Grafton Group PLC is a big name in the builders and plumbers merchants industry, trading from almost 500 locations through numerous subsidiaries, employing around 4,500 staff and turning over more than £1bn.
With more than a dozen well-known brands under their umbrella, Grafton Group PLC requires dedicated service across a number of their subsidiary websites.
Urban Element’s relationship with Grafton Group PLC began by chance. Urban Element had been a trusted digital marketing partner to Beaumont Forest since 2011; an organisation which was acquired by Grafton Group PLC in June of 2014. When the acquisition took place, Grafton met with the team at Urban Element and, much to our delight, wanted to retain us as their digital marketing supplier.
This natural roll-over was the result of long-term, significant results for Beaumont Forest, who had trusted Urban Element to develop an e-commerce site for them back in 2011. This successful project turned into a nine-year-long relationship where we continued to provide SEO services and drive their online sales (£50,000 in monthly online sales).
MissionDeliver functional sites that appeal to the broad range of subsidiary customers, ensuring boosts in traffic through strategic SEO, and significant profit increases through targeted Google Ads campaigns.
Since the acquisition, Urban Element has been responsible for the development of two more of the subsidiary websites — Civils and Lintels and Lloyd Worrall. More recently, Urban Element has begun working with Nationwide Drywall & Insulation to host their site and support them with necessary updates.
Lloyd Worrall went live in August 2020 and a case study will follow in the coming months.
Under Urban Element’s ongoing website management and SEO, Civils and Lintels, as of 31st July 2020, has 30 keywords in top 3, 37 in top 10, 47 in top 20, and 74 in top 100. It has the best visibility over three large competitors, and over the last two years the website visibility has increased by 13.81%, and the average position for keywords has improved by 24.11.
Buildbase had been managing its paid advertising with a much larger agency but had not been getting the attention or communication on the account that they needed and consequently results were poor. Having switched to Urban Element within a month, results have turned around and have continued to improve.
In July 2018, Urban Element was instructed to manage Buildbase’s Google Ads campaign, with significant results.
Sales ROI between that 1st of January 2019 to 31st of July 2020 period equated to 21:1.
With the Google Ads needs growing across subsidiaries, Grafton needed a flexible solution in place to manage their paid advertising, allowing them to turn the tap on or off when required.
Off the back of this thorough reporting and strong profit results, Urban Element was given another subsidiary, Hirebase, for whom we have just completed an initial pilot Google Ads campaign.
As a relatively small agency, the expansion of Urban Element’s relationship with Grafton Group PLC meant careful management and scaling to meet their increasing needs. What started as just one division, has turned into work with five.
To manage this effectively, Managing Director at Urban Element, Natasha Ellard, was appointed as the primary contact to ensure consistency of delivery and effective management of agency resources. This was achieved through thorough communication to reach established goals and manage expectations for Grafton Group PLC.
From a delivery standpoint, the introduction of strong project and project management software, BaseCamp, LiquidPlanner, and Zoho, also ensured transparency and seamless organisation across the Urban Element team.
WHAT THEY SAYI have worked with Urban Element on 2 website builds and PPC campaigns. Well organised, professional and a good balance of discussion vs recommendation. Not a pushy agency who always think they know best and trying to get more from you. Collaborative, supportive, understated and good value, most importantly delivering a sound ROI
Saul Michelson, Head of Marketing at Buildbase.
