After producing $370MM in new revenue for our clients since 2016, Inner Architect is pleased to announce today that we have changed our name and business designation. Inner Architect is now Inner Architect Media LLC.
Established in 2008 as Inner Architect, the brainchild of Managing Principal Susan Hanshaw, a 30 year professional and veteran marketer with a decorated career in direct and digital marketing, Inner Architect Media LLC is the next evolution.
Longevity
The tough fact is that 75% of businesses fail before reaching 15 years in business. Inner Architect Media is celebrating our 15 year anniversary in business in 2023. We believe having “LLC” or “Limited Liability Company” in our business name (Inner Architect Media LLC) and registering with the state, provides more stability and legitimacy to our business.
Our Humble Beginnings
As Northern California natives, Susan Hanshaw and partner Dean Guadagni had a keen interest in the wine industry. With Dean’s family in the industry growing grapes, managing vineyards and producing world class wines, it was only natural for us to look to the wine industry as our first target market.
In the beginning, as a social media agency, we successfully landed some of the biggest names in the industry working with Opus One, Patz & Hall, Whitehall Lane, and Revana Family Vineyards to name a few. We also wrote the first ever social media case study on our Twitter campaign which successfully drove wine enthusiasts to a Napa Valley tasting room resulting in increased direct to consumer sales.
As search engine marketing became a dominant strategy for lead generation, Inner Architect shifted focus to Adwords, (now Google Ads) campaign management. As we evolved, our direction moved from consumer goods to the legal industry, financial services, and other service industries.
Driving Force Behind Inner Architect Media LLC
Beneath Inner Architect Media, the brand, lies a story of experience, testing, data application, process invention, and eventually success. As the social media landscape morphed, and Google became the dominant power in search, we realized that the process of generating leads that converted to new customers was also changing.
Case Study: Client Intake Optimization
In 2016, Susan and her team began working with a law firm in the toxic tort (asbestos) practice area. Prior to retaining Inner Architect, the firm had an annual $1M+ marketing budget without a reporting process in place. They were unable to evaluate ROI and did not have a tracking system in place to understand where leads were coming from.
In addition, the firm employed their own internal team to respond to leads. The internal staff had other job functions that often took them away from their desks, leaving incoming phone call leads going to voice mail. Without a process to respond to leads immediately, the firm lost numerous cases to other firms that followed up faster, often within the hour.
Toxic tort law, specifically the asbestos practice area, is one of the most highly competitive marketplaces for pay-per-click (PPC) marketing in the legal industry. Case values according to our client at the time were $10MM per case and there were only 2,500 cases available each year. Hundreds of firms compete over what is considered a tiny market.
In 2016, Inner Architect built the processes for multi-channel lead capture, established a customer relationship management system (CRM) as a housing database, and began applying the analysis from the data collected to the PPC campaigns.
The final piece to the conversion puzzle was Susan’s revamp of the firm’s porous intake process. Her work in this revamp led to a new term we call intake optimization (IO). IO was created for law firms that had no idea how to capture and communicate with leads coming to their website, through phone calls, contact form submissions, or live chat.
Results from New PPC Strategies and Processes
After the firm went months without landing a case through their marketing, Susan designed a system for client intake optimization that launched in June 2016. Within six weeks of intake optimization implementation, four (4) new asbestos cases were closed – the first cases closed all year.
Six months later seven (7) new asbestos cases closed by the end of the year.
12 new cases were closed the following year in 2017 using the same intake optimization process.
What Does Intake Optimization Uncover?
Client intake optimization is the building of a process designed to manage leads so that they will have a high likelihood of becoming a client. Although the ultimate payoff is leads that convert to new cases that is not the only benefit realized through IO. IO is a strategy that fosters new discoveries and it is a service designed for businesses that want to apply a more strategic approach to lead management. The value the IO process brings to your organization:
- Lead source: You will learn the source that generated each new client and prospect, and the channel in which they reached out to you so that you can maximize the ROI of your marketing dollars.
- Historical data: By establishing a CRM you will have the ability to collect and house data. As you build your database, your firm can compare past PPC campaign results and parameters to current campaigns.
- Obstacles: Uncover any conversion obstacles that might exist with your internal intake team.
Inner Architect’s process will also identify:
- What is your firm’s closing rate?
- How many leads that initiated contact turn unresponsive? And why?
- Are leads falling through the cracks?
- Are you investing in too many leads that are unqualified?
- Are leads followed up with in a timely and systematic manner?
Susan Hanshaw Google Pay-Per-Click Expert, Founder Inner Architect Media LLC
Our Principal Susan Hanshaw has been Google certified in Search since 2016. Her expertise in PPC campaign management has led to IAM being recognized as a Google Partner Agency. As a result, IAM has been selected for inclusion in the prestigious Google Partner directory, a worldwide directory, as one of among 3087 agencies. For perspective, there are 10,776 Digital advertising agency businesses in the US as of 2023, an increase of 21.8% from 2022. There are 428,744 Global worldwide advertising agency businesses as of 2023, an increase of 2.4% from 2022.
Under Susan’s supervision and guidance in one of the most competitive marketing landscapes in the United States, Inner Architect Media LLC has been named one of the 9 Best PPC Agencies in San Francisco for 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Inner Architect Media LLC: Our Journey
As we begin the dawning of a new artificial intelligence age, we are ready to apply new technologies to improve our services. As witnesses and participants in the social media revolution in 2007-2008, today we recognize there is a titanic sea change in the way people will communicate and how businesses will find new clients.
Is your business ready?
Are you ready to compete?
Contact us for a free consultation. Learn how Inner Architect Media LLC can help you grow and future proof your business.
