Specialty Lifting Equipment Manufacturer
A U.S. manufacturer of portable hoists, davit cranes, and industrial lifting products. A 13-year engagement that required the strategy to be rebuilt twice as the market — and the distributor landscape — changed around it.
Thirteen years. The strategy has been rebuilt twice.
We've worked with this U.S. manufacturer of industrial hoists and lifting products since 2013. Over 13 years, the account and the strategy have both evolved — not because the original approach failed, but because the market changed and we changed with it.
That's the part most case studies leave out. What works in year one rarely works unchanged in year five. The market shifts. Competitors enter. Your own distribution network grows. A strategy that doesn't adapt to those changes stops working, even if it was right to begin with.
Search worked — because the market was wide open
In the early years, search was relatively uncrowded. New products were entering the market with limited competition. Targeted search campaigns let the manufacturer reach buyers actively looking for exactly what they made, and it produced results. We built campaigns around core product terms and buyer intent, and the account grew alongside the business.
We also built tools during this period — a product design configurator that helped buyers identify the right solution for their application, and a downloadable buyer's guide that started capturing email addresses and building the list.
Competition rose — including from their own distribution channel
As their product lines grew in popularity, so did the competition on those search terms — including from their own authorized distributors. When distributors start running ads on your core product terms, you're no longer competing against an outside competitor. You're bidding against your own channel.
The math doesn't work: driving up CPCs, splitting the search result page, cannibalizing distributor relationships — none of it serves the manufacturer. Competing on those terms would have cost more and delivered less while simultaneously irritating the distribution network that carried their products.
From demand capture to demand creation
Rather than compete on search terms the distributor network now handles, we moved upstream. The strategy shifted from capturing existing demand to creating new demand — reaching buyers earlier in the research process, before they've formed a specific product preference.
YouTube for product education
YouTube campaigns to put product demonstrations in front of buyers during the research phase. Industrial buyers research before they search — video gets in front of them at that earlier stage, building brand preference before they hit Google to compare options.
Display and Demand Gen for awareness
Display campaigns to keep the brand visible across the consideration phase, and Demand Gen campaigns — including connected TV — to extend reach further into the upper funnel. These channels build awareness with buyers before they reach the search stage.
Remarketing for warm traffic
Remarketing campaigns to recapture site visitors who already know the brand — the segment that has already been exposed to their products and is in the consideration phase. This traffic converts at a fraction of the cost of cold search traffic.
Search reserved for niche and custom terms
Search campaigns stayed active — but focused on niche application terms, custom configuration queries, and segments where distributors don't compete. These are the searches that indicate a buyer with a specific requirement the distributor network isn't positioned to answer.
Buyer's Guide as an owned email asset
A downloadable Hoist Buyer's Guide that has been generating hundreds of email signups per month for years. That list is an owned asset — it doesn't belong to Google, it doesn't belong to a platform, and no algorithm can take it away. It compounds over time.
Thirteen years in, the account looks nothing like it did in 2013
And it shouldn't. The manufacturer has grown, their distributor network has grown, and the campaigns have adapted to serve both without creating channel conflict. The account has been rebuilt at least twice as market conditions changed — not as a failure, but as the correct response to a changing environment.
The email list built through the Buyer's Guide is now one of their most consistent owned marketing assets. Hundreds of signups per month from buyers who self-selected as interested — that's an audience that doesn't disappear when Google changes its algorithm or a competitor outbids you on a search term.
"Business is up 33%. We're getting more calls from customers who could have only found us by doing a search. We're on the map now." — Operations Manager, industrial hoisting equipment manufacturer
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