Lever

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Marketing Officer for PreFlight Airport Parking. We provide airport parking at locations around the country as well as shuttle service to the airport.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lever Interactive?

We needed someone to manage our social media presence, as well as our search engine and organic advertising, in order to find new customers and hold onto existing ones.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They manage our SEO, PPC, and social media for us. They found keywords that were popular in our industry and recommended those. They also went through our website and noted specific recommendations to make it more user-friendly. Further, Lever suggested changes that would help our search results, which I wasn’t expecting them to do. They monitor reviews on our social media sites and work with me to respond to ones where that is necessary. They also put out regular posts that are relevant to our business.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact is their senior account manager.

How did you come to work with Lever Interactive?

We’d been working with another provider but we needed someone that was bigger, responded quicker, and was able to handle a higher capacity. Lever is located in Chicago as we are, so being local helped.

Lever’s President is familiar with the head of our I.T. Department. We were pleased with their capabilities and price after we brought them in, so we decided to give them a try.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since July 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’ve seen an increase in online bookings. Our overall experience has been positive and we’re going to continue using their services.

How did Lever Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re a large enough organization to handle big projects for us, but not so large that everything gets lost in the shuffle. It’s also nice to have one point of contact that I can go to with everything.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their professionalism, responsiveness, and consistent performance have stood out to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing really comes to mind. We’re quite happy with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior marketing director of an educational institution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lever Interactive?

Our focus is on building name recognition and encouraging more potential students to contact us.

SOLUTION

What is the scope of their involvement?

They manage our paid search campaigns and are constantly optimizing them on a weekly basis to make them better. This includes competitive and zip code analysis to help us understand where to best put our efforts and funds.

What is the team composition?

We work with a senior account manager.

How did you come to work with Lever Interactive?

I have been in my current position for around three years and Lever was here before I was. However, after working with them during my first year, it was clear that I wanted to continue to have them as a partner.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with them since October 2013.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Lever’s work has helped us increase our inquiries. Additionally, they have been great at helping us deal with compliance and legal issues. For example, if we are told we cannot say something, they do a really great job of helping us find a work around so that we can still get our point across and get compliance and legal's approval.

How did Lever Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

Our account manager is phenomenal. Even though we are located in different time zones, he is easily accessible any time of day and is quick to respond.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their willingness to collaborate has been impressive. I truly feel like they have a part in what I do everyday, and if the performance is not good they feel it and are constantly coming up with ways to improve.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The one area that I've expressed a need for more help with is on the creative side, but we're working together on that now.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We make commercial-grade lawnmowers and turf equipment for landscape professionals and acreage owners. As the marketing communications specialist, I handle all our digital properties and a lot of our creative development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lever Interactive?

We had terrible organic rankings and were looking for a new agency to partner with. We wanted to fix our existing situation and boost our paid search strategy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve overseen our SEO and SEM strategies for a couple of years. We started by doing site audits, including keyword research and an analysis of our organic rankings. We discovered what we needed to improve and started implementing changes. We took their recommendations and they’ve adjusted their strategy as they learn more and more about our business. They make sure current products are featured and obsolete terms are removed. Once we had all our strategy together, we added remarketing to their duties. We’ve tripled our SEM budget with them and have softened our focus on organic growth.

We’ve also branched out into some video opportunities. We ran a YouTube campaign last spring to correlate with March Madness. We utilized some terms and customizations to hit our target market. It’s a successful strategy for us and we’ll continue with initiatives like it.

What is the team composition?

Melanie (Account Manager, Lever Interactive) is our SEO contact and Brian (Director of Strategy, Lever Interactive) oversees our paid campaigns.

How did you come to work with Lever Interactive?

I reached out to some of our contacts in the digital arena and asked for recommendations. We interviewed three or four agencies that fit our needs and liked two of them. Ultimately, our personalities meshed best with Lever.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our research and initial work with them around September 2015 and launched the SEM initiative in January 2016. Our work together is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The specific YouTube campaign we ran started in mid-March and ran through April 9, 2018. We had 4.8 million views and 52% of viewers watched the entire 30-second video. It outperformed any other digital assets we ran in the same campaign period. Its success helped us double the budget and run the campaign for an additional month and a half.

How did Lever Interactive perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a really good job. We have biweekly meetings with both our SEO and SEM teams and will talk several times between each meeting. We sometimes get a little behind on the SEO side, but that is usually because of issues on my side. I act as the relay with our development group and edits can take time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciate their attention to detail and their ability to explain the process in layman’s terms. They answer my questions and explain things that might be useful to our strategy. They’re very helpful with any changes or adjustments we make.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve struggled with our organic rankings. We had problems on the technical side to keep everything up-to-date but are doing additional backlinking to improve our position in results. We’d still like to see if we can expand our success with the paid portions. There may be opportunities we haven’t tapped into yet.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Review what your competitors are doing and set up benchmarks based on the market. Know your goals and what you hope to accomplish in your relationship.