Transportation Digital Marketing
Learn how we helped a $100M+/yr company to dramatically expand their web presence and footprint in the commercial transportation industry.
MASTER'S TRANSPORTATION OVERVIEW
COMPANY
Master's Transportation is Moving People Forward
Master's Transportation is a nationwide commercial vehicle dealer that specializes in providing safe, innovative, and comprehensive commercial transportation solutions to its customers via their Sales, Rental, Service, and Parts departments. Headquartered in Kansas City, they operate 14 locations across the U.S., delivering first-in-class service that delivers on their promise to continue Moving People Forward®
Company: Master's Transportation
Industry: Commercial Transportation
Location: Kansas City (HQ) + 13 Add'l Locations
PROJECT CHALLENGES
CHALLENGEThe Master’s team contacted Straight Line in mid-2020 during the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like most transportation companies, COVID was significantly interrupting their operations with no end in sight. However, rather than surrender to circumstances, their team leaned into their inbound marketing efforts with the hope that daily life would eventually return to normal.
From there, our teams began a four year partnership that yielded spectacular results which not only carried them through the pandemic, but also aided in lifting their business operation to an entirely new level.
Problems They Faced
Disjointed inbound marketing strategy
Outdated website design
Confusing and broken user experience
Low search visibility at local/national levels
Low return on ad spend (ROAS) for PPC ads
Limited analytics and reporting
THE SOLUTION WE DELIVERED
SOLUTIONStrategy
Our teams collaborated during several discovery and strategy meetings to align on the company’s greatest pain points and goals for their revamped web presence, including:
- Business identity, branding, and unique value proposition
- Website failures and opportunities
- Results from past SEO/advertising campaigns
- Customer journeys for all departments
- Business location profiles and expansion plans
- Key conversion actions / lead types
- KPI tracking and reporting needs
- Software / CRM integrations
By accounting for each of these items early in the project, our teams were able to enter the design phase with a clear vision and focused effort.
Design
Equipped with a defined strategy, our team produced a completely customized web design that conveyed professionalism, approachability, elevated quality, and the human element.
New design features included:
- Updated branding with custom fonts and high contrast color palette
- New, high resolution photography of the business and its primary vehicle types
- Completely redesigned page layouts
- Reorganized menus for simplified navigation
- Prominent calls to action
- Trust symbols/logos and reviews to reinforce authority
- Incorporation of new service videos and custom graphics
- Redesigned vehicle rental reservation form
- Redesigned vehicle inventory catalog system
- Hover effects, scrolling effects, and other animations
Development
Building Master’s Transportation’s new website on WordPress provided them all the benefits of a full-feature content management system, including easy updates to content and images, countless design and functionality features, and widespread support from the well-established WordPress developer community.
We implemented several custom development features with the help of WordPress plugins and manual customization to ensure their new site would serve as their primary web platform for years to come:
Vehicle Inventory Catalog
WooCommerce provided a large portion of the required functionality for Master’s new vehicle inventory catalog including vehicle listing pages, category landing pages, image galleries, search and filtering features, and more.
Rental Vehicle Reservations
We utilized the Car Rental Booking System plugin by QuanticaLabs to offer users with a much improved reservation experience for users. The new system offered a customizable reservations form which allowed for custom date, location, and vehicle selection as well as the option for users to choose rental add-ons.
CRM Integration
We supplemented our use of Gravity Forms with the Salesforce for Gravity Forms integration plugin to ensure new leads received through the website were automatically sent to the company’s Salesforce system for lead management/sales purposes.
Company News Blog
WordPress’ built-in blog functionality allowed us to create an easy-to-use blog which the company could use for regular announcements, search-optimized articles, and industry insight pieces.
Security and Performance
Given the size of their company and website traffic, security and performance were critical. We utilized multiple plugins in tandem with premium WordPress hosting to ensure the website remained protected against spam, viruses, and malware, and that it continued to load at fast speeds across all device types.
Search Engine Optimization
A key component of the company’s inbound marketing strategy was to improve search visibilty across all major search engines for both national and local searches related to their commercial vehicle sales and rental services. We included SEO work as part of the website’s initial launch as well as through ongoing monthly services to continue growing the client’s visibility over time:
Search-Optimized Site Structure
We created a search friendly archicture for the site to ease indexability by Google and to serve as a strong foundation for future scalability. A key strategy for the site’s structure was to create clusters of location-specific content by city/state to earn Google’s favor within search results pages. This essentially required the creation of 14 “mini” sites within the primary site, allowing each location to have it’s own small hub of relevant service content. This proved incredibly effective over time.
Search Optimized Content
Content requirements were very high given the size and reach of the company, and the diversity of their service offering. The website’s initial launch included over 150 pages and over 60,000 words of new, search-optimized copy intended to lift their search rankings for thousands of keyword searches. Post-launch, we added an additional 110 pages of search-optimized service pages, location landing pages, and blog articles to their site totaling over 100,000 words.
