Case Study: Cedar Woods’ Inbound Success

Our Client

Cedar Woods is an award-winning residential and commercial property developer known for its projects spanning Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. For over 30 years, Cedar Woods has created vibrant communities that enrich the lives of its customers.

The Problem

Before engaging Salted Stone, Cedar Woods found themselves in a marketing conundrum.

Their teams struggled to understand their audience and lacked a software solution that presented a 360-degree view of customer interactions. Plus, lead generation strictly relied on industry-standard above-the-line (ABL) marketing tactics such as radio and outdoor advertising. This prevented Cedar Woods from talking one-to-one with their audience, constraining their ability to authentically connect with prospects. The team were also frustrated by limited pipeline visibility and challenges attributing sales to ABL efforts. 

With another project launch on the horizon, Incontro of Subiaco, the team sought to revitalise their marketing by testing digital tactics with an inbound approach. Cedar Woods recognised the value of inbound marketing as a proven concept, yet needed expert guidance to implement it effectively.

Salted Stone partnered with Cedar Woods to lead their inbound transition in a 6-month engagement for Incontro (in line with the industry’s sales lead time). 

The Incontro development comprises 41 three-bedroom townhouses set within the heart of Subiaco, an affluent inner-city suburb in Perth, Western Australia. Built for modern living, Incontro is described as a connected community that’s stylish and surrounded by nature. Townhouse pricing started at $500,000AU. 

Salted Stone created two sets of campaign goals, one each for the ‘Coming Soon’ expression of interest (EOI) phase and a subsequent launch to market. 10 townhouse sales would catalyze development.

Campaign Goals: 480 MQL's, 140 SQL's & 12 Sales

Our Solution

Our team mapped the entire buyer’s journey for all four personas, building our understanding of who we were trying to serve, to customise a strategic program. The focus was to build market awareness and drive sales during the launch via digital marketing tactics. Our agency also recommended Cedar Woods utilise HubSpot Sales and Marketing Enterprise as the core enabler of the Incontro campaign. The platform’s tools would bring our agency’s strategies to life, and tie in with the campaign goals and broader client challenges. 

Salted Stone’s robust campaign strategy leveraged several digital tactics to support Cedar Woods’ internally led ATL campaign. The strategy primarily revolved around the creation of a landing page and email workflows using the inbound methodology to generate MQLs, SQLs and ultimately, sales. Those tactics are as follows: 

• Attract persona interest via Facebook, Instagram and Google ads: The initial EOI phase generated interest via lead generation ads that worked as the entry point for our nurture campaign. Our agency oversaw keyword research and ad setup, along with ongoing campaign monitoring and optimisation. We accurately targeted audiences as informed by robust persona research.
  
• Educate and excite the audience with an informative Landing Page: The page encouraged visitors to ‘Download a Master Project Pack’ who would later be nurtured into leads. We collaborated with Cedar Woods on the content approach, created the design and UI/UX, and architected the result with HubSpot’s landing page tool.  
• Persuade with an informative digital Master Project Pack (MOFU offer): To achieve our MQL goals, the landing page drove personas to download a consideration stage information pack. This showcased Incontro’s features and convinced people of the benefits, containing Incontro floor plans, plus information about Subiaco’s attractions and community. 
• Capture persona data via HubSpot forms to continue the conversation: The MOFU offer was gated to build a contact database of people interested in Incontro. The form captured the names and contact details of interested prospects, segmented into HubSpot lists by their selected persona type. 
• Create a frictionless ‘Talk to Sales’ experience with HubSpot’s calendar integration (BOFU offer): A calendar integration on the landing page captured prospects on-page and streamlined the sales process through HubSpot automation.
• Nurture MQLs through the journey with HubSpot email workflows: Using templates, we created emails targeted to each buyer persona and set this up as a workflow series branched for every persona. The database created from these contacts was segmented and appropriate lists were made to maintain engagement through to launch. Come Phase 2, we launched a new set of nurtures to motivate contacts to move from the MQL to SQL stage. 

Salted Stone is APAC's largest and most trusted HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner (2021).

The Results

EOI Phase

Cedar Woods rapidly accrued outstanding results from Salted Stone’s early campaign activities. The results speak for themselves:

The EOI Phase was undeniably successful, however, Salted Stone recommended several campaign optimisations to boost the next phase. These recommendations were informed by HubSpot contact activity and heatmap data analysed weekly and at an end-phase performance review.

Launch Phase

Salted Stone maintained momentum into the Launch Phase by continuing to build MQLs and drive SQLs for conversion to sale, optimised by our EOI Phase observations.  

Overall, we strongly outperformed our Incontro Campaign goals which culminated in the following outcomes: 

Our Impact

In our 6-month Cedar Woods engagement, Salted Stone successfully proved the real impact of an inbound approach propelled by HubSpot’s powerful tools.

Our strategic program demonstrated:

• A customer-first, inbound approach is both engaging and extremely effective; it holds its place alongside tried-and-true traditional tactics 
• HubSpot’s ability to empower teams using a 360-degree view of the customer, finally allowing Cedar Woods to trace lead times 
• The value in partnering with a digital-savvy agency to lead a strategic program driven by data and ongoing optimisation 

In the end, consumer demand drastically outweighed Incontro townhouse supply, with the surplus of leads retargeted for future campaigns. Salted Stone effectively drove results with a bottom-line impact, contributing to the generation of over $7,500,000 in revenue (up 125% on target) — all thanks to an inbound-focused strategy.