Valves, Visibility and $150K in Orders

A family-owned Toronto manufacturer had spent 25 years making hygienic stainless-steel valves, fittings and cleaning systems for food, beverage and pharmaceutical plants. It had about 96 staff and three production halls, and exported more than half its output to 27 countries. But almost all new business came from trade shows and distributor referrals. The website ranked for the company’s own name, but not for the products engineers were searching for in English or French. With sales cycles of 4 to 10 months, buyers were often shortlisting suppliers before ever contacting sales.

When we took over in April 2024, the first problem was measurement. Website forms weren’t tracked properly, and leads were never matched to won orders. A crawl of 3,300 pages found 121 duplicate titles, 78 errors linking the English and French pages, and 164 broken links. Only 41% of pages passed Google’s speed and usability checks, and 182 pages that shouldn’t have been in Google’s index were. On social media, a year earlier, $1,980 of boosted posts had produced just 5 leads, with no way to trace them.

Within two weeks, we rebuilt tracking so every lead and order could be traced to its source in the CRM. On Meta, we replaced boosted posts with four campaigns, each with one job:

Real footage from the polishing hall and a plant manager’s testimonial became the top-performing ads. The CRM also sent qualified leads and won orders back to Meta, so the campaigns learned from real sales.

On search, we fixed the technical problems, then rewrote 14 pages around the words engineers actually type, in English and French. Buying guides climbed fast: “how to choose a hygienic valve” went from position 64 to 14. We also earned new links from trade publications, distributors and customers.

In July to September 2024, search and social together produced 95 qualified leads and 7 orders worth $150,730, from $33,820 in ad spend and SEO work. That’s a 4.46× return. On Google, clicks from new buyers were up 66.5% on the same quarter in 2023, and the number of keywords in Google’s top 10 rose from 21 to 52. On Meta, the cost of each qualified lead fell 56%, from $1,130 to $496.

Because orders take months to close, much of the value is still to come. Another $452,380 from search and $268,940 from Meta is open in the sales pipeline. The two figures aren’t added together, because one opportunity appears in both.