A custom growth plan for Lansing's longest-running independent commercial van and truck upfitter, built from a deep audit of your business, your competitors, and the search demand sitting unclaimed in mid-Michigan right now.
Twenty-three years building US Work Van into the commercial van and truck equipment shop Lansing trusts. A perfect 5.0 rating on Google. $325,000 booked in Q1 alone, on pace for $1.3 million this year. The bones of this business are exceptional — that's not in question.
What's in question is why a business this strong is functionally invisible to Google. And we know part of the answer: a year ago you trusted that to a media company. Their salesperson left. The middleman model meant you never spoke to anyone doing the actual work. They billed you for months you never agreed to, and when you tried to cancel, they ignored you for almost a month before showing up at your shop unannounced.
“They basically left me high and dry. I had no control. They were doing it on their own. They didn't know what I wanted.”
— Nick Hassell, Owner, US Work Van
We heard that. We're not them. Before we asked you to spend a dollar with us, we ran a full audit of your domain, your site, your competitors, your market, and the actual search demand in Lansing right now. What we found is in the next section. It's the homework you paid the last people to do, and it's the homework no one ever did.
Before drafting a single line of this proposal we ran a complete competitive and technical audit using the same data sources Google itself uses to evaluate sites. Here's the picture in numbers:
Translation: this isn't a marketing problem. It's a technical visibility problem. Every dollar previously spent driving traffic to this site was running into a wall Google can't see past. That's why nothing worked. It also means the fix is far more solvable than “build the brand from zero.”
You told us: “We don't have anyone who does what we do in the area that are serious.” The data confirms it. There is exactly one digitally-optimized direct competitor in your market — and the rest of the local pack is filled with businesses that aren't even in your category.
Here's the part that makes this a once-in-a-decade window. We tested three of your most valuable Lansing search queries and found this:
The Google 3-pack returns Staples, Target, and Walmart. No specialist appears at all. The same pattern repeats for "truck accessories Lansing MI" (Harbor Freight wins) and "commercial van equipment Lansing MI" (only one real match).
Google is desperate for relevant local businesses in this category. A properly optimized US Work Van — with the technical foundation fixed and 50+ reviews — could capture all three local pack positions across multiple queries with very little fight. This window doesn't stay open forever. Once a competitor starts taking it seriously, the cost to dislodge them goes up by 3–5x.
Forget the strategy doc for a second. Picture an actual day.
It's 9:14 a.m. You're walking into the shop. Phone buzzes — a fleet manager from Consumers Energy found you on Google searching “commercial van upfitting Lansing.” They have eight Transits coming in next month and need shelving, partitions, and ladder racks. He asks if you can quote by Friday. That one call is $40,000.
Two hours later, three more inquiries hit the new website — one HVAC owner-operator wants drawer systems on a ProMaster, one electrical contractor wants a full upfit, one is a referral from a vehicle dealer who says “my customers always ask me where to go and I send them to you.”
By the end of the week, your AI assistant has already replied to twelve missed calls, eight website inquiries, and four Google Business Profile messages — before you saw any of them. Every one of them is on the calendar. None of them slipped through the cracks.
That isn't aspirational. The market data above shows the demand is sitting there right now, unclaimed. Every month it stays unclaimed is revenue rolling to whoever moves first.
Every page is sized to the keyword data, the buyer journeys, and the specific commercial customer you told us you want — the gravy accessories and the fleet jobs, not the floor-mat walk-ins. Total: 14 pages plus a Privacy Policy, ~12,200 words of new content.
Routing hub for all three buyer types. 23 years above the fold, brands you carry (Adrian Steel, Masterack, Reading Truck), click-to-call, quote CTA. Expanded from 188 to 800 words.
Your single highest-revenue keyword. 50 confirmed monthly searches in Lansing at $8.62 CPC, plus broader cluster volume. Real install photos, brand options, geo signal.
Currently returns 403 to Google. Fixes the broken conversion path. Vehicle type, service needed, response-time commitment.
Safety / OSHA-driven purchase. Captures cargo van bulkhead partition cluster (210/mo). Vehicle compatibility list, installation included messaging.
High-intent trades buyers (electricians, HVAC, plumbers). Currently 403. Captures the “ladder rack van” cluster (1,600/mo nationally; substantial local-modified volume).
High-ticket add-on. Upsell vehicle for owner-operators and fleet buyers. Before/after photos, system configurations.
