For CariFree, Gravitate is proud to be far more than just a website developer. Our relationship began by overcoming a handful of urgent technical challenges and grew into our current, long-term partnership which—if we’re being honest—truly reflects the ideal client/agency relationship.

After working together since 2016, Gravitate essentially operates as an extension of the CariFree team. We assess their marketing efforts objectively and proactively implement solutions to overcome challenges, increase user engagement, and ultimately drive results and sales.

From the client

Our new website is not only beautiful but is also providing a smooth and simple shopping experience for our customers—a complete turnaround for us. After seeing and experiencing the website redesign process with the team, it was a no-brainer for us to continue working with Gravitate on digital marketing and optimization.

Ashley Latimer, VP of Marketing for CariFree
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Brushing up on CariFree

CariFree, a subsidiary of Oral BioTech, offers a different approach to dental care and is setting a new standard for oral health and cavity prevention. While everyone else is “drilling and filling”, CariFree focuses on proactive treatments proven to prevent decay and balance oral bacteria. Founded in 2004 by Dr. V Kim Kutsch, Oral BioTech was originally pitched to dental professionals but later shifted focus to consumers as Gravitate came into the picture.

+400%
increase in average monthly users
+100%
increase in average monthly revenue
+300%
increase in average monthly organic sessions

Stabilizing the Current Websites

Increasingly, clients come to us with complex, urgent problems that can’t be fixed with a quick campaign or website redesign. We need to jump into issues, be flexible and put out fires before we can start laying down plans to rebuild.

We began to build trust with Oral Biotech by developing short-term solutions to terminal billing issues on their existing three websites (all built on different platforms by different teams, we might add). As we stabilized, optimized and sunsetted their sites we began to learn a lot about the business, marketing goals, and target audiences in the process.

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Rethinking the Market Strategy

Technical issues aside, Oral Biotech’s websites were doing a poor job of intuitively guiding dentists to value props and product offerings. Not only were dentists confused about why they needed the products, but they also couldn’t figure out how to purchase the products online. At the same time, a shift in the industry was occurring. As the number of independent practices and insured patients dwindled—dentists began to double-down on lucrative treatment options rather than focus on preventative measures.

So, with a skyrocketing health and wellness industry, CariFree was born and we helped refocus marketing efforts on direct-to-consumer sales. Our research indicated that while dental professionals may not be financially motivated to prevent cavities, a legion of consumers certainly feels otherwise.

To support the move from B2B to B2C, we:
  • Crafted new messaging architecture
  • Provided detailed SEO and market research
  • Created an ongoing marketing strategy
  • Entirely rethought the website flow
  • Supported packaging and rebranding efforts
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Design, Development, and Launch

Ready to focus on the consumer health and wellness market, we started designing a website experience that effectively communicates the new brand pillars to potential customers while also funneling this curious bunch to credibility boosters and educational resources. While our primary goal remains to drive e-commerce sales to Carifree’s preventative products—we had a big job to communicate both why consumers should care and why Carifree is the answer.

Outcomes

Although it’s common to see a bump in traffic and conversions after we launch a new website, the improvement for CariFree was remarkable. Just six months after launch (vs. the metrics six months prior) we saw a 5 percent increase in conversions and organic traffic grew by nearly 400 percent.

An Ongoing Relationship

Since the website launch in May 2017, we have continued to collaborate with CariFree to improve the effectiveness of their website and pay-per-click campaigns. Not only are we helping set sales records each year since our partnership began, but check out some of these numbers comparing CariFree’s metrics from last year. (Q1 2019 vs. Q1 2018)

+554%
average monthly search impressions
+335%
average monthly organic sessions
+72%
average monthly revenue

PPC

Paired with search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) can snatch up valuable real estate for brands on the results page. For CariFree, we directed paid media attribution modeling and remarketing tactics. This includes optimizing spending across all channels, developing robust audience targeting and remarketing materials, and aligning our PPC efforts to our content marketing strategy.

SEO

The other side of the Google coin is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO compliments our PPC efforts and leads to more successful search results. Beyond letting our best performing PPC copy inform our content recommendations, we also test our organic keywords with our paid listings to receive immediate feedback and fine tune accordingly.

CRO

To capitalize on the traffic generated from PPC and SEO, we implemented a number of conversion rate optimization (CRO) campaigns to lower customer acquisition costs and get more value from the visitors already coming to the site. We focused on the shopping experience and A/B tested a number of elements across the online checkout process and ultimately increased average order value by 148 percent and online revenue by nearly 50 percent.

Reporting

To track our progress, spot opportunities, and inform ongoing strategies we built out a robust reporting dashboard. This allows both us and the client visibility into not only overall site performance, but also provide insight into user behavior, SEO health, and bounce/exit rate trends. We really wish we had a snazzy acronym for this section to match the others.

Our Thoughts

Emma headshot

As a designer, working on CariFree has really been quite fun. I thoroughly enjoy the variety of projects and how open they are. They are pretty much a dream client. They trust us to make good work for them and they are always willing to hear new suggestions and ideas of ways to improve. They are also just really nice humans.

Emma Kardaras, Art Director

The CariFree marketing team and Gravitate's growth and development teams combine like a textbook recipe for success. Layered between trust and collaboration is the single goal to support CariFree's growth, and every task is filled with a commitment to quality. From digital experience to design to development, working with CariFree is really a dream!

Lizzie Anderson, Senior Account Manager

As a strategic partner to CariFree, we couldn't ask for a better team to work with. From on-site optimization to video production, our collaborative and goal oriented relationship has allowed us to take the CariFree brand to new heights. With a fantastic product and killer marketing strategy, there's no limit to what CariFree and Gravitate can do.

Steven Howsley, Director of Analytics & SEO