Drain Ninjas is a growing Auckland business, providing 24/7 response to all business and residential customers with drainage issues from Wellsford to Pokeno.

Whether it’s repairing or unblocking a drain, getting a closer look with CCTV, or uplifting waste by vacuum loading for responsible disposal, this family-based company is keen to help and ready to expand.

With Ark Advance, Drain Ninjas have developed the digital presence they need to reach more customers with their full range of services.

The background

“We were working with a previous SEO company for about three years, after trying several out along the way,” explains Account and Marketing Manager Sasha Langham. “We started well and saw results, but over time, we noticed that our service level wasn’t what it had been. Our provider was landing bigger clients with greater spending power; we felt increasingly less important, and were being invoiced for regular services that went unreported and in one case, were actually switched off.”

After realising they needed a change, the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020 gave Sasha the time and space she needed to apply a rigorous selection process. “After high level interviews with six companies, we narrowed it down to four,” says Sasha. “From there, each shortlisted provider was invited for a more detailed presentation, and the one that resonated most clearly for us was Ark Advance.”

The problem

Before bringing Ark Advance on board, Drain Ninjas was still feeling the pain of their growth being restricted by a lack of visibility. “We were still dealing with the issues of our legacy relationship,” Sasha reveals. “We were already looking at investing in a second vacuum truck, but weren’t ready to proceed without reliable data on our digital lead growth, or our reach with our wider customer base.”

The Ark Advantage

Drain Ninjas found Ark Advance more engaged and more thorough from the outset than their previous provider. “The Ark Advance team are proactively transparent in their relationship with us,” enthuses Sasha. “As well as a monthly update meeting and regular detailed reports, they are often in touch to consult on changes and relay any useful information. It’s that kind of openness that builds the trust we need.”

Another strength for Ark Advance is being ready to identify not just problems, but solutions. “We had never gone for display ads in the past,” says Sasha. “We’d never really had their value demonstrated to us, but Ark Advance convinced us from their insights that it would be a useful way to grow certain areas of the business strategically.”

The solution

Ark Advance was able to reboot Drain Ninjas’ digital marketing presence, starting with Google Adwords. Where previously they had run one campaign at a time, Ark Advance set up multiple separate campaigns to run concurrently, and then compared the results.

“These could be broken down across our various services,” points out Sasha, “but also geographically across north, south, east and west Auckland. It’s such a simple demographic indicator that offers plenty of insight into where our business is coming from.”

Further work included building more pages on the Drain Ninjas website to cover their vacuum loading service, with content created, optimised and published by Ark Advance’s expert web team. These could then support the proposed campaign of display ads, providing a whole new source of leads for this strategically important service.

The results

“In essence, the benefits we’re getting are more leads, more work and increased demand for the services we want to focus on,” confirms Sasha. “Our website looks so much better, and it’s getting more than double the traffic it was this time last year.”

“On the strength of more reliable reporting, we were able to hire a new vacuum loading team member, fill his days up fast and start planning for growth across all areas,” she says. “The increase in work obviously leads to greater revenue, and this in turn sets us up to expand, and invest in more capital assets.”

“For 2021, we’ll be turning our focus to social media, and leveraging some of the broader-brush, lower cost channels to build our brand profile.

The bottom line

“The Ark Advance team are great, and I feel like they really have our best interests at heart,” Sasha concludes. “They’re keen to see us grow and succeed, and that means we’re happy and well supported in continuing to build our business.”