Black Dot Agency

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I lead content marketing at a mid-sized B2B financial services & technology company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Black Dot Agency?

We are a small team with ambitious growth goals and a deep appreciation for content quality. We hired Black Dot to help us increase the number of blog posts we're able to publish monthly across a wide range of complex finance topics. We leverage these blog posts to drive SEO traffic and lead generation.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We came across Black Dot while searching for financial B2B writers. After an initial pilot, we decided to scale our collaboration with the team given their deep subject matter expertise and excellent writing.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Black Dot was really easy to work with. Every month, we shared briefs created by our SEO agency outlining target keywords, search intent, and recommended headings. The Black Dot team would draft the content and we would iterate on the drafts together as needed. I appreciated their openness to feedback and revisions.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

I worked primarily with the account manager, who was supported by a team of writers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Since the start of our collaboration with Black Dot, our SEO content traffic has grown by 70%. Black Dot played a pivotal role in contributing to the increase. More importantly, the content they produce is well-researched, which helps us build our brand and gain the trust of our audience.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was very easy to work with the Black Dot team. We mostly coordinated via email and I know I could trust Black Dot to deliver on time or give advanced notice if timelines needed to be adjusted. The team also gave good feedback when briefs lacked sufficient information or they had alternative ideas for approaching a topic.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I greatly appreciated their subject matter expertise on a wide variety of finance topics.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Sometimes, the content needed punching up, but the team was always very receptive to the feedback and worked with us to achieve the right voice & tone.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I head product marketing for a strategic finance platform for modern businesses. It offers business leaders a real-time, forward-looking view of their business with a complete planning, monitoring and forecasting engine. The company consolidates your data into a single source of truth to deliver the insights you need to make faster business decisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Black Dot Agency?

We wanted to create thought leadership and customer engagement pieces for our audience which consists of CFOs and their office besides founders and CEOs at fast-growing startups. The topics we wanted to cover require a deep level of understanding of the domain, business model and our product as it involves complex themes from forecasting to financial modeling and scenario planning.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We worked with many freelancers and agencies both here in India and in the US. But, we ran into the same problem each time with budget not being a constraint as we wanted quality. Finally, our TA specialist found Vivek's profile on LinkedIn, set up a meeting and we gave him an outline of a rather difficult topic and a full written draft of an eBook to copyedit and proof read.

He did both exceedingly well. In fact he did developmental edits on the eBook draft and worked with me to understand certain nuances better so that he could rewrite them. The fact that he also mentioned that he's happy to include unlimited revisions was what finally made me go with him since that means he puts quality of the deliverable and client satisfaction first.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We initially worked on a per article basis—this covered blogs, a case study, and SEO-optimized articles. Then we switched to a retainer model a month later. For the thought leadership blogs, we usually give him an outline, he works a draft and sets up a call if needed and 2-3 iterations we usually hit the final piece.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Vivek and a couple of his writers. I don't know the positions of the writers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our SEO-optimized articles have performed really well especially given the fact that we haven't promoted it as yet as we are still in the content build-up phase and given our relatively new domain. One of the articles debuted at 42 in SERP and climbed up to 28 in just 3 weeks and that too for a very competitive keyword!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

He's very prompt and the TAT very quick. They are quite patient with delays on my side.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Promptness. Quality of deliverable. Patience. Client Satisfaction. They constantly seek brutal feedback

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Switching to OneDrive suddenly for hosting all our new articles from Google Drive was too sudden and we weren't given much of a choice in that. We didn't want to switch because of quite a few legit reasons. But, having said that, after a few weeks, they listened to our concerns and switched back to GDrive.