Case Study: Company A (Denver, Colorado)

Starting Point: What Was Breaking

• Marketing tools were available but underutilized, limiting lead capture and repeat purchase prompting.
• Limited visibility into which activities produced profitable traffic and orders.
• Abandoned carts had minimal recovery, allowing interested buyers to slip away without follow-up.
• Product and site content were not fully leveraged for search discoverability and customer education.
• Catalog browsing created friction for products with many options, increasing confusion and drop-off.
• Growth execution depended on owner bandwidth rather than a repeatable cadence and trained ownership.

Objectives for the Engagement

• Install an internet marketing operating system that the owner and team could maintain.
• Improve lead capture and implement a clear follow-up sequence to convert visitors into buyers.
• Create measurement discipline so paid advertising could be evaluated using tracked results.
• Recover otherwise lost revenue through cart abandonment workflows and controlled incentives.
• Increase discoverability and customer confidence through structured content and SEO improvements.
• Train staff so workflows run consistently between monthly KPI reviews.

What I Changed: The Interventions

Operating Cadence and Accountability

• Established a monthly check-in cadence to review KPIs, inspect execution quality, and set priorities.
• Trained staff on repeatable workflows so execution continued consistently between reviews.
• Defined ownership expectations for monitoring lead capture health and follow-up consistency.

Financial Visibility and Decision Support

• Implemented tracking URLs to attribute traffic and conversions to specific campaigns.
• Structured promotions using trackable coupon codes so incentives could be evaluated and adjusted.
• Built a habit of reviewing campaign performance as part of the monthly KPI cadence.

Sales Follow-Up and Pipeline Discipline

• Implemented lead capture with an automated email delivering a 10% discount offer.
• Created an abandoned cart workflow with phone and email follow-up to recover orders and learn hesitation reasons.
• Coached offer timing so discounts supported conversion without becoming the assumed default price.

Process, Tools, and Delivery Systems

• Applied SEO meta tags and trained staff to maintain metadata as a routine step for new content.
• Built a dictionary system to explain unfamiliar terms and create structured internal linking for education and SEO.
• Implemented product variations so shoppers could select options within a single listing, reducing catalog friction.
• Improved shopping cart readiness to enable outsourced order processing with clean handoffs.

KPIs and Outcomes

The results followed the operating sequence. Lead capture and automated follow-up improved conversion from existing traffic. Tracking URLs created attribution so paid campaigns could be evaluated rationally. Abandoned cart outreach recovered revenue and produced feedback that informed prioritization. In parallel, content and catalog improvements reduced buyer confusion, supporting both conversion and scale.

Timeline of Key Moments

• 2008 – Company A founded; operated with slow, incremental growth in a niche market.
• February 2014 – End of the owner’s roughly 6-year solo-run period referenced as baseline context for KPIs.
• March 2014 – Engagement began; onboarding and baseline review of the website and platform configuration.
• September 2014 – Monthly sales increased from approximately $1,000/month to approximately $14,000/month.
• March 2015 – Customer list grew from 103 names to approximately 353 names (net +250).
• September 2018 – Ownership transfer completed; transition supported by reinforcing training, responsibilities, and monthly KPI review cadence.

Why This Worked

This engagement worked because it treated growth as an operations problem. The focus was not on isolated tactics, but on installing one repeatable rhythm: capture leads, follow up consistently, measure results, and adjust based on observed performance. That reduced tool chaos and replaced sporadic effort with predictable execution.

Follow-through became measurable through tracking URLs and trackable coupon offers, which improved decision quality. Customer education and catalog simplification reduced friction for buyers and reduced support load. Staff training and the monthly KPI cadence reduced owner dependency and helped preserve momentum through the September 2018 ownership transition.

Transferable Value

• Operational diagnostics that convert scattered activity into a clear operating cadence.
• KPI design and monthly review rhythms that connect marketing activity to revenue outcomes.
• Lead capture and automated follow-up systems that turn traffic into reachable prospects.
• Abandoned cart recovery processes using phone and email follow-up with controlled incentives.
• Campaign attribution using tracking URLs to support rational spend decisions.
• Content operations for customer education, including dictionary-style explanations and internal linking.
• Catalog and purchasing-flow improvements that reduce decision friction for buyers.
• Operational scalability planning, including readiness for outsourced order processing.