Airstream makes travel trailers and touring coaches that inspire a growing community to explore the unexpected. As their business grew, they needed a simple way to generate more leads at scale and distribute them amongst their network of dealers — all while aligning their ads with the rest of their marketing efforts. By implementing a journey-based advertising strategy using HubSpot’s marketing software, Airstream increased leads generated by 78%, while decreasing cost per lead significantly.
Generating and Distributing Leads at Scale
Airstream works to stir the venturesome spirit in people across North America. A B2B business, they sell to a network of dealers across North America and are responsible for all marketing efforts for their brand. As they worked to generate leads at scale, Airstream quickly realized the important role ads would play in growing their business.
Airstream does not sell directly to consumers, but they own all lead generation efforts for any dealers taking part in their quarterly Dealer Marketing Program. As a result, they needed a way to track their campaign performance, and easily understand the return on their ad spend.
Ultimately, they hoped to generate more highly qualified leads at costs competitive to their previous campaigns. These leads then needed to be easily qualified, nurtured, and distributed amongst their North American network of dealers. Finally, to ensure an optimal customer experience, they sought tools that might enable them to more tightly integrate and automate their lead generation and nurturing efforts.
Creating a Consistent Narrative
In order to effectively generate, nurture, and distribute leads at scale, Airstream recognized the need to deeply integrate their ads with both their CRM data and their marketing automation tools. HubSpot’s Marketing Hub provided the solution they needed. Along with their marketing agency Element Three, they found success through creating helpful content across their entire buyer’s journey, and using Facebook Lead Ads in HubSpot.
“Our teams work obsessively to create content offers and resources that are genuinely useful to future Airstream customers at every step of their individual buyer's journey. The combination of Facebook Lead Ads integrated with HubSpot’s marketing automation platform make certain that this information is delivered to the right audiences in the most seamless, frictionless way possible,” said Tim Morse, Digital Marketing Manager at Element Three.
Working with Element Three, Airstream creates quarterly campaigns aimed at introducing future Airstream buyers to their line of products and helping them determine which one might be right for them. The campaign targets audiences living in postal codes surrounding each participating dealership. By syncing HubSpot contact lists with Facebook audiences, they achieved extreme granularity in retargeting existing contacts. They’ve also developed lookalike audiences off these lists to expand their reach, while maintaining the quality of their leads.
Creating a consistent narrative across their buyer’s journey is key. Once a lead fills out a Facebook lead form and is automatically synced to their HubSpot CRM, Airstream uses HubSpot’s marketing automation tools to send users a dynamic follow-up email that contains both the content offer and their closest dealer. While ultimate follow-up can vary depending on the dealership, Airstream uses email to connect directly with the consumer, ensuring a consistent post-conversion experience for leads across North America.
HubSpot’s reporting tools inform every decision Airstream and Element Three make with their advertising. Specifically, they use HubSpot’s lead scoring and campaign reporting tools to measure the quality of the leads they are generating. In fact, the insights gathered through their analysis of HubSpot’s campaign reporting showed them that their audience was more likely to convert on Facebook Lead Ads than standard newsfeed ads — leading to a 44% decrease in total cost per lead.
“HubSpot empowers Airstream and Element Three’s marketing teams to close the loop on many of our marketing activities. Through HubSpot’s Campaign and Reporting tools, our teams are able to understand the actions leads take after converting on an ad, the difference between a qualified and an unqualified lead, and what steps should be taken next to close the deal.”
With HubSpot, Advertising Means Money in the Bank
Airstream and Element Three generated 78% more leads than a previous campaign by implementing a journey-based advertising strategy using Facebook Lead Ads within HubSpot. More importantly, they generated leads at scale — decreasing cost per lead by roughly 44%. Airstream and Element Three attribute their success to the insights they received from HubSpot’s reporting tools and the advanced targeting and segmentation they achieved by creating their ads audiences using HubSpot contact lists.
“We’d recommend the Marketing Hub to most businesses in B2B or B2C that are looking to ramp up their lead generation efforts. There is a ton of opportunity for businesses within all types of industries to utilize these features to enhance and take their marketing efforts to the next level.”