BOL

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for a relatively large telecommunications service provider. Specifically, I work in the business-to-business marketing department. We focus primarily on marketing business-related Internet and telephone systems across 36 states. I manage the entire department of business-to-business marketing, including social media outreach, marketing communications, marketing operations, and customer relationship management.   

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with BusinessOnline?

We were predominantly up against some very big players in the VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] phone system market. We were struggling with the fact that these key players had much larger budgets and audiences due to the fact that they were able to provide services in larger geographic areas. Because we’re a telephone company, we’re essentially landlocked, which presents some unique challenges in terms of marketing, especially on the digital front. We were looking to increase our market presence, and expose more potential customers to our brand and services.  

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work of this project?

We looked at several different things. One of the things that we looked at was the concept of validated engagement scoring, which was trying to look at people’s buying behaviors on our website and our Google search history in order to predict purchasing thresholds. We were trying to anticipate the demand for our products and services.  

The other thing that we looked at was an entire canvas of our two Web properties to ensure that our content was optimized for search engines. We performed quite a bit of keyword research, and then initiated several Google pay-per-click [PPC] campaigns based on best practices and new keywords.

How did you select BusinessOnline as your solution partner for this endeavor?

We met them at the ULMAS conference a couple of years ago. We saw a presentation that BusinessOnline had done around predicting who is going to buy, what they’re going to buy online, etc. We were very intrigued by the whole premise. I reached out to them after that conference to find out how they could do something similar for us. That initial task snowballed into a much wider variety of services.  

As we began talking with them, we realized that they were very knowledgeable in the various moving parts of online marketing. Everything changes so rapidly, and they seemed really on top of what to do, how to remain agile, and how to ensure that we could improve our search rankings. We felt very comfortable with their expertise and approach. It took several months to figure what our complete statement of work would be, but we went with them right away. We never really considered any other vendors.

Could you give me a sense of the size of this initiative in dollar terms?  

It costs between $200,000 and $500,000 a year.

When was the most recent project completed?

We’ve had a continuous statement of work from 2013 through 2014, so it remains ongoing. We don’t have any intention of terminating that agreement anytime in the foreseeable future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or anecdotal feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

One of the stats that I like to reference is the fact that when we began this initiative, the number of leads that were being tracked in our CRM [customer relationship management] system was extremely low. We had no visibility into what was happening with our leads. We were basically blind. Once we started working with BusinessOnline, all of that changed. We can now track almost 90 percent of our leads, we can track all the way from when they submit contact forms to what happens to them in the CRM, and to closure.  

The traffic of our website has almost doubled since we started working with them, too. Our forms, our conversion rates, have increased dramatically on both of our websites. In terms of SEO, our conversion rate has doubled with regard to our AdWords campaigns. That’s a good metric. Our click-thru-rate has remained consistent. Our cost-per-lead is down 80 percent. The percentage of our keyword’s in the top 10 or top position has also increased dramatically. In terms of keywords in the top 10, we’re up to about 17 percent. It’s grown quite a bit in a very short time period.

When working with BusinessOnline, is there anything you would consider unique or special about their approach or methodology compared to other vendors you’ve worked with?

What really stands out to me is their collaborative approach, and they have experts in each one of their relevant fields. Each week, their entire team is on a call with us strategizing what the next moves should be. They have this very positive attitude and a fantastic work ethic. They know a lot of people sitting on the client side. They understand that we can’t always do things at the turn of a dime, but they’re always generating new ideas and new approaches to our challenges.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

We're a company that makes social software for enterprise clients. We help them more effectively connect with their customers online. We offer customer community platforms as well as all kinds of other ways to connect with their customers, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

What is your position?

I'm the director of content strategy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with BusinessOnline?

Optimizing our content for search was the first thing on our bucket list. Search engine optimization was the first project that we got involved with them on, and I inherited that. I’ve been here for almost three years. I inherited that relationship and about a year ago, and now we've begun engaging them for our PPC [pay-per-click] campaigns. They're responsible for devising, configuring, and executing our digital marketing campaigns across the board. 

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work that they've delivered?

For SEO, it was more like the framing and the plumbing, if you will. It was more like meta data, keyword testing, keyword mapping and research, optimizing the way that images are tagged, and adjusting the layout of our content display. 

How did you select BusinessOnline as your solution partner?

I honestly can't speak to that process because I inherited them as a partner. The process I used for delegating to them our PPC initiatives was simply to reduce the amount of independent vendors we were using. I was relatively confident that they could handle the workload based on their SEO record. 

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

I’m going to say in the first couple of years, it was right around the $90,000 range for SEO, $90,000 for PPC. The whole package is increasing, but I’m not actually involved with that. We have a new VP of digital marketing and the SEO in the contract is mostly his billing now. I managed SEO for the firm for three years, and now it’s really his duty, so I wasn’t involved in the negotiation for the new contract. I believe all we’ve ever done is increase our relationship with them.