Unlocks the $15K–$50K segment: GM Lansing, State of Michigan, Consumers Energy, AT&T fleet accounts. Must be live before Q1 fleet budget cycles. Volume pricing signal, dedicated account manager, turnaround SLA.
Captures branded search (“Adrian Steel dealer Michigan”, “Masterack Michigan”). Each brand becomes a rankable section.
Vertical trust signals for HVAC, electrical, plumbing, telecom/utility, landscaping. Seeds 5 industry sub-pages later as Phase 2 of the engagement.
Local SEO anchor. Strengthens GBP relevance. City and region mentions, embedded map, service radius statement.
23 years is your single biggest differentiator — most local independents are under 10. Founded year, owner story, Lansing community ties, Adrian Steel partnership history.
Visual proof. B2B buyers want to see completed installs. Organized by vehicle type AND trade (HVAC, electrical, plumbing).
The 5.0 rating is a conversion weapon. Embedded Google reviews, fleet client logos, video testimonials when available.
Captures long-tail question searches. Reduces sales-call friction by answering “do you install Adrian Steel,” “what vans do you upfit,” “do you handle fleet accounts,” “how long does install take.”
You told us about Clover at the front and QuickBooks (going to QuickBooks Online) for invoicing. Good. What's missing is what happens between the inbound inquiry and the deal landing in QuickBooks — the part where most leads quietly disappear because nobody picked up, returned the call, or replied to the form. Our CRM closes that gap on every single channel:
AI texts the caller back within 30 seconds: “Hi, this is US Work Van — sorry we missed you. What can we help with?” Captures details, books a callback time.
Form submissions trigger immediate AI reply with confirmation, vehicle questions, and calendar link. Lead enters the pipeline with all the data already gathered.
Messages route into the same inbox. AI responds instantly with answers to common questions or hands off to you when ready.
GBP messages and questions captured into the same workflow. Faster response time = better local pack ranking. Compounding effect.
Customers can text your business number directly. AI handles the back-and-forth while you're on a job. You see the transcript when you're ready.
23 years of customers in your existing list become a reactivatable asset. Targeted SMS / email campaigns to past buyers when fleet refresh cycles hit.
Every conversation, every call, every form submission: recorded, transcribed, tagged, scored, and visible in a single dashboard. You add staff later? Each person gets their own login and their own pipeline view. Nothing is locked in any one person's head — or any one person's phone.
You said you don't want to be a customer who never knows what we're doing. Same dashboard you use is the same one we use. Full transparency. You can see every lead, every reply, every job in motion in real time, from your phone or your office.
Using the numbers you confirmed on our discovery call: $5,000 average ticket, 40% gross margin, 10–20 deals per month at baseline.
| Scenario | New Deals / Month | Monthly Revenue | Monthly GP (40%) | Annualized GP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | +1 deal | $5,000 | $2,000 | $24,000 |
| Your stated goal (+20%) | +3 deals | $15,000 | $6,000 | $72,000 |
| Full upside | +6 deals | $30,000 | $12,000 | $144,000 |
Numbers above use your stated $5,000 average ticket on standard owner-operator deals. Fleet account revenue ($15K–$50K per engagement) and any commercial / specialty work is additional upside not modeled here.
Payback frame: The full Phase 1 setup ($9,025) is recovered in 3.2 standard owner-operator deals. One fleet account at the low end of typical ($15K) covers it 1.7x. At the high end ($50K) it covers it 5.5x. The monthly fee ($150) is recovered with a single text-back conversion.
The +3 deals/month above don't appear out of nowhere. They come from three specific channels, each one built to do a different job. Here's how the math breaks down per channel, using your same numbers ($5,000 average ticket, 40% margin):
GBP and Paid Ads activate at launch (week 8–9). Organic SEO compounds in over months 3–6 as Google indexes and ranks the new pages. Numbers above represent each channel's realistic standalone contribution at maturity. Fleet account revenue ($15K–$50K per engagement) sits on top of all three and is the single biggest variable upside — one fleet win in the first six months changes the entire ROI math.
Once the foundation is live, paid ads turn on. The amount you put behind them is your decision — we've modeled three starting tiers using your numbers ($5,000 average ticket, 40% margin) and your category's ~$8 blended CPC. Total monthly out-of-pocket includes our management, our 10% on ad spend, the CRM platform, and the ad spend itself paid direct to Google.
