Case Study

Growing To Dominate Competitors with Google Local

Why Zeman Homes choose Vab Media as the right fit for their search marketing needs. Learn about our approach and how we helped Buttonwood Village to increase it’s rankings, and conversions. Before we started on the project the active adult snow bird retirement property was struggling to show up on local-level searches with only generic copy on the website.

Zeman Homes Inc. offers residential communities management and development services. Founded in 1983 by Bud Zeman, Zeman Homes has grown to own and operate over 40 manufactured home communities and mobile home parks across the United States.

Zeman Home’s hired Tharakan Consulting to help redesign and manage their marketing and advertising campaigns for a number of their community property websites. They wanted to improve their local search results to get more traffic and visibility on searches that were relevant to their industry. Tharakan Consulting hired Vab Media on several occasions to develop content that would rank and attract their target audience to take and action and convert ( requesting more info about a home or booking a tour etc). We collaborated and worked on an active adult 55 plus retirement home community located in Florida called Buttonwood Village.

Zeman Home's Business Goals

Begin an aggressive content marketing, and local SEO initiative to help their communities rank for competitive non-branded search queries in addition to brand searches.
To audit their existing Google Adwords account and find ways to optimize CPCs and increase conversions.
To test multiple page design layouts for the best performing version and optimize accordingly.
Increase overall ROI through integrated campaign efforts.
To help improve their website’s lead conversions and sell their unique value proposition of a being a high quality 55+ manufactured homes for sale community

What We Did

Real estate like many other industries is very competitive and is hyper-local. Many of Zeman homes retirement and manufactured home communities are areas that offer many choices to potential home buyers. And despite its ups and downs, real estate consistently represents approximately 19 percent of U.S. GDP (gross domestic product). Purchasing a home (even if it is luxury retirement home) is often one of the most significant investments a person will make in their lifetime. And yet for most people, the idea of “home” runs far deeper than just dollars and cents – or an online price estimate. One of the main goals was to dig deeper into the real value of owning a home in a retirement community – on a more human level and convey the benefits, in the ad copy messaging.

One of the properties, Buttonwood Village, that we worked on was located in Punta Gorda south Florida, which is one of the meccas of oceanfront retirement communities. They were competing against other local communities such a Blue Heron, Emerald Lake and the larger developers such as the Toll Brothers. After the first meeting with Tharakan Consulting, we had mutually decided that their website platform needed a new branding and look to it.

So we worked with Tharakan Consulting as they were in the development phase to come up with a content strategy. We also performed competitor and keyword research in order to assess what type of content was needed to get their website to come up in searches related to the products and services they provide. Vab Media analyzed what Buttonwood Villages local and national competitors were ranking for and writing about (optimizing) and developed an SEO campaign content strategy to target many different long tail keyword phrases that affluent snowbirds or recent retirees might be searching for related to vacationing or buying a home in Florida.

Highlighting the Brand's Value Proposition

We helped leverage the brand’s unique position and strengths via a comprehensive and highly-integrated, strategic PPC advertising and content marketing campaign – one that gets beyond “dollar and cents” to explore and put a very high emphasis on the emotional and highly human aspects of living a luxurious carefree, active lifestyle (selling the experience & amenities such as the recreational clubhouse, Heated swimming pool, Private catch-and-release fishing lakes, Shuffleboard courts, yoga, game room etc) in a paradise setting.

" Before we started with them on this project, Buttonwood Village had a very minimal digital presence. If you are looking for help with your SEO and PPC marketing, I highly recommend that you contact Vab Media. We have used and partnered with Vab Media on a number of digital initiatives over the years – they are always bringing an energetic approach, creative ideas, and are very responsive to work with. From search marketing to content strategy and development”

Katie Tharakan
CEO of Tharakan Consulting

We developed a keyword strategy based on the location, key amenities, and competition, then rewrote content across the site to include those keywords.

Vab Media’s plan was to address the weaknesses in their website’s lack of relevant content and pages in order to more provide useful information to new customers who might be conducting “informational searches” in the research phase of the real estate sales funnel. We also initiated a local SEO campaign which worked with their existing customers to get them more reviews. We also went in and optimized the brand’s Google My Business listings(Google Local listing). Our PPC experts helped to advise on keyword selection, ad copy optimization to lower their cost-per-clicks and increase the click-thru-rate.

The brand’s PPC advertising was ramped up through a few key strategies. We lengthened keyword lists, optimized bids and spending, and performed ongoing A/B ad testing.
On each page of content created for the site, we worked with Tharakan Consulting to test different colors, ad copy and calls to action to figure out what would improve their conversions via contact form lead signups to book a tour of a home or the community.

We also taught the Tharakan Consulting team what points to take into account when creating future content. The SEO “best practices” we trained their internal team, helped them to carry out a content strategy after our contract ended.

Their website is now ranking number 1 on first page in organic and local results for “Punta Gorda retirement communities“, “55+ communities in Punta Gorda fl” , “Punta Gorda manufactured homes for sale” and “Best retirement communities Punta Gorda”, “Manufactured Homes For Sale in Punta Gorda, Florida.” We actually ended up working on 6 other properties with Tharakan Consulting over the two and half years.

Punta Gorda Retirement Communities

Google Local Analytics Driving Calls and Visits Data in 1 Month

Google Local Analytics Search Impressions Data For 1 Month

WHAT WE ACHIEVED

Designed A New PPC Advertising Strategy

That optimized bids and spending, performed ongoing A/B ad copy testing with different landing page layouts, in order to see which converted the most.

Achieved #1 Rankings

We leveraged audience-intent and signals from search data, and created contextually relevant content that boosted their site’s pages search engine relevancy and engagement with intended users for brand and non-brand ROI-driving keyword terms.

Buttonwood Saw a Monthly Traffic Peak of Over 200%

3,000 unique visitors, a 200% increase! The integrated SEO and paid search efforts ensured long-term online marketing success.

Ready to Change the Game, contact us for a Quote

If you are a real estate or property management company in need of online marketing help, contact us today to discuss your project.