In 2017, Protect-A-Bed’s D2C grew revenue 31%, more than double its plan, and became the #1 Google result for "mattress protector."
Kara Lineal wrote the plan, managed a roughly $2.4 million advertising and marketing budget, replatformed the site to Magento, built the consumer email list from the ground up, and brought SEO and PR in-house. Protect-A-Bed was acquired by SureFit Home Décor in 2018.
JAB Distributors (Protect-A-Bed and REM-Fit) | VP of Marketing | 2016 to 2018
RESULTS
+31%
D2C revenue in 2017, against a 15% goal
#1
Google organic result for “mattress protector,” with 9,300 ranked search terms
45,000+
Email subscribers, built from the ground up in one year
Challenge
Protect-A-Bed introduced mattress protection to the U.S. in 2000. Most of its sales came through specialty sleep retailers, hotels and pest control distributors, and the direct channel was small and hard to measure. At the start of 2017 the company had no consumer email list, three separate email platforms, a CRM kept partly in Excel, web phone orders that were not tracked at all, and PR run by an outside agency. The website needed to grow without competing with the retailers who sold the product.
What she did
Write goals you can check.
Kara built the 2017 marketing plan with a numeric target for every channel (revenue lift, visitors, conversion rate, email list size, page-one rankings for five core terms) and reported against it in a monthly results deck and a weekly stat tracker.Rebuild the digital experience.
She moved the website to Magento in Q2 2017, with refreshed product pages, a support knowledge base and one-page checkout. The plan expected the traffic and ranking dip a re-platform brings and set a goal to recover by Q4.Own search in-house.
Her team rewrote product content and photography for the top-selling SKUs and published content on the problems shoppers search for: bed bugs, allergies, dust mites and cooling.Test the product page.
Conversion tests lifted pillow protector revenue 71%.Build a list from zero.
A list-building program grew the consumer list to more than 45,000 subscribers by December 2017.Spend less, keep more in-house, control quality.
She moved PR from an outside agency to an in-house communications role and planned 2017 spend at 17% below 2016 actual ($68k savings).Make the website work for retailers.
Her in-house studio gave retail partners product photography, video and copy at no charge. Mattress Firm used Protect-A-Bed's product content on its own website.
“The D2C website needed to help our retailers, not compete with them. We offered user manuals, replacement parts, and syndicated reviews. We gave our retail partners our photography, video, copy and digital marketing strategy.”
What happened
Protectabed.com revenue grew 31% in 2017, against a goal of 15%. After a dip from March through August during the re-platform, sales ran 138% above the prior year in October, 115% in November and 76% in December.
Site traffic ran 145% above the prior year in September and 207% above in October.
Protectabed.com went from 6,700 ranked search terms in October 2017 to 9,300 by March 2018, more than Malouf, LinenSpa or Bedgear, and held the #1 organic result for "mattress protector" (Semrush).
The consumer email list reached 45,261 subscribers in December 2017, up from zero.
Protect-A-Bed finished 2017 with about 53,000 Facebook fans, the most in its category, ahead of Bedgear at 44,000 (March 2018).
Protect-A-Bed was acquired by SureFit Home Décor in 2018.
“Adept at understanding the needs … of B2B customers, Kara develops marketing materials that not only speak directly to these clients but programs that can be passed through to the end consumer to great effect.”
Why it worked
The plan set a number for every channel before the year started, so the dip after the re-platform read as expected, not as failure, and the team could see when rankings came back. The site also stayed on the retailers’ side. Partners got free product content, and shoppers who searched found the brand their store had in stock.
Accelerate your marketing engine.
Hire a fractional CMO who has built the channels, the teams, the AI-assisted automation, and owned the results.