All three tiers pay back in under 2 deals per month at your current $5K avg ticket / 40% margin. The "right" tier is the one that matches your comfort with monthly variable spend — you can scale up or down at any monthly cycle based on what the data shows. Our recommendation is to start at Tier 01 for the first 60–90 days while we collect conversion data, then move to Tier 02 or 03 once we know which keywords and creative are pulling the most leads. Ad spend is paid direct to Google on your card — you control it, you can pause it, no contracts.
You said it: SEO is a long game. We agree, with one critical adjustment — paid ads turn on the day the foundation is live, because organic alone takes 3–6 months to mature and you need leads sooner than that. The reason this works now and didn't last time is that the foundation, the tracking, and the lead capture are all in place before a single dollar hits Google.
14-page Wix Studio rebuild, Google Business Profile optimization, Creative Partner CRM with AI agent across 6 channels. Fixes the technical visibility wall and captures every inbound that's already coming in.
$9,025 setup · $97/mo · included in this proposal
The minute the new site goes live, paid traffic turns on. Last time you ran ads, they were driving traffic to a website Google couldn't crawl, with no conversion tracking, and no system to capture the leads that did come in. This time it's different. The site, the CRM, the tracking, and the lead-capture system are all in place before a single dollar hits Google. GBP local-pack ads + Performance Max across Search, Maps, YouTube, and Display. Includes graphic design, video creative, campaign management, optimization, and monthly reporting.
$1,000/mo management + 10% of monthly ad spend · ad spend paid direct to Google (separate, you control your card)
Once Phase 1 + 2 are producing consistent monthly leads and we have real conversion data, Phase 3 expands the surface area. 5 industry sub-pages (HVAC, Electrical, Plumbing, Telecom/Utility, Landscaping). Vehicle compatibility guides. Active social on the channels your buyers actually use. Targeted fleet account outreach pages for GM Lansing, State of Michigan, Consumers Energy, AT&T.
Custom-scoped at the time, based on what's working from Phase 1 + 2
All three channels working together — from week 9 forward.
Project kickoff call. Fix all 9 of the 403-error pages on the existing site immediately (zero-cost technical unlock). Audit current GA4 / GSC / GTM access. Begin content questionnaire. Creative Partner CRM provisioning starts.
Wix Studio design system established. Homepage + Van Shelving + Contact built and ready for review. CRM workflows configured across all 6 inbound channels.
Van Partitions, Ladder Racks, Drawer Systems, Fleet Services, Brands, Industries, Service Area, About. Round 1 review with you.
Gallery, Reviews, FAQ pages built. GBP categories, description, photos, Q&A self-posted. Review request campaign to past customers launched.
Full QA pass. Site launches. XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console. Conversion tracking verified on every page. CRM goes live across phone, web, Facebook, GBP, SMS, and reactivation.
The minute the foundation is live, paid traffic turns on. GBP local-pack ads + Performance Max campaigns launched. Creative built (graphic + video). Tracking verified. Inbound leads start flowing through the CRM same day ads go live.
Organic rankings start to surface (3–6 month maturity for SEO). GBP enters the local pack. Paid ads optimizing on real conversion data from your CRM. Monthly reporting on every channel, no spin.
You said you'd rather work with someone local you can talk to and feel comfortable with. We're a Lansing-based agency. You'll work with the same team start to finish — no salesperson handoff, no middleman, no "your rep changed." When you call, you talk to people who know your account.
“I'd rather work with someone local that I can talk to and feel more comfortable with.”
— Nick Hassell, Discovery Call, April 9
One last commitment: you said you don't want to walk away after two months because the phone didn't ring — you want to be a fair partner if we're a fair partner. We'll meet that. Monthly reporting on actual numbers, no spin. If something isn't working, we tell you first. If we need to adjust strategy, we explain why, not just do it. You will never go a month not hearing from us.
Nick — thanks for the call on the 9th, and thanks for being so honest about the WILX experience. That kind of transparency from a prospect makes our job easier. You told us you wanted to cherry pick the customers you're after — the commercial buyers, the gravy accessory jobs, the fleet accounts — not the floor-mat walk-ins. Everything in this proposal is built to do exactly that.
We've done more homework on US Work Van before quoting you than most agencies will do across the entire engagement. That's deliberate. You've earned that level of seriousness with 23 years of building a real business in our city, and we'd be proud to put it back on the map.
Whenever you're ready — same day or after you've had a few days to think on it — I'm here. Call me direct.
If you're ready to go, sign and we kick off this week. If you want to talk it through first — questions about the scope, the timeline, anything in here — book a 30-minute call and we'll walk through it together.