“We built this business on Instagram. But now we need to reach further than Instagram can reach.”
See how Goose Gear dramatically expanded their search visibility in just a few months and got ahead of AI to ensure their continued growth.
Goose Gear is a manufacturer of premium modular vehicle storage systems based in Grand Junction, Colorado. Founded by Brian Fulton in 2014, the company grew out of a three-generation family background in cabinetry and laminate manufacturing. Brian built the first drawer system for his own 4Runner after a camping trip with his daughter, posted it online, and the orders started coming in. Today Goose Gear sells direct to consumers as well as through a national dealer network, ships globally, and processes every transaction through the web. The brand has earned a strong following in the overland space through product quality and community presence, but organic search had never been built out systematically. Brian knew it was costing them reach into market segments that didn’t yet know Goose Gear existed.
3 Core Challenges
Goose Gear Faced
1st Core Challenge:
Paid advertising was cost-prohibitive for a lean manufacturing operation. Goose Gear needed a way to get in front of new buyers without buying its way to the front every time.
1st Strategic Shift:
By building out a strong organic strategy, their visibility with new customer segments compounds over time and reduces their overall cost of acquisition.
2nd Core Challenge:
Brian had tried independent contractors and referrals to handle search and visibility. None of it had worked. There was no internal bandwidth to own it, and no outside partner had been able to deliver.
2nd Strategic Shift:
KeenView’s team took full ownership of the work. Brian can see results every month without having to manage the process himself.
3rd Core Challenge:
AI was reshaping buyer discovery faster than the business could respond on its own. Missing that window felt like the same mistake as not being on Instagram ten years ago.
3rd Strategic Shift:
KeenView is actively tracking AI platform trends and keeping Goose Gear positioned in that environment. Brian is ahead of the shift rather than scrambling to catch up.
The Problem
Brian has been building this business for over a decade. His focus on product quality and community helped him build his brand and thrive in social media. Instagram was instrumental to their growth for many years, but was limited in helping them gain broader exposure to new customer segments.
Paid search was the obvious answer on paper, but for a lean manufacturing operation with real production costs, buying visibility on every relevant keyword wasn’t realistic. Brian had tried to fill the gap with independent contractors and referrals, but none of them had moved the needle. There was no clear strategy, no reliable progress, and no clear picture of what was actually getting done. The work kept landing back on him.
He also saw AI coming. Not as a distant trend, but as something that was going to change how buyers discovered products in ways that would make search performance matter even more. Getting in front of it wasn’t in the budget, but neither was falling behind. That tension is what drove the decision to move when he did.
The Solution
What set KeenView apart in Brian’s evaluation wasn’t a pitch. It was that when he reached out to other founders KeenView had worked with, they were willing to get on the phone and tell him directly what their experience had been. That kind of peer validation is hard to manufacture. It told Brian more than any sales conversation could.
KeenView identified where Goose Gear was showing up, where it wasn’t, and worked with Brian to build a plan. From there the growth compounded quickly. Keyword rankings went from roughly 200 to 500 to 800 in consecutive months, giving them visibility into customer segments the brand had never reached through paid channels or social.
On the AI side, KeenView is doing the ongoing work of tracking platform shifts and keeping Goose Gear positioned ahead of them. Brian doesn’t have to follow what ChatGPT, Google, and the other platforms are doing. He just needs to know someone is. That’s what he has now.
We’re a small company, so spending a lot of money just to buy our way into people’s views is basically cost prohibitive. What did we do before KeenView? Not much, honestly. We talked about it. We knew we needed to do it. We didn’t have the back-end infrastructure to handle it in house. I’ve tried hiring different people, independent contractors, friends, referrals, all that kind of stuff – with incredible lack of success. The first month was a lot of digging, a lot of information, and then every month since then we’ve seen significant growth in just the number of search keywords we’re ranking for – it continues to grow almost exponentially. Having someone you can just hand it off to and know that things are getting done, and we’re progressing, and you can see the results every month – it’s worth its weight in gold. We built this business on Instagram, but now we need to reach further than Instagram can reach.
Brian Fulton – CEO, Goose Gear
Brian Fulton – CEO, Goose Gear