Topical Backlink Acquisition
Our team priortizies the acquisition of topically relevant backlinks from domains/entitities that Google has likely associated with the company’s industry (or adjacent industries) and/or location(s). Over a four year period we helped the client to earn dozens of relevant backlinks that solidified Google’s understanding of the business’ identity and purpose within their industry.
Google Business Optimization
Toward the project’s start we immediately began assisting the client in verifying and optimizing separate Google Business profiles for each of their locations, and helped them to form a plan for consistent review acquisition for each profile.
Online Business Citations & Entity Assets
To establish brand legitimacy and improve’s Google’s understanding of the business within their knowledge graph, we launched a long list of online citations and brand entity assets across various web platforms.
Technical SEO Improvements
We ensured the site continued to align with Google’s stated guidelines regarding techinical SEO elements including: Secure browsing, page load speed (Page Speed Insights), structured data/schema, sitemaps, internal linking, 301 redirects, crawlability, toxic backlink removal, and more.
Performance Reporting
The website was integrated with CallRail, Google Analytics 4, and Google Search Console to track website traffic, search queries, user behavior, and conversions for organic marketing attribution. We also utilized SEMRush SEO software to track Google rankings and overall visibility over time for the company’s most important keyword queries. Data was then fed into Google LookerStudio to provide their marketing team with an easy-to-use reporting dashboard with helpful charts and data visualizations.
Google PPC Advertising
In addition to SEO, the company’s aggressive lead generation goals required the simultaneous implementation of multiple Google PPC ad campaigns. Our team refined and expanded upon their existing ad campaigns to dramatically improve performance on a five figure monthly ad spend. Service included:
Keyword Research & Refinement
We selected optimal keyword targets and match combinations to ensure ads were displayed to the most ideal users. We also routinely identified negative keyword opportunities to better focus ad spend on higher value clicks.
Ad Creation
Custom ad copy was written for 30+ individual ad campaigns targeting users searching for queries related to all four of the client’s primary divisions. Headline and description variations were regularly assessed for performance and modified as needed.
Ad Assets (Extensions)
We incorporated multiple ad asset types to better engage users and differentiate from ad competitors including image, sitelink, callout, structured snippet, location, and call extensions.
Budget Planning & Bidding
Ad budgets and bidding were reassessed monthly with the company, and took changing business priorities into account as location service offerings came online or were modified. Bidding methods and targets were routinely tested to ensure max ad spend efficiency.
Audience Targeting
Ad segments were utilized to target users most ideally suited for each of the company’s primary service departments, including targeting based on age, gender, income, location, and interests.
A/B Testing
Campaign ads were routinely A/B tested to identify better performing combinations of ad headlines, descriptions, assets, destination URLs, and more.
Conversion Tracking
Estimated revenue from form submissions, calls, and live chats were tracked within Google Ads to dramatically improve performance tracking and focus ad spend on higher performing campaigns.
GA4 + LookerStudio Analytics Reporting
We created custom advertising analytics dashboards in Google Looker Studio to help the company quickly assess ad performance over time. Dashboards included customized data visualizations like bar charts, pie charts, time series, and scorecards to clearly convey the performance of various campaigns and ad groups across all target locations.
Key Features
Custom Website Design
WooCommerce Catalog
Custom PDF Quote Generator
Custom Multi-Step Forms
CallRail Call Tracking
LiveChat Integration
National SEO
Local / Multi Location SEO
Salesforce CRM Integration
Mobile Optimization
Blog Integration
Advanced Google Analytics
Google Business Integration
Member Access Restrictions
REAL RESULTS DELIVERED
RESULTSOver a four-year partnership, Straight Line Web Solutions helped Master’s Transportation achieve remarkable digital marketing success.
Google search visibility soared across local, regional, and national searches, while organic website traffic quadrupled to nearly 13,000 users per month. Organic leads surged by over 1,000%, driven by optimized funnels and conversion tracking.Conversion rates increased 3-4x, and Paid Search ROAS nearly tripled.
The surge in business required additional staffing and led to the construction of a new headquarters to support expanded operations. This partnership significantly enhanced Master’s Transportation’s online presence, customer acquisition, and overall business growth.
Advertising Results
Return On Ad Spend
+258%
Cost Per Lead
-77%
Engagement Rate
+63%
Conversion Rate
+427%
SEO Results
# Keywords in Google Top 3
+507%
# Keywords in Google Top 10
+353%
Organic Traffic Change
+324%
Monthly Organic Leads Change
+1,157%
Page 1 Search Rankings on Google / Bing
"bus for sale kansas city"
"sprinter van leasing"
"school bus for sale d.c."
"10 passenger van for sale"
"van rentals atlanta"
"luxury van rental denver"
"shuttle bus rental orlando"
"church van for sale"
"rent a bus st louis"
"dallas sprinter van rental"