Driving traffic for defect reporting app

The challenge

SmartCheck is a defect reporting app designed to bring fleet maintenance into the 21^st century. They wanted to strengthen their brand awareness and increase its industry presence, whilst fuelling its new-business pipeline through a tailored digital marketing campaign.

Primary and secondary research delivered by our strategic practice, Leopard Co, found a common theme: going paperless. We found that fleet managers wake up every day with fleet management headaches. With people to manage and daily issues to deal with, getting through to them was critical to success.

Our challenge was selecting a digital channel that could persuade strapped-for-time fleet managers to change habits of a lifetime, switching from paper-based systems to a paperless solution.

Turning instinct into action

Using our PROWL process, we knew we needed to get fleet managers waking up every day with fleet management headaches to sign up for a 30-day free trial by showing them that SmartCheck can check that fleet management headache off their list.

But how do we do that?

Wanting to reach all stages of the marketing funnel, a paid search campaign via Google Ads was the way forward. We crafted headlines and descriptions that combined emotional and functional values and conducted paid search keyword analysis to reach the right audience from the start.

When developing the campaign’s copy, and the keywords to target, our behavioural science brains kicked in. Pushback from employees in the face of change is a key problem our target audience are tackling, so a slow-and-steady approach was needed.

Whilst our copy would attract searchers at all stages, we chose to maximise conversions, with the goal being sign-ups to a 30-day free trial. By implementing a foot-in-the-door approach, we created the opportunity to reframe perspectives rather than convince, using emotionally-charged, functional copy, with headings and descriptions like:

• Say goodbye to paperwork and hello to streamlined fleet management with SmartCheck.
• Turn pieces of paper into peace of mind - make vehicle checks smarter with SmartCheck.
• Our support team is here to ease switch over without any downtime for your fleet.

We worked with SmartCheck to develop a campaign-specific landing page designed to strengthen the campaign’s conversion rates and improve the user journey from ad clicker to valued customer. Using ongoing paid search keyword analysis, we tailored the landing page copy to strike with the keywords creating clicks and conversions, whilst writing emotionally led functional copy that bridges the gap between the problems fleet managers have and the benefits SmartCheck’s solution offers.

Daily keyword optimisations, audience and auction insight analysis, and bi-weekly reporting calls help us drive performance and make critical real-time campaign decisions. Creating a strong communicative relationship with SmartCheck has been key to the campaign’s success, ensuring the conversions we’re seeing are turning into quality leads for them.

Impact

Since launching the ad campaign in December 2022, we’ve generated 54 conversions (registered as sign-ups to a 30-day free trial) from 3,096 clicks. With an impressive click-through rate of 5.86%, way above the Auto industry average of 4%, our paid search ads are reaching the right audience and raising awareness of SmartCheck, sewing the seed of ‘consideration’.

Furthermore, conversion paths have been revolutionised through this success, with an additional 40 conversions starting from our ads, and ending in trial signups via organic searches.

In this time, new users to the SmartCheck website have increased by 199% in comparison to the previous 5 months before the campaign. Furthermore, the new users are becoming engaged users, with the number of events increasing by 115%, and engaged sessions (sessions lasting longer than 10 seconds, or experienced conversions and or 2 or more page views) up 122%.