This information is an executive summary of a case study involving a local business client of Flywheel.  For more information please contact us directly.

Our case study business is an auto body shop located in a moderately large city in the Eastern US.  Over the course of 12 months all leads and contacts from the Internet were tracked.  For a 3 month period, all customers were tracked, including Internet contacts, call-in customers, and walk-ins.  Every job was tied back to a source and every initial contact was tied to an outcome.  The exact amounts of estimated and actual revenue and profitability were recorded. 

A substantial effort was also made to determine the 'lifetime value of a customer' for this business.  This means we determined the present value of all the future cash flows related to the acquisition of a single new customer.  After discounting business that will occur in the future back to today we can determine what each new customer is worth to the shop right now.

To make sure we did not over-inflate the values, we only claimed credit for customers who listed their primary referral source as the Internet or website.  If, for example, a customer listed a radio ad as their primary referral source and the Internet as a secondary referral, we did not count that customer in these figures.

Internet Leads Summary

A few interesting facts...

88.5% Customer Capture rate
Internet Marketing leads do not waste your time.  Close to 9 out of 10 contacts turned into jobs.  Even more, customers that come from Internet Marketing efforts are typically pre-sold on your business.  When they contact you, they are typically not trying to make a decision on which business to use - they have already chosen yours without any time investment on your part. 

17% of Customers
Auto body repair businesses are built heavily on referrals, insurance relationships, and return customers.  This business was already well established, but Internet Marketing still became directly responsible for 17% of their jobs.  The percentage of new customers was much, much higher, highlighting the ability of these efforts to grow a local business.

1,290% Return on Investment
Marketing is best measured by your Return on Investment (ROI).  When you spend a dollar on marketing, you expect it to result in additional profitability for your business in excess of the expense.  The ROI for traditional marketing methods are often small: mailings, radio ads, tv ads, billboards, face-to-face sales all provide less than 10% ROI.  20% is considered an extremely effective return.  The case study ROI was 1,290%, meaning after all costs and expenses related to performing the work and running a business, our efforts added almost $13 to the company's bottom line for each dollar invested in our services.

This Internet Marketing case study for local business supports our primary belief: that Internet Marketing with Flywheel is the best marketing investment a local business can make.  The only question is whether you will invest in marketing.

At the time of the case study, the Internet Marketing leads provided annualized revenue of $318,400.  Soon thereafter that number grew to $342,000 per year, which is the statistic shown at the top of this page and the homepage.  That amount accounted for 17% of the customers for the business, 15.4% of total sales dollars, and had a 1,290% ROI based on profitability numbers provided by the business.