How we helped a national superstore with their grand opening

The Ace & NAPA Superstore is an innovative, full-service retailer combining the home product lines of Ace with NAPA’s extensive auto parts catalog. This new retailer offers all the products needed for a consumer’s home and auto projects.

3P was brought in very early on in the superstore’s creation. We were able to create a full plan to create awareness for the store in the months leading up to its grand opening, allowing them to hit the ground running once the doors opened.

Along with building awareness, we were tasked with filling out the workforce for the store. They wanted their positions filled a month in advance of the opening to have enough time to train and prepare for all systems go on day one.

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Here’s how we went about accomplishing these goals:

Recruitment for Ace & Napa

For the recruitment, we knew we had to identify good fits for the available positions, create ad copy that clearly articulated the positions’ responsibilities and benefits, and decide where to place the ads to best be seen by qualified candidates.  

The first thing we did was make a landing page. We wanted a concentrated point of contact for the recruits, displaying the information they need to decide whether to apply while providing an easy form to fill out should they choose to.

Then, we created ads about the positions with links to the landing page. We utilized Facebook and Display ads in this campaign. Our targeting for Facebook was to reach users who had displayed interest in home and auto parts, with some of the Facebook defined tags including Interest in Vehicle Repair, Auto Industry, Home Improvement, Home Construction, and Renovation. Our thinking was that people interested in these topics would be more likely to want to work in the home repair & auto industries.

Additionally, we placed display ads on webpages with keywords about entry-level jobs in these industries, with the list of keyphrases reaching almost 250 phrases long.

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Awareness

For building awareness for the grand opening, we built another landing page. Normally the national websites for Ace & NAPA will be the main point of contact between the brand and consumers, but we also wanted an additional landing page to collect local emails and hit customers with updates and special promotions.

On the landing page, we put information about when the store would be opening, its location, products, notable premium brands they’re offering (Weber, Yeti, Big Green Egg), and an email newsletter sign up box. The page was short and concise to get as many subscriptions as possible.

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After getting the landing page set up, we started working on building out ads to drive people to the page. We decided on a three-part campaign to be spread out over the months leading up to the opening, driving customers from curiosity to awareness and, eventually, action.

Months Out

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June

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After Opening

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We ran these ads through Display and Facebook platforms. We split our targeting into Ace and NAPA centric campaigns.  

For the Ace campaign, we geofenced local hardware and home stores, reaching customers who visited the locations. We also used addressable geofencing to advertise at the homes addresses of contractors and homeowners who showed interests in home improvement or have bought home improvement products recently. Also, on Facebook we were able to target contractors and users interested in home & garden, home construction, repair, maintenance, and DIY.

For the NAPA campaign we are geofencing auto part stores, tire shops, and service centers. We are doing addressable geofencing for homes of auto mechanics and vehicle owners along with consumers interested in auto work or who have purchased auto parts in the last month online. Facebook allows us to target mechanics and users who are interested in auto parts and the auto industry.

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The superstore was able to see great success with both campaigns. Here were the results:

Recruitment

The Ace & NAPA Superstore was able to find qualified recruits quickly to completely fill out their workforce. In just one month they received over 40 applications, all of which led to hires. The superstore was running at full staffing by day one.

Awareness

The superstore’s launch went better than even our loftiest expectations. In their first week they doubled their projected sales. The community has responded extremely well to the new location and are already building up loyalty to the superstore, in large part because of the work we were able to do in making the community aware of how awesome the new store is.

Future 

While we’re extremely proud of helping Ace & NAPA kick things off, we aren’t stopping there! We’re continuing to work with the store after opening to keep growing their sales for the foreseeable future.

We already have plans to make videos showing off the store and start up campaigns on streaming channels (YouTube & Hulu). We’re excited to continue to optimize their campaigns and find new ways to marketAce/NAPA to a community in need of great hardware & auto products!

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