Western Pest Services
How we accelerated growth and helped a regional pest control player become a powerful and enduring brand – even after its acquisition by a national leader.
Our 25-year growth partnership with Western began when this privately-owned pest services company was a leader in New Jersey with pockets of growth in local offices down through Virginia. The category was stuck at 17% penetration of households; low price and speed of response was the way local competitors defended their turf.
Western Pest Services
Consumer & Home Services
INSIGHT
Through our research, we discovered that Western’s family-driven values were reflected in its focus on providing the highest quality services and outcomes using a successful low-pesticide approach that combined regular, expert inspection with pest prevention services by highly-trained experts. Higher-income households who valued this approach were willing to pay for Western’s higher-priced services because the results and high-touch services created a powerful asset: brand trust. That began a twenty-five-year relationship of growing brand awareness and superior lead-generation through local, data-driven marketing plus improving customer engagement via web and online platforms and also improving the customer experience.
SOLUTIONS
Our outstanding results-journey was fueled by a fully integrated suite of research-driven branding, targeting, market testing, customer experience enhancement, and award-winning advertising campaigns. As a full and trusted partner with Western, we built a strong brand identity that was rolled out through trucks, uniforms, website, ad campaigns, and sales presentations. New campaign messaging emphasized Western’s points of difference, their smart solutions, and featured their expert, friendly techs as local heroes.
RESULTS
Western’s customer base and revenues grew 500% to $125 million during our partnership. As a result of our data-driven geo-targeting, overall consumer awareness grew, especially among our primary target: higher-income household families that reflected the persona characteristics of Western’s loyal customers.
When national leader, Orkin, acquired the company, it discovered that Western had a strong and valuable brand and continued to support Western as an independent brand. Individual market tests and roll-out campaigns consistently delivered results that exceeded expectations.
The new owner leveraged our marketing innovations and knowledge of data-driven and digital marketing and applied it across the country. They also reassigned us media planning and execution duties after the acquisition, realizing that our precise, local market knowledge and media strategies were producing results that were superior to a national media company. Individual market tests and roll-out campaigns consistently delivered results that exceeded expectations. For example:
- Doubling lead-generation year-over-year and tripling it in several markets
- Growing company revenues 14% in a year the industry was in recession
- Dramatically lowering CPL and CPA year-over-year through the constant improvement of targeted media and digital engagement strategies
