Digital strategy drives success, including a campaign that nets $1.1M in 5 weeks—all while marketing a product everyone hates
Firebrand digital strategy positions XRS as trucking technology’s most likable brand, drives the development of a powerful conversion engine—and ultimately results in a lucrative sale to powerhouse, Omnitracs.
Digital Strategy
Content Strategy
Copywriting
SEO
Web Development
Social Media
PPC
Email Marketing
The challenge
Fostering brand affinity to drive subscriptions
Transportation technology firms, like XRS, battled negative perceptions of their products, day-in, and day-out. That’s because independence-loving professional truck drivers often viewed vendor compliance solutions with suspicion. They were perceived as Big Brother technology—and in some cases, they were right.
New mobile trucking technology vendor, XRS, needed a way to engage drivers and small fleet owners who were resistant to marketing messages, foster positive perceptions of their brand, and carve out a sustainable subscriber base for its new SaaS product.
The solution
Active listening, practiced vulnerability, and free, high-value resources
While other tone-deaf vendors touted product features, Firebrand took a very different approach with XRS. It zeroed-in on pain points and benefits, and it validated negative experiences—heartfelt engagements that were unheard of in the trucking industry. Firebrand also created value for drivers, small fleet owners, and large fleet technical buyers with free, user-centric resources and engaging storytelling.
These solutions included:
- A conversion-oriented website that focused on audience pain points and user benefits
- Blog content that delivered deep insight into industry trends, business operations best practices, and trucking regulations
- An electronic onboard recording devices minisite (eld.com) that delivered industry-leading regulatory guidance to transportation businesses, especially small businesses that lacked in-house expertise
- Social media channels that employed active listening and strong storytelling to both drive high engagement and cultivate respectful, open debate
- ROI calculators and interactive graphs that nurtured prospects along the sales funnel and captured critical data through progressive profiling technologies
- Dynamic content informed by behavior signals that created the more personalized experience, which drove an increase in conversions, shortened sales cycles, and closed deals
The work
Digital assets that actively positioned XRS as the company that cared.
The results
Detractors-turned-loyalists and a powerful lead gen engine
Leveraging a search-optimized, user-centric website and a social media community built through compassionate listening, Firebrand greatly impacted the business, including:
- Increased inbound links by 3,300%
- Landed several first-place critical keywords and secured them for years
- Generated $1.1M in subscription sales during a five-week campaign
Firebrand also built lead gen minisite, ELD.com, which offered critical regulatory guidance to the company’s target audience. This site ranked number one for the highly-competitive keyword, ELD, for several years, outranking Wikipedia and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)—the federal agency which issued the ELD mandate.
Additionally, Firebrand powered XRS inbound marketing efforts with high-value content. The user-centric blog post, Your CSA Score – How To Check It (And Why You Should!), ranked number one, outranking the FMCSA’s own how-to page. Today, the post still ranks in the top five for multiple critical keywords six years after publication.
XRS was ultimately acquired by Omintracs. The performance of the XRS website and cross-channel digital conversion engine, combined with the brand’s unique ability to communicate with a resistant consumer base, were noted as key factors in Omnitracs’ decision to acquire XRS, and also in its valuation.
“The website has turned into our #1 lead generating tool (80%). These guys know what they are doing.”
– Steve Kull, Director of Brand Management
Why Firebrand?
Trusted to deliver high-performance digital strategy
Before joining XRS, the company’s CMO collaborated with Firebrand on the Blue Zones project—a high-visibility digital project sponsored by National Geographic and the National Institutes of Health. Impressed by Firebrand’s digital strategy and execution, the agency was brought in to serve as an embedded part of the XRS marketing team.
With two decades of digital strategy experience, not to mention a knack for shortening complex sales cycles and driving technical product conversions, XRS turned to Firebrand for results.