AC98 Heavy Haulage is an owner-operated transport company, moving machinery and oversized loads out of Napier across Hawke's Bay and beyond. The work speaks for itself and the phone rings on the strength of word of mouth — but online, AC98 was starting from almost nothing: a barely-used Facebook page, no Google Business Profile, and no Instagram. No consistent content, and no time to build any of it while running rigs all day.
For a business whose customers increasingly check Facebook and Google before they call, that gap was quietly costing reach — and handing visibility to bigger, less local competitors.
We took AC98's Get Found work off the owner's plate entirely. First we built the foundations that weren't there — set up the Google Business Profile so AC98 could show up on Google and the map, and launched an Instagram presence to sit alongside Facebook. Then we ran the content engine: every week we planned, wrote, designed and scheduled posts built around what AC98 actually does — real jobs and real rigs (the Kenworth T909, the C16), early-morning haulage, driver culture, and local landmarks people recognise, like the Hawke's Bay Expressway widening project.
We mixed it with genuinely useful, search-friendly education — what actually makes a load "oversized" in NZ, what goes into an oversize permit — and turned five-star customer reviews into posts. 30 posts in the quarter, roughly ten a month, every one human-checked before it went live. AI did the heavy lifting on drafting and design so it stayed fast and affordable; the owner just approved and kept driving.
The reach wasn't vanity traffic from the other side of the world — it was local. Nearly 70% of the audience was in New Zealand, with Napier the single biggest city, followed by Hastings and Havelock North: exactly the customers AC98 wants moving next to. The top post — "Took the old C16 for a run" — alone pulled 23,200 impressions and nearly 1,000 interactions.
It moved the website too. In the same quarter, social became the second-largest source of traffic to the AC98 site — around 29% of all visits — sitting just behind organic search and ahead of direct. A business that was effectively invisible online now shows up, consistently, in front of the right people.
"Prompt, easy to deal with and nothing is a problem — and always answers the phone."
— Verified customer review, turned into a post that reached over 1,800 peopleBook a free Audit — we'll show you where your customers are looking, and how to show up there. No jargon, no pressure.
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