Goodman’s Barber Lounge is a high-end, yet approachable barbershop in the River North neighborhood of Chicago that offers much more than a shave and a haircut. Far from your standard barbershop, Goodman’s brings you back to the good ol’ days, when a barber lounge provided best-in-class service, and made every accommodation to make their clients look and feel their best.
The leadership team at Goodman’s came to VisualFizz looking to build their brand and attract more customers to their high end brick-and-mortar location. This case study explores the steps VisualFizz took to promote Goodman’s Barber Lounge, improving their website, and resulting in organic search traffic and turning online readers into physical customers.
About Goodman’s Barber Lounge
The term Marketing Agency often conjures images of a New York corner office full of slick suits pitching multimillion dollar ad campaigns to corporate bigwigs. That scene does occur, but more often we are approached by small business owners looking for a better way to promote their business.
Enter Goodman’s Barber Lounge, a premium barber shop offering best-in-class services to the gentleman of Chicago. With a unique service, a powerful brand and a premium location in one of Chicago’s most popular neighborhoods, Goodman’s should’ve had no problem finding customers. Unfortunately for the gentleman at Goodman’s, the Covid-19 pandemic limited the services they could offer and made it particularly difficult to attract new business. Beyond that, the company was nearly brand new and had minimal exposure, compared to their competitors, who have established long-term customers in the area.
After some head scratching, the digital marketing experts at VisualFizz uncovered an opportunity to not only promote an in-person service during a pandemic, but also leverage the expertise of Goodman’s own barbers to build an informative, extremely useful grooming and style resource for men everywhere.
Partnership With VisualFizz
Like many brick-and-mortar businesses, Goodman’s Barber Lounge was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The corresponding drop in customer volume drove the team at Goodman’s to seek out new ways to bring customers through the door.
Their partnership with VisualFizz would uncover a significant content gap in the men’s style, grooming, and hair care niche. With that realization in hand, VisualFizz would utilize the extensive industry expertise of the Goodman’s barber team to create a content library that caters to the grooming, hair care and style needs of men in Chicago.
Moreover, VisualFizz would provide targeted, expertly crafted branding and marketing guidance, as well as brand strategy that portrays Goodman’s Barber Lounge as the best and safest place for men to get their haircut during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Together, these items would act as lead generators and information centers for potential clients to gain familiarity with the Goodman’s brand and the expertise of their barbers before they make an appointment.
VisualFizz Drives Direct, Organic and Paid Search Traffic, Improves Local SEO, and Optimizes Google My Business Listing for Local Brand
Prior to the partnership with VisualFizz, Goodman’s Barber Lounge was unranked on Google for their most important keywords. Thus, VisualFizz approached Goodman’s Barber Lounge with an SEO strategy and multiple creative concepts focused on the unique experience and expertise provided by their barbers.
Content Strategy and Web Development
The goal of the content strategy was to not only showcase the amazing customer experience that clients can expect at Goodman’s, but also position Goodman’s as an online hair care, style and grooming resource for men.
The VisualFizz team recommended improving the user-experience of the website by focusing on building more detailed pages, which included more content and information about Goodman’s services. This not only helped with SEO, but also created a simpler user-experience and increased conversions.
Our photography team also planned and executed a photo shoot for Goodman’s products and services. This was a full-day shoot showcasing all of Goodman’s services, products, barbers, and beautiful location. This provided the team with authentic content utilized on their website and social media channels. Beyond that, this shoot allowed both teams to finally meet in-person after the global pandemic.
Branded landing pages were also shared across social media channels to encourage users to visit Goodman’s website and ultimately become clients. Most importantly, the VisualFizz team would also refresh Goodman’s single-page website with fresh new landing pages.
SEO Efforts: Paid and Organic Search
Prior to the partnership with VisualFizz, Goodman’s Barber Lounge had been running a Google Express campaign that provided limited access into their search data and segmentation.
VisualFizz took up the project in late 2020. Over the preceding year, their efforts would lead to tremendous growth on overall organic search strategy. The table below shows one full year of Google traffic results from September of 2020 (prior to VisualFizz involvement) to October of 2021.
As shown above, the client experienced an increase in conversions (325% ), conversion rate (136%), number of users (73%) page views per session (33%) and average session duration (50%).
The table above reflects a sample of the keyword target rankings over time sorted by the most improved keywords. As the table shows, SEO efforts emphasized the river north neighborhood name, which led to sustained growth, and pushed the keyword into the top-ten search listings.
The VisualFizz Paid Search team was able to find numerous opportunities for growth, as it pertained to the paid search account. Before the VisualFizz team took over, the Goodman’s team had been managing paid search, which, unfortunately, was not resulting in the return they were hoping for. They also did not have tracking set up, which would result in inaccurate results and inconsistent data.
From November 2020 – August 2021, the VisualFizz team was able to drive around 7,600 clicks, 78,000 impressions, and a very strong CTR (Click Through Rate) of 9.8%. With a very low CPC (Cost per Click) of $1.49 through optimization and ad strategies, we’ve been able to convert nearly 34% of traffic, resulting in over 2,500 leads.
The client saw vast improvement in the user and conversion rates for the homepage. This table also shows the effectiveness of the content building campaign, which continues to drive traffic, expand the keyword net and provide Google with a deeper understanding of the site’s content.
Social Media
By nurturing a community around the brand on social channels and implementing reputation management procedures, the VisualFizz team were able disseminate branded content (blog posts, photos, videos, etc.) that conveys the unique experience of a Goodman’s visit.
This cross-network approach relied on boosted promotional messaging to maximize reach and ensure the Goodman’s message was received by as many social media users as possible.
For advanced social media advertising and promotions, we utilized Cost per Click campaigns, as well as boosted posts on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels.
The Results: More Clients in the Door Every Month
The result of the Goodman’s-VisualFizz partnership is the fully-functional, conversion-focused website, an incredibly powerful and high converting PPC strategy, and a human-centered, informative social media/content calendar to drive traffic to the website, and provide meaningful ROI for Goodman’s Barber Lounge.
Most importantly, the Goodman’s-VisualFizz partnership enabled the Goodman’s brand with an image, a voice, and the authority to change the way men think of hair care, style and grooming.
The experience Goodman’s offers is always top-notch. But before they partnered with VisualFizz, they had few ways of proving to the men of Chicago that they are as good as they claim to be.
After the Goodman’s-VisualFizz partnership, every customer in Chicago knows that Goodman’s Barber Lounge is THE place to go if you want to look and feel your best. If you liked what you read here, we suggest you contact us to see what a VisualFizz partnership can do for your business.
