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Overview
Cherokee Brick is one of America’s most trusted brick manufacturers, supplying 38 states with brick from their two manufacturing plants in Georgia and Mississippi with over 100 variations of brick colors, finishes, sizes, and shapes. Founded in 1877, Cherokee Brick’s advertising has gone through many changes through the years, but their latest modernization wasn’t yielding the kind of results the company needed. The Director of Marketing at Cherokee Brick – Sonja Jonson – recently met up with the Genius Monkey team and discussed the issues the company faced.
The Challenge
Cherokee Brick had been running programmatic advertisements through a competitor to Genius Monkey and wasn’t fully satisfied with the outcome. “Throughout the duration of running with StackAdapt, we were yielding 1 to 2 form fills per day on good weeks. I also had to do everything myself, and let’s be real, I don’t have the time.”, said Jonson. This wasn’t moving the needle to justify continued investment, so Cherokee eventually turned off their accounts. If they were going to run programmatic ads, they needed a platform that could deliver strong results without consuming valuable bandwidth.
During Cherokee Brick’s brief time with the other platform, “StackAdapt had been cagey with conversion data and consumer metrics. Jonson described: “I had to go through a two hour training course before they even let me near the platform”. Visibility and accessibility would be a priority with any programmatic solution going forward.
Cherokee Brick focused on these primary goals with their programmatic vendor:
Increasing Form Fills
Strong Results With A Lean Bandwidth
Visible and Accessible Platform
Our Solution
Sonja Jonson met a Genius Monkey account executive at a local Brick Association conference, and was excited by the possibilities of the platform. Cherokee Brick signed on with Genius Monkey to place display ads, building a campaign that targeted DIY’ers, home builders, and other construction entities. They also leveraged the Genius Monkey platform’s conquesting abilities, which allows advertisers to target consumers who have visited the sites of competitors.
In addition, Genius Monkey set up a personalized dashboard for Cherokee Brick to track the important metrics they sought. Jonson was particularly impressed, “especially given the contrast with the closed-off nature of StackAdapt. The Genius Monkey dashboard… is so intuitive and easy to navigate.” With the ads and tracking in place, Cherokee Brick launched the campaign and immediately saw results.
The Results
Within the first month of launching, Cherokee saw website traffic and leads “skyrocket”. Analytics showed that:
- Total users increased 91.83%
- New users increased 106.25%
- Direct traffic increased 216%
- Display traffic increased 312%
- Organic social traffic increased 248%
GA4 tracks “key events” which include hard conversions like form fills, “find a location” page visits, etc. After only 30 days, total key events on the Cherokee Brick website were up 11.62%, and display traffic key events increased 262%. The rapid return was a pleasant surprise for Jonson. “We went from what was 1 to 2 form fills per day to 4 to 6 per day, and that is continuing to grow still.”
Through the Genius Monkey dashboard, Cherokee Brick could see where those conversions were coming from. Jonson said, “this is really incredible data. I can go in and verify, yes, these are the people I got form fills from. It definitely makes a difference.”
"This is really incredible data. I can go in and verify, yes, these are the people I got form fills from. It definitely makes a difference."
- Sonja Jonson, Director of Marketing
Summary
A Brick manufacturer was looking to expand their advertising, and wanted a better offering after a disappointing first try at a programmatic solution. A mere ten days after launching a targeted display campaign with Genius Monkey, Cherokee Brick finally began to see the rewards of programmatic done right: meaningful engagements and increasing conversions.
Jonson had only good things to say about the process. “I like everything about it. It’s paying for itself already, and it’s just wild how much I can see.” Jonson concluded by sharing that she had already recommended Genius Monkey to other marketing friends: “StackAdapt is the old programmatic; Genius Monkey is the new.”
