From Playgrounds to Pipeline: Nearly 9x Return on Paid Media Spend

CRS has a large, varied product portfolio, and the business priorities behind that portfolio change throughout the year. Certain products have relatively narrow peak selling windows, while others require more sustained demand generation. On top of that, CRS operates primarily in a B2B environment, even though many of the products themselves can easily attract consumer traffic online. CRS needed a marketing partner that could continually adjust where budget, creative, and attention were going based on what the business actually needed at that moment.

Realigning Paid Media Around the Business

Over the course of the partnership, TDR has repeatedly refreshed CRS’ paid media strategy rather than letting a long-running account operate on autopilot. One of the largest overhauls came in spring 2025, when we consolidated campaigns, realigned spend around current business priorities (Google Search has remained a core channel), and rebuilt portions of the program to improve performance.

Supporting tactics include:

• Shifting budget toward priority products as sales goals change.
• Aligning campaigns with seasonal buying windows.
• Refining targeting to reduce consumer traffic in a heavily B2B sales environment.
• Reviewing performance and business priorities together through quarterly strategy sessions.

Using Creative Where It Can Do More Than Look Good

Meta has given us a different kind of lever. Rather than treating it as another version of Search, we’ve used the platform strategically where visual storytelling and audience targeting can support specific business needs.

That has included paid recruiting campaigns for seasonal aqua park crews, equipment installers, and other positions. We’ve also used Meta to build awareness around the in-person industry events CRS attends. According to CRS themselves, events supported by paid promotion have performed noticeably better than years when that advertising was absent.

Our creative support has expanded into product marketing as well. For the FLX Shade product line, TDR developed an animated video to explain a product that can be difficult to fully appreciate through a static product image alone, then supported the broader sales push with Meta advertising.

Across these efforts, the approach has stayed consistent:

• Match the creative format to the job the campaign needs to do.
• Test messaging and visual approaches rather than assuming the first idea is the right one.
• Use paid media for more than product sales when recruiting or event attendance presents another meaningful business need.
• Build creative around the specific product, audience, and stage of the buying process.

Looking Beyond the Ad Account

Paid media can only do so much if the experience after the click creates friction. We’ve supported e-commerce enhancements and provided UI/UX and landing page recommendations designed to help CRS make the most of their traffic. 

Today, that work sits within a broader marketing consulting relationship. Quarterly strategy sessions give both teams space to look at CRS’ marketing engine as a whole, identify where business priorities have shifted, and determine what deserves attention next.

For a partnership this long-running, that ability to keep changing the playbook has been important. The paid media program has been revitalized several times over the years as the business itself has changed.

The clearest proof came from paid digital performance. Through the end of Q1 2026, CRS saw closed revenue at approximately 8.7–8.9x the media investment, before accounting for the additional pipeline. Not to mention additional improvements noticed by CRS, such as improved event attendance and other hard-to-quantify metrics.

Most importantly, our relationship has lasted over 10 years because the strategy has never been treated as finished. CRS’ priorities have changed, the product mix has changed, and our marketing program has changed with them.

"The Digital Ring is the ideal vendor/agency and acts as a partner or extension of our Marketing department: never pushy, always willing, highly accountable, and ever flexible. It can be easy for partners to become complacent, bored, or lazy after working together for years; TDR is constantly challenging themselves and CRS to iterate and evolve to improve our company. They are highly invested in our success, receive feedback graciously, and are a true joy to work with by being both incredibly competent and kind. I have and will continue to recommend TDR to anyone looking for marketing assistance of any kind."
— Ryan Hartberg, VP of Sales & Marketing, Commercial Recreation Specialists

A Marketing Partnership Built to Keep Moving

A lot can change over the course of a decade. New products launch, sales priorities shift, recruiting needs pop up, and inevitably, a campaign that worked two years ago needs another look.

That’s why our work with CRS has always been bigger than keeping campaigns turned on. TDR helps connect paid media, creative, digital experience, and broader marketing strategy back to what the business needs next. If your marketing program could use the same kind of attention, we’d love to dig in.