Spuncast’s Digital Twin Generates a 2:1 Increase in Qualified Leads
| Company | Spuncast |
| Industry | Steel foundry specializing in centrifugal casting |
| Sales team | 4 |
| Marketing team | 0 |
Watch the video overview of the case study, then read on to see the detailed results!
Challenge
Spuncast, a steel foundry specializing in centrifugal casting, was looking to increase the company’s web presence and generate more leads for their sales team.
As a traditional manufacturing company that relied entirely on their sales team for leads, the company had no expertise in digital marketing, said Greg Whitman, Vice President of Sales and Engineering.
According to Whitman, Spuncast “didn’t know what it didn’t know” about digital, but they did know that the sales game had officially gone online.
The traditional methods were not serving us anymore.
Those methods consisted primarily of cold-calling and trade shows, and so the company considered three options to help its sales team:
- Hire a lead-generation company
- Hire a marketing professional to work onsite
- Hire a digital marketing agency
The goal was ultimately to deliver quality leads and enhance Spuncast’s online presence.
Solution
Spuncast first interviewed two lead generation services, and didn’t like what they saw.
We felt the lead generation service was far too expensive for a lot of unqualified leads. We just didn’t feel we would be getting enough bang for our buck.
They then struggled to find a new hire that could do all the things they were looking for from a marketing standpoint. That’s not surprising considering how digital marketing requires specialization in various areas — like content creation, digital advertising, analytics, and video / graphic design.
Finally, they looked to a digital marketing agency: Winbound.
Whitman said that only Winbound offered the ability to create digital content and track the lead generation and success rate. Most importantly, Spuncast chose Winbound because of its ability to produce content that was a Digital Twin of the company’s sales team.
Spuncast liked the approach of “mirroring” the company with digital content.
It’s important that any of our marketing tools sound like us and look like us.
Results
Digital Twin Content
Collaborating with the Spuncast experts, Winbound created written and video content that spoke to the foundry’s true differentiators and provided insights to potential customers. Winbound’s content writer Catherine Bell led the charge on content creation.
“She’s fantastic. I can’t imagine coming from a background where you don’t know anything about centrifugal casting. To be able to write about it as if you were working here and one of us is truly amazing.”
Catherine Bell, Winbound
Collaborating with Spuncast’s internal experts, Catherine and Winbound generated insights that educated prospects on ways to improve their business, such as:
- How to reduce uneven production schedules
- Why metallurgy is so important in the process
- How to achieve consistency in cast products
The content resonated when it was distributed through marketing channels, regularly exceeding the industry click-through rates and boosting impressions, the main metric tracked in this stage.
The home page was also rewritten to show the value proposition to the customers, and then address the key pain points that the foundry solves through their differentiators.
Digital Twin Marketing
Once content was created, Winbound used paid and organic marketing channels to get the content in front of prospects in three time-honored sales stages — getting a customer to Know You, Like You and Trust You.
Here are the results, based on three Digital Twin key performance indicators.
Know You Metrics:
In the Know You stage, the Digital Twin “prospects” through the use of paid advertising, SEO, and social media like LinkedIn. The main metric here is Impressions.
Impressions is an advertisement or message that renders on a user’s screen. It doesn’t mean the prospect engaged with it, but the opportunity was there. It’s like getting you in the game.
| Metric | Goal | Results | Which means… |
| Impressions | Increase exposure to prospects |
April: 52,493 December: 331,496 493% increase |
Nearly 5x more prospects potentially saw Spuncast’s name and content |
With the advertising presence, we’re getting calls night and day from people who are seeing us. And the LinkedIn presence was zero prior to working with Winbound.
Like You Metrics:
In the Like You stage, the main metric is Website Traffic. This is similar to a prospect visiting your “store” and learning more with your company.
| Metric | Goal | Results | Which means… |
| Website traffic | Get prospects into the “store” |
April: 777 December: 2,690 246% increase |
2x more prospects were learning about Spuncast’s company and products |
The number of exciting projects that are coming directly from web contacts is something we just didn’t have before.
Trust You Metrics:
The customer’s journey culminates at the Trust You stage. If they’ve seen enough compelling content to trust Spuncast, they’ll then be more willing to request a quote.
| Metric | Goal | Results | Which means… |
| Requests for a quote | Provide sales with a marketing qualified lead (MQL) |
Q1: Average 0-2 MQLs per month Q4: Average 5 MQLs per month |
Over 2x more qualified leads per month |
The lead generation is huge, but the actual qualified leads are 2 to 1 what we were getting before.
“The value proposition is just incredible.”
These results are “phenomenal,” Whitman said, and they reinforce the company’s initial decision to choose Winbound.
Besides new revenue coming in, there have also been dollars saved versus hiring a lead generation agency. Whitman also believes Spuncast would need 2–3 permanent staff members to do what Winbound does.
“The value proposition is just incredible,” he said. “It’s far better than our other options.”