When was the project completed?

I would say two weeks ago, but the relationship is really ongoing. We contact them for ongoing analytics and things of that nature, too, but we are revamping our website and they had to do all of the plumbing again.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they've delivered?

I can mostly speak to our PPC initiatives. When I gave them our PPC business last year, they easily doubled my leads and cut our cost by half. You couldn’t ask for a better story than that.

Are there any other metrics or key performance indicators that you have that would demonstrate their effectiveness other than lead generation?

Yes, definitely our organic traffic. Our traffic has grown quite a bit in the three years that we’ve been here. It’s attributed to too many factors as you might imagine. Nevertheless, our traffic has continually increased during the course of our relationship. At least a fraction of that can definitely be attributed to the success of our numerous SEO campaigns. 

When working with BusinessOnline, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors with which you’ve worked?

They really take the time to understand our business. They’re great strategists. They’re not here to sell me a carbon copy, 50-print package that they put together for some other client. I've been impressed by them. Having bespoke solutions created for you is something difficult to find. 

In retrospect, are there areas that you think they could improve upon, or are there things you might do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

For the first couple of years that we did business with them, they gave us wonderful recommendations, and we did not have the internal capability to move on them very quickly. The constructive criticism that I would give is they still got their money, but we didn’t see their value. Even though we knew it was our fault. I respect them very much and like them very much, and know that I needed to continue to push for this kind of work in the business, but I would just advise them that in order to secure the relationship, make sure the people you’re collaborating with to have the capacity to implement what you recommend. Otherwise, they’re just not going to see the value manifest, and they'll really only see the expenditures. 

I was even pointedly asked, “We paid these guys a lot of money, so what’s going on?” They have given us the absolute right direction, the absolute right strategy, but the guy that’s in charge of designing our website and updating our website is not taking it into account. They don’t even know this, but they were really on the hot seat here with us because we weren’t seeing the value, and I had to defend them without any tangible justification. In hindsight, I've been vindicated, but at the time the relationship was very unstable. 

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your company?

We’re a private software development firm based in San Diego with approximately 1,500 employees. We’re in the property and casualty business. We’ve got four different business units. I work in the auto-physical damage division of the company.

What is your position?

I’m the director of product marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with BusinessOnline?

We wanted have increased control over our digital marketing channels in order to drive qualified leads to our sales business units. One of the biggest challenges with that was properly integrating all of our digital marketing channels so we could then track results, add in appropriate analytics frameworks, and be able to move improve conversions from leads to opportunities. It’s essentially a pipeline challenge.

SOLUTION

For what platforms did they provide services and expertise?

They’ve helped us with Google Analytics, Google AdWords and our marketing automation platform, which is Eloqua.

Could you describe the scope of these projects?

There are a number of different aspects involved. On the base level, they’ve helped enhance and optimize our technology platforms and our business processes. The second aspect involves their strategic execution of paid search campaigns. The final piece involves our analytics and reporting. They’ve configured our sites to track key metrics and trained our core staff how to use the reporting tools to evaluate our benchmarks effectively.  

How did you select BusinessOnline as your solution partner?

I used to work at BusinessOnline, so I know the organization very well. I know the CEO. I know their work ethic. The relationship was essentially already in place. That’s one aspect. The second thing is that we interviewed several potential vendors, and BusinessOnline was clearly the best unit for our needs, in terms of their expertise with search and driving business results. Being a performance-driven agency, they have business results with other such organizations similar to ours, and their methodology just made intuitive sense to us. We consulted with two or three other firms, but they didn’t come close to offering what BusinessOnline could.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

We’re going to be spending north of $100,000 with them in 2014.

When was the most recent project completed with them?

They recently completed the full set-up of our analytics platform on Google Analytics. It was completed just before the end of the year. We have several other projects that remain ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any metrics, statistics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

We don’t have a lot of metrics or figures yet because we engaged BusinessOnline quite late in the year. The majority of the work that has been completed to date has been foundational in nature. For instance, they’ve been setting up the reporting infrastructure, performing the research and discovery, and starting the implementation process. It’s really too soon to give you meaningful figures on their performance. I know they’ve contributed to our business results, but I couldn’t accurately quantify it just yet.

When working with BusinessOnline, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors you’ve collaborated with in the past?

They’re extremely performance driven and well aligned with our KPIs [key performance indicators]. They know that every single thing that they do will need to be closely linked to a key metric or result. That’s what I like about them. They don’t simply advocate technical tactics or best practices on a conceptual level, but track their own progress in terms of tangible results and indicators. There are a number of firms that don’t do that very well. I like that performance is the number one. They don’t shy away from being accountable for results.