Animal Care Equipment & Services (ACES) began life as a local veterinary equipment supplier in Broomfield, CO, serving Denver and nearby communities. With a long-term, comprehensive digital marketing approach, we helped them grow into a major player in their industry, serving clientele nationwide and globally to nearly a dozen countries.
The Problem
ACES had had little success in the digital sphere: online sales were a fraction of their total business and, more often than not, an afterthought when compared to their traditional sales channels. While non-digital sales and service remained stable, there was clear potential in web-based sales, but no clear route to reaching that potential. Figuring out the “how” was the next big step.
Our Solution
Given the scope and potential of ACES’ situation, our solution was multifaceted and all-encompassing. We partnered with ACES to give them a fully-managed paid ad campaign, an SEO campaign that focused on overall visibility and their core product lineup, two fully-custom websites over the course of six years, and hands-on management by our senior staff the whole way through (complete with regular in-depth meetings and anytime access by phone to our marketing team).
Our Results
57xPaid Ad ROI
$13Average Click Value
$0.13Cost Per Click
Having a comprehensive and meticulously-executed digital marketing campaign helped ACES establish itself as a forerunner in the veterinary equipment space. Having begun as a local business, today they are the supplier of choice for dozens of vet clinics, animal control units, shelters, zoos, and other animal-centric agencies across the US and the Asia-Pacific region.
The Paid Ad Campaign
With numerous large distributors and manufacturers saturating the market, the vet equipment space was difficult for ACES to break into alone. Mediaworks was able to provide the strategy and execution they needed to achieve long-term and highly lucrative success in the online advertising sector.
Our plan for ACES’ paid ad success was twofold: a broad-scope campaign targeting veterinary equipment-and-supply buyers generally, and another for specific fields and professions within the veterinary world, e.g. animal control, animal shelters, etc. This flexible approach allows us to better target the right people with the right product, as well as keep cost per click lower. This approach also helps us synergize with ACES’ promotions and product pushes, especially when it comes to promoting their own in-house brands over those products’ competitors.
The bread and butter of our approach is our expertise, diligence, and in-depth knowledge of ACES, our client. We’ve partnered with ACES for over six years, and have become deeply familiar with their business, their operations, and their industry. The story of helping them reach the figures they have is less about one big “breakthrough” moment, and more about hundreds upon hundreds of little decisions and optimizations.
Our efforts resulted in the explosive success of ACES’ digital sales:
- ACES enjoys a 57x return on their ad spend. For every dollar spent on paid ads, they net $57 in online purchases.
- ACES’ clicks cost just $0.13 on average, and each click is valued at around $13 in terms of sales delivered to their eCommerce store.
- ACES’ clickthrough rate continues to rise year over year. Beginning at around 3.5%, they now enjoy a CTR of around twice that: 7.0%.
The SEO Push
SEO is another pillar of our success with ACES. Since we began working with them, they’ve seen substantial growth in their organic ranks and keyword statistics, with numerous heavy-hitter keywords on Google’s first page of results and a number of high-power blogs and articles.
At Mediaworks, our SEO strategies always revolve around developing a deep knowledge of our clients and their industries, and using that knowledge to inform our approach. This was especially true of ACES, whose audience is split between contents: North America and the Asia-Pacific region. Between the two, there’s a surprisingly large difference between what keywords searchers are using to find the same products. For example, “opossum trap” is the more popular term in the US, while “possum trap” is much more popular in Australia; optimizing for “opossum trap” there would have been largely ineffective at selling traps. ACES’ case was a shining example of how good SEO isn’t something you can just throw together, it’s an art that needs research, know-how, and thorough knowledge of your audience.
- Under our SEO regimen, ACES achieved 1,500+ keywords between their two major markets, North America and Asia-Pacific.
- ACES’ branded keywords help direct more sales to their in-house equipment brands, boosting their margins further.
The Website
ACES, having an eCommerce storefront, needed to nail their web presence. Since 2020, we’ve delivered two all-custom websites that integrate seamlessly into ACES’ preexisting workflow, and that provide a quick and easy shopping experience for customers.
Their latest Mediaworks site funnels shoppers into the categories they’ll be most inclined to purchase from, making it easy for shelters to find shelter gear, animal control units to buy animal control gear, etc. The interface is spacious and bright, optimizing clarity and ease of use. Aesthetically, ACES’ site is appropriately clinical while also retaining hints of charm and personability you’d expect from a small business.
The site also comes complete with remarketing and analytics built in: if, for instance, an ACES shopper closes the site but leaves items in their cart, reminder emails will automatically be sent their way, and practically every purchase can be tracked in terms of source, on-page behavior, and more.
A Flexible, Custom-Built eCommerce Solution
What’s the best way to ship a snake-catching pole? How about a snake-catching pole that’s bundled in with a net gun, a 5-foot animal trap, and a 2-gallon container of cleaning solution? And how do you do it such that it optimizes UPS shipping rates, and provides live estimates on arrival dates, and does so all without human intervention?
For ACES, the answer was to call Mediaworks. Due to the nature of their product lineup, normal shipping solutions simply weren’t powerful enough to suit their needs. There were too many variables to account for, too many edge cases, they needed something tailor-made for their business and operations. We stepped in and developed a fully-custom shipping solution to remedy this: from box-size calculations to shipping cost estimations to tracking-number generation, we were able to address all of ACES’ unique needs and do so in one elegant package.
ACES is now a digital power player in the veterinary equipment space, and we’re proud to have helped them achieve that. Having gone from an afterthought to a leading force behind their continuous growth and expansion, ACES’ digital marketing and eCommerce efforts are now core to the company as a whole. We’re proud of our work, but we’re equally as proud of the professional relationship we’ve garnered with their team.
