau agreed to switch to Squarespace so we could improve our ability to track results, as well as update the overall look and feel of the website. We took this time to add new service pages, one for every service provided, important CTAs to every page (something that was missing from the Wix site), and a GatherUp widget that allowed us to prominently display all of their positive reviews! Our team also provided Beau with creative direction on a staff photoshoot. A big part of Bundilla’s job involves being in customers’ spaces, whether it’s their home or their office. We wanted to ensure their customers feel confident and comfortable welcoming members of Bundilla’s team in. The photography on the Wix site focused too much on stock photos of bugs, and not the work that their team did.
The new Squarespace website launched in January 2019, and after a year we asked Beau if he was ready to make another leap — a WordPress website. Squarespace was an improvement from Wix, and fit within his budget, but a WordPress site was the next logical step as his business was growing and it would also enable us to better optimize for SEO and improve his rankings in search results.
Since the WordPress website launched in March 2020, they’ve seen a 340% increase in organic traffic versus the previous year, which we attributed to both the site being faster and our SEO efforts. Starting in September 2020 we really started to see their organic traffic take off — both due to the seasonality of the service (seasons are the opposite in the Down Under) and SEO.
“I know you’d told me the figure before, but it really didn’t seep in. I was drinking my morning tea when I read your first sentence and nearly choked. It’s sinking in now (kinda). 720% is fucking epic! No other way to describe it. Well done.” – Beau
Search Engine Optimization
We started SEO in February of 2019 once the new Squarespace site launched. A lot of our SEO work in 2019 was laying the foundational groundwork needed to see the needle move, so to speak.
We started with a focus on local SEO with optimizing their Google My Business listing to ensure it was filled out to the fullest extent and cleaning up old citations. Our favourite part of this process was writing Google Posts, which really brought us down a rabbit hole into the world of bugs! However, local SEO is more than just an optimized Google My Business listing and cleaned up citations. We also set them up with GatherUp (an online review engine) to consistently build more reviews! We also battled (and continue to battle) the constant spam on Google Maps — so many companies are stuffing their business names with keywords and locations to rank better, or are using a fake address. Additional SEO groundwork in 2019 included on-page SEO edits to service pages which included monitoring title tag performance, improving headings, adding FAQs, and updating old blog posts to better match search intent.
Even though all of this work was done, there are many limitations with Squarespace when it comes to SEO. With the creation of Beau’s WordPress site in 2020 along with new additions to Google My Business (e.g. product posts) we were able to do so much more! Some of the updates we made to the WordPress site included a new site navigation to better organize their different service types, along with better promoting termite control and prevention, and the addition of structured data.
Beau also introduced a new location in 2020, which sparked a new local SEO strategy because their new location was considered a service area business. We set up this new location with a Google My Business listing, citations, and a strong local landing page. We’ve also continued to monitor rankings and performance for target services making the necessary on-page SEO edits.
Going forward our SEO efforts are focused on improving online market share in their expanded North Brisbane and Morayfield/Caboolture service areas and building and executing an actionable link building strategy that both our team and Beau can work on together.
Results
Since launching the WordPress website, we’ve seen:
- A 340% increase in organic search traffic compared to the previous year (this also included time during COVID, when results were going to be down generally)
- A 146% increase in conversions from organic search traffic compared to the previous year
- A 16% increase in conversions from Google Ads traffic compared to the previous year, with budget remaining the same
Overall, traffic is up 78% and goal completions are up 47%! Beau is looking to expand his business further into the Caboolture and Morayfield area, and has already expanded to North Brisbane.
Limitations
The main limitation of this project was the client’s budget. We couldn’t implement all of our recommendations at once, so we had to break out the project into phases. Ideally, we would have taken them from Wix to WordPress and skipped Squarespace, but it was a necessary step in order to be able to track how our marketing efforts were performing in the meantime.
Another limitation is time. We’ve outlined link building opportunities and have provided a guide on how to reach out to these opportunities, but Beau hasn’t had time to work on this. (We blame COVID!) As we’ve done a lot of on-page SEO for his site, link building will be the next thing that moves the needle. This is something we hope to work together on more in 2021!
Reflections
Our favourite takeaway from our work with Beau is all of the facts we now know (more than we’d like) about bugs in Australia! Our SEO Strategist, Liz, even proudly shared she’s a “soon to be a jeopardy champion” if there’s ever a bug related category. We’ve also picked up on some awesome Aussie lingo.
Communication is key — Beau’s willingness to share so openly about different aspects of his business even outside of digital marketing and SEO have helped build our strong working relationship. We’re able to both feel realistic about expectations and deadlines.
Based on Bundilla Pest Control’s growth in the last few years, Beau has big plans for continued growth and expansion into the future. We feel confident we’re on the right path to help him succeed far into the future.
Once we started with Kick Point, everything started to move along very well. Everything we received was presented in easy to understand English and in a fun and helpful way. All of the team at Kick Point are nice, fun, warm, and really know their stuff.
And then the results started rolling in… Very soon after engaging Kick Point we saw a great return on our investment. I hadn’t been running the business long, and I was pretty dubious on how our existing advertising was working. And I was equally skeptical about all other forms of advertising (radio, paper, TV, etc). I had managed to find a way to measure all of my advertising at the time, and pretty much nothing was working. Except Kick Point was kicking arse. All of a sudden we had a reliable funnel for new leads, which was something we were sorely missing up to that point.
— Beau Rheinberger, General Manager