case study:
blue ocean
pool service
client overview
Blue Ocean Pool Service partnered with Honey & Hive to launch their business.
They required a full digital presence to be built from the ground up. From their logo to lead gen strategy and everything in between. From the beginning until now, we've been their complete marketing department.
services provided:
full website design | logo and branding design | content creation | social media marketing |
digital advertising strategy & execution | SEO optimization
the challenge
Blue Ocean is a pool service company based in Austin, Texas. Their co-founders, Chris and Young, wanted to challenge the market by building a company devoted to providing high-quality pool cleaning, with a heavy focus on customer service. Additionally, unlike other pool service providers, they wanted to promote a strong company culture, hiring employees instead of contractors and emphasizing quality of work over quantity.
When they came to Honey & Hive, they had their name in mind, but no other branding or strategy in place. We were tasked with creating their brand, building up their digital footprint, and assisting with lead generation - all from scratch
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our strategy
Texas-First Branding
Many competitors in Austin had a major advantage over Blue Ocean: time. They had been around for decades and had loyal customer bases. When creating their logo, we decided to lean into what Chris and Young would share with their future customers: Texas pride.
In addition to capturing their audience's hearts with their shared state honor, we opted for a bold typeface and imagery to capture their attention as well. This was especially important as the design would be featured on their company vehicles.
Differentiating Our Content
As Blue Ocean founded their company with the goal of building a strong company culture, we decided to reflect that on their social media channels. We've featured Blue Ocean's employees on their social media and aim to not only recruit leads but more employees. This is also very different from the industry's norms for social media, allowing Blue Ocean to establish themselves as a new type of Texan pool service.
Rapid Testing and Optimization
Our initial paid ads strategy was to quickly test platforms, creatives, and copy in order to find the perfect mix. In the first three months of our engagement, we ran a wide variety of ad campaigns in a programatic way on Facebook, Google, Yelp, Nextdoor, and Angi's List.
Our social advertising contributed to their brand awareness and consideration, while the search advertising contributed to converting those actively searching for their services into customers. We collected analytics and optimized the ads weekly based on our results.
These tests allowed us to determine the most effective creative, copy, audience targeting, and channel strategies to yield the highest number of leads for the lowest cost.
the results
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In the first 10 months all of this effort lead to real results:
210
routes
$70,000 mrr
16
team members
So what worked during our first 10 months:
Through the use of both paid and organic efforts, Yelp led to an increase in brand awareness and lead generation. 3 months of running Yelp ads resulted in a 230% increase in leads, as well as a 164% increase in page visits, increasing brand awareness.
Facebook has allowed us to reach over 100,000 people this year, through both paid and organic efforts. We've used a combination of consideration and conversion campaigns to generate more website views and leads.
Due to this massive increase in leads, Blue Ocean had to quickly hire more talent to take on all of the new routes. Mid-year, we paused on all lead-generation efforts and shifted our focus to recruiting. We were able to bring in multiple candidates through our hiring campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. They now have a crew of 14 members servicing their 200 routes.
Since the first 10 months we have expanded our scope of work to include email marketing, a continued programmatic testing of ads and channels, and a mixture of social content to meet the ever growing needs of the business growth.
hear from the client
"The Honey & Hive team was able to help us expand Blue Ocean dramatically these past 10 months. We asked them to move quickly and strategically to build up our lead sources, and they rose to the challenge. Their ability to stay flexible for our needs, as well as their wide skillset, has been a tremendous help as we work through the growing pains of a new company. This entire journey has made us confident we were investing our resources wisely with Honey & Hive."
Young Han, Co-Founder of Blue Ocean Pool Service