Kaivac
Since 1997, Kaivac has been creating sophisticated cleaning machines for the people performing America’s dirtiest jobs. What started as a small company building all-in-one restroom cleaning machines turned into an award-winning brand providing fleets of smart cleaning technology to companies in many different industries nationwide. Their products don't just improve the lives of janitorial staff; they also help companies improve customer environments and streamline building maintenance and operations.
Throughout almost three decades in business, Kaivac has turned selling cleaning solutions into a science, but it wasn’t always so seamless. When we first met Jim Pickrel, their Director of Marketing, his team was working to create a “Sales and Marketing Machine” that streamlined sales with prospective customers and dynamically executed marketing campaigns.
Kaivac's "Point A"
While Kaivac’s marketing campaigns were enviable, their website needed work. What had once been a powerful WordPress website suffered from significant plugin bloat. It was frequently unavailable for periods of time, it operated very slowly, and it attracted high volumes of unwanted traffic. Any digital marketing progress was hindered by the shortcomings of the website, and Kaivac was missing out on new business opportunities. Jim and the marketing team needed a solution.
Kaivac's Roadmap
Throughout our 3 year partnership, we have been working with Kaivac through a multi-stage journey toward digital marketing excellence.
Strategy
When we first talked to Kaivac, they wanted to redesign their website as soon as possible. It quickly became apparent, however, that immediate and comprehensive reconstruction on a website that size would likely only magnify the frustrations of the Kaivac team. Instead, we decided to quickly solve the challenges with the biggest impact on their revenue first. After triaging the important repairs to the existing Kaivac website, we were able to take what we learned about their business and its goals to deliver on the full website redesign.
Before diving into development work, we took time to interview the Kaivac team and explore their websites issues to uncover the heart of their problems.
test
Infrastructure updates & plugin audit
Kaivac’s sluggish website was due in part to an insufficient hosting configuration. We transitioned their website to our AWS environment and added improved caching to increase the website speed.
Kaivac also suffered from a common WordPress problem: an over-abundance of plugins that throttled their website speed. Our team reviewed every plugin, replacing the bad and deleting the unnecessary.
Marketing website
Kaivac’s website served both their marketing and ecommerce audiences. We separated these functions into two sites to improve website speed and give ourselves more room to work.
Then, after a few months of continuous improvement and results, we moved forward on the website redesign with a solid foundation. We built the new website using the Sanity CMS for its ability to manage content across multiple platforms.
To fuel Kaivac’s “marketing machine”, we built multiple ways for prospective customers to engage on the website, including “The Big Clean Quiz” to help users self-identify their cleaning needs.
eCommerce refresh
While the marketing-focused website redesign was underway, we also refreshed the eCommerce website to remove Divi Builder and improve its performance.
Digital advertising
With their website up and running and ready to capture new leads, we began building digital advertising campaigns to build targeted awareness for the Kaivac brand.
SEO
In addition to paid advertising, we also focused on helping Kaivac dominate organic search results. We continue to perform ongoing technical SEO support as a part of our marketing partnership.
test
Technical support
The Sanity CMS gave us the opportunity to implement custom functionality on the Kaivac website and integrate existing features from the eCommerce website, including ROI calculators, distributor locators, online warranty registration, and processing for tax-expempt customers.
As our partnership has progressed, we have continued working with Kaivac to increase their marketing through advertising, continued website enhancements, and an additional website for Expert Rotomolding, one of Kaivac’s other brands.
Point B: The marketing machine
While working with Kaivac, we haven't take a one-size-fits-all approach. Kaivac had unique needs that required a tailored marketing strategy and a calculated order of operations. Through months of close collaboration and technical problem solving, the Kaivac website was redesigned and received a polished interface, all while business operated as usual.
Today Kaivac is well positioned to keep their marketing machine rolling and grow their brand online.
We are honored to partner with Kaivac to revolutionize the cleaning industry and improve facilities everywhere.