Work record / Brand / Contractor Gorilla
Contractor Gorilla and page one: I showed up before competitors
Tellus had real press and no search presence, so a homeowner looking at Google could not tell us from hundreds of other Los Angeles contractors. I wrote the plan to fix that and let the agency build it.
The seat
I started as a client of the agency through Tellus Design and Build. In 2014 I became its advisor and took an equity position, while Tellus stayed on as a client.
| Sector | Contractor marketing and search |
|---|---|
| Type of work | Search strategy and advisory |
| Where | Los Angeles, California |
| Years | 2014 to 2017 |
| How long | About three years |
| Through | Contractor Gorilla, the agency, with Tellus Design and Build as its client |
| Credits | Common Ground Jesse Fowler, Advisor with an equity position |
What I was brought in to decide
Contractor Gorilla is a marketing agency in Granada Hills, Los Angeles, that makes websites and search programs for contractors and no one else. Late in 2013 it was still a website shop. A contractor who had begun doing search work for other contractors made a cold call to Tellus Design and Build.
Our firm was small and green, a design-build outfit with genuine television and magazine coverage and no position in search. On a results page we were one of hundreds of Los Angeles general contractors that a homeowner had no way of telling apart.
What we did
- I wrote the search strategy myself and left the build to the agency. It began with a new logo and an interactive portfolio site where a buyer could walk through and find projects like their own.
- I chose the phrase we would own: "design build Los Angeles." A homeowner searches for a category and a city, not for a contractor's name.
- The plan did not rest on one domain. Each Tellus company and trade brand got its own site, six or seven in total, each with its own license, address and pages, and all linked back to Tellus Design and Build as the hub. In April 2015 we formed three more entities beside the original company: Tellus Build, Tellus Design and Tellus Management.
- We treated press as something to deliver. The agency kept a steady cadence of releases and I made myself easy to reach. Two reporters ended up calling me regularly on green building, bathrooms, financing and interest rates.
- I also commented regularly, under the Tellus name, on articles that already ranked in our category. That put the firm in front of buyers where they were already reading.
- In 2014 I went from client to advisor with equity in the agency. I brought an operator's view of contractors into what it sold, and Tellus remained a client. In 2017 I gave up the equity in return for trade work on Tellus projects, because the work was worth more to me than the paper.
Results
- Tellus Design and Build sat on page one of Google for "design build Los Angeles" for years, sometimes as the top result, and kept that spot after my advisory seat closed.
- Contractor Gorilla published a case study on the Tellus work. It reports 319 percent growth in organic traffic and top positions on more than 25 competitive keywords.
- The LA Clippers contacted Tellus in 2017 to redesign their practice facility.
- I reviewed the agency at the time. I wrote that if Tellus were not a regional business I would not have published the review, since I did not want our local competitors getting the same results.
- My rule from this: take a piece of a supplier when your judgment makes their product better and you can see the outcome yourself, and hand it back once the work is worth more than the paper. That same presence-first thinking runs through Common Ground's work on machine discoverability today.
The lesson
Get there before the category fills in. A position is worth more before every competitor is bidding on the same word.
Public record
Stories from this work
Questions about Contractor Gorilla, answered
Firm record
Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Contractor Gorilla on the Common Ground wiki.