The challenge
Porter Group is one of the southern hemisphere's largest heavy-equipment businesses: nine equipment brands (Hyundai Construction Equipment, Sandvik, BOMAG, Madill, Airman, Terex, Furukawa and more) sold and hired through five divisions, Equipment, Hire, Mechanical, Parts and Haulage, with operations spanning New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the Pacific Islands.
Each brand had its own audience, dealer requirements and seasonal cycles. Each market had its own competitors and buying behaviour. The digital footprint had grown organically into multiple websites, email lists and social accounts without a unifying strategy, and paid spend wasn't accountable to a return figure.
How the strategy was built
Before restructuring a dollar of spend, I mapped the demand. Search behaviour differs sharply by market: the machine a contractor searches for in one country, and the words they use, aren't the same in another, and hire demand moves on different seasons than purchase demand. Layered on top of that came the internal research: time with the sales teams in each division to understand what a good enquiry actually looked like, because an equipment lead worth pursuing is very different from a casual browser, and only the people closing deals can tell you which is which.
The segmentation followed the money. A buyer purchasing a Hyundai excavator, a contractor hiring for a three-month job, and a fleet manager ordering parts are three different customers with three different purchase cycles, so campaigns, keywords and landing experiences were structured by brand, division and region rather than one generic pot. Budget then followed evidence: regions and categories that returned got more, and every brand had to earn its share rather than inherit it. The owned channels completed the mix, Porter Press for the long relationship between machine purchases, and 50+ Google Business locations for the moment a buyer finally searches "dealer near me".
What I did
- Rebuilt paid search around return, not impressions. Restructured Google Ads campaigns by brand, division and region, with conversion tracking tied to enquiry value, reaching a sustained 3.5x return on ad spend across regions.
- Ran the multi-region digital estate as one system. Multiple websites, email programs on Mailchimp, and industry media placements, coordinated so each brand stayed consistent while speaking to its own market.
- Managed a large social portfolio. Eight Facebook and Instagram profiles, two LinkedIn pages, a YouTube channel and 50+ Google My Business locations, each optimized for local visibility where machines are actually bought and serviced.
- Created "Porter Press". Designed, wrote and managed a quarterly in-house magazine distributed to more than 9,000 global recipients, a print product that kept a high-value B2B audience engaged between purchase cycles.
The feedback loop
The 3.5x ROAS wasn't a launch-day number; it was the product of a reporting rhythm. Conversion tracking tied ad spend to enquiry value, monthly reporting put the numbers in front of leadership, and the sales divisions fed back on enquiry quality, which closed the loop the platforms can't see: an ad that generates cheap enquiries nobody can close is expensive, whatever the dashboard says. Keywords, creative and budget splits moved every cycle based on that combined picture, and the discipline compounded across four markets simultaneously, because a lesson learned in one region was tested in the other three within weeks.
The results
- 3.5x ROAS on Google Ads sustained across four markets
- A single, accountable digital system replacing fragmented brand-by-brand activity
- 50+ locations with maintained, optimized local search presence
- A flagship owned-media channel (Porter Press) reaching 9,000+ readers every quarter
Why it matters
This role proved the model I've used ever since: one senior marketer, with clear systems and accountable numbers, can run what looks like a department-sized remit across brands, divisions and borders, without losing the local nuance that makes each market convert.