We doubled the number of marketing qualified leads for James Hardie in less than 6 months by implementing a five-step funnel process across Facebook and Google search ads in 150 days.
Image credit: James Hardie
From unseen to unforgettable: James Hardie’s evolution
James Hardie is a renowned construction products manufacturer in Australia. Known for its fibre cement cladding products, the company is a popular choice within the construction industry for commercial and residential builds.
The marketing objective was for James Hardie to become the preferred choice when building Australian homes. But low brand awareness and recall among the Australian homeowners was a big challenge. Research showed us that most people didn’t know a lot about the cladding products used in their homes.
To solve this problem, we discovered the audience’s insight that while people may not search for the exact products when building a home, they are inspired by new styles and trends. This insight led to the launch of a highly successful lead generation campaign on Facebook, Google, Pinterest and other channels.
An omnichannel boost to maximise reach
We implemented an omnichannel approach to generate quality leads from the homeowner audience segment. To maximise lead generation, we launched the campaign across multiple channels. We executed the Modern Homes campaign via:
- Social media marketing – Facebook and Pinterest ads
- Search engine marketing – Google ads
- Media buying – Home decor magazines and construction niche platforms in Australia
How we turned audience insights into 1,000+ monthly leads
Image credit: James Hardie
We launched the Modern Homes Forecast campaign in March 2024, generating an average of 1000+ qualified leads per month.
Here’s the step-by-step guide to how we launched the campaign:
Step 1: A market research report uncovered seven contemporary home designs that would dominate the home decor trends in 2024. This gave us our campaign idea. Also, the audience insight and keyword research suggested that users would sign up to receive exclusive content about the latest home decor and design trends.
Step 2: Through our research, we leveraged seven different design lookbooks created by the client, one for each house, which contained advice and recommendations from leading Australian designers and builders around how to get the modern look.
Step 3: Based on the lookbooks, we built a map of the lead generation journey, highlighting the points where we could intercept users with inspiration-based ads. This included ads on how to make a modern home by incorporating certain styles in your house to achieve that trending look.
The touchpoints were the stages at which users would be shown ads from a multi-tiered campaign structure, going from awareness, consideration to conversions and retargeting. The high frequency of awareness ads increased the user’s desire to sign up for the lookbook at the following stage, maximising the number of leads generated in the next leg of campaigns.
Step 4: The same logic was followed for conversion and retargeting ads so that they would receive progressive messages through the ads about the next action to take at each stage. We retargeted users who downloaded lookbooks, to order free samples of products shown in the lookbook, driving the user’s desire and intent. This step ensured users would have a lasting impression of the James Hardie brand.
Our winning approach
Our tailored strategy, broken down by platform, audience targeting and compelling creative, helped us achieve unparalleled success with the campaign:
Platforms strategy
We launched the campaign across traditional, affiliate and digital marketing channels to gain maximum exposure. The omnipresence of the campaign and the long campaign duration of seven months ensured that a majority of Australian homeowners would come across the Modern Homes ads.
Digitally, Holmes launched the campaign on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google search and display. Sponsored campaigns on relevant publisher platforms accompanied this. Social media was the most successful platform for lead generation for this campaign.
Targeting strategy
We targeted the audience based on their interests. This was split into two major categories:
- Homeowners and designers
- Construction professionals
The differentiation was important because of two reasons:
- We allotted higher campaign budgets to the homeowner audience as this audience was less likely to know about the James Hardie products, needing more awareness campaign budgets than the construction based audience.
- The call-to-action for homeowners and builders were not the same because they had very different motivations. To get maximum leads, we decided to be very precise in capturing those needs and shaping our call to action for the ads accordingly.
Creative strategy
We used a mix of creative ad formats on social media including videos and static images. The ads were shown on billboards in prime locations and via sponsored articles in popular home decor magazines.
We built the creatives around two major themes, the look of the house designs and an industry leading expert sharing why the design was their favourite. This helped build credibility for the brand as the design recommendations came from the top voices of the industry and worked as the cherry on top for enhancing user sign-ups for the lookbook.
A/B tests revealed that more leads were gained from statics and short form video ads on social media than any other platform.
Strong results
- More achieved, in less time: 55% more leads generated than the preceding campaign in a smaller time period.
- Significant cost savings: 700% decrease in cost per acquisition than previous lifetime campaign.
- Quality leads: The total sales qualified leads to the business through the Modern Homes marketing campaign through publisher based media channels, developed by Holmes.
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