Think Strategy

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

At the time of our involvement with Think Strategy, I was serving as the general manager/creative director at Cymbal Interactive, a custom development and design company for the life sciences industry. We had about 10-15 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Strategy?

We needed help improving the performance of our customers' websites, but had little experience with digital advertising.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Think Strategy performed site audits of customer websites, analyzing page rankings, organic search conversion rates, web page loading times, and other factors that may have been causing underperformance.

From there, the team helped develop a content strategy and managed both organic and paid ad campaigns and respective budgets. In some instances, they also managed social media campaigns.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 3-4 people, including a copy writer and SEO/SEM project lead. We also worked Bernard Ablola [Founder and Partner, Think Strategy], who  spoke with our customers directly in many meetings.

How did you come to work with Think Strategy?

We personally knew someone from Think Strategy's team who introduced us to Bernard.

We weren't looking for a vendor at the time, but after developing a relationship with their team, I felt I could trust working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested between $35,000-$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from around January 2014 to January 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Think Strategy, I was able to build a core competency within my organization that was previously absent.

For our downstream customers, we were able to ramp up conversion rates through initial paid experiments. Over time, this allowed our customers to capture organic search results by identifying which content drove the most traffic, saving them money on advertising. As a result of this holistic approach, we saw $10,000 budgets drop down to around $1,000 a month for maintenance of services.

How did Think Strategy perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team was exceptional at managing deadlines. Whenever we needed an in-person meeting, they were available. I never had to ask for updates, because they provided us access to a dashboard tool that summarized the status of any campaigns we had running.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I've worked with many development companies both within the U.S. and abroad, but I've never worked with a vendor I trust as much as Think Strategy. Many companies oversell their ability to deliver results, but that wasn't the case with these folks. Their team is both professional and fun to work with, so the whole experience was rewarding.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything. When we first started working together, their team was smaller and had less capacity for design work. I'm not sure if they've expanded since.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the VP of marketing for an enterprise software company. We provide core administration software for international and domestic healthcare payers. I handle our budget and oversee everything from corporate identity to all of our go-to market strategy positions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Strategy?

When I came to the company, we were in a growth phase. We'd hired out a pretty agile team and were building infrastructure as well as doing all the blocking, tackling, and marketing, but we didn't have enough resources to accomplish everything. We decided to look for a firm that could help with paid traffic and SEO.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially hired them to handle SEO, but they also manage pay traffic, which covers Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns with services like Google, Bing, LinkedIn, and Facebook. When we started, they did every part of the process, but we’re now at the point where our copywriter comes up with the text and sends it to them.

We started with a small engagement so we could observe their work style, and they walked us through a very thorough and data-driven process that followed our overall strategy. They essentially hand-held us for the first six months, and we were able to significantly move the needle because of it.

Their approach involves digging deep into competitor intelligence. They compile matrices of keywords that all of our competitors rank for, sorted by quality and quantity, and then give us that data to inform our marketing strategy. We’ll discuss back and forth until we reach a consensus about our strategy in terms of basic SEO blocking and tackling, as well as link-building for page optimization, and then they’ll work with our team to implement those plans. and then their team helped our staff do the work of implementing our plans.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager and we also work with an SEO specialist, but their CEO, Bernard Ablola, sits in on a lot of our calls, too. I reached out to him directly when we first made contact with Think Strategy and he's been really involved with our work.

How did you come to work with Think Strategy?

For this project, I looked through the top 100 SEO companies on Moz.com and cold-emailed several of them. One of those contacts reached out to me and recommended Think Strategy, and then I contacted their CEO directly.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2015 and we’re still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When we started with Think Strategy, our search visibility was a little below 4%, but they got us up to about 17 or 18% within six months, which is an incredible pace for moving that needle.

We also keep an eye on our score with HubSpot's website grader so we can see how our performance has changed compared against our competitors. For a long time we were scoring in the 20s (out of 100), but now we're at 57 and our next closest competitor is at least 10 points below us. That score is largely based on traffic, linking domains, and Moz rank, so our improvement there is mostly attributed to the work that we've done with Think Strategy.

In addition to those metrics, we track our Moz score, our linking domains, where we rank by keywords, and then we also keep an eye on standard metrics like visitor traffic and conversion rates. We've seen improvement with all of those, although with those metrics it's sometimes harder to tell what specific action on our end is driving the improvement.

How did Think Strategy perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re incredibly involved and easy to work with. We have bimonthly phone conferences, and then they provide us with business intelligence via email on a biweekly basis. They also send us a weekly roundup of different high-ranked websites that we should submit links to or try to get our content on.

They really emphasize educating their clients, which makes for great collaboration. Our in-house copywriter builds all our SEO content now, and they helped us get to that point by sending weekly emails with notes on specific things we need to do to maximize the effectiveness of our text.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They don't get complacent. Even though we've worked with them for three years and we've already seen significant growth, they're still pushing for new ways to improve our metrics and giving our staff new skills to master. It feels like they're a partner, rather than consultants. That's very different from what I've experienced with previous agencies or freelancers.

Another thing I love about their whole team is they're genuine marketing professionals. We might start a call with a specific focus, but we'll spend extra time discussing event strategy and what works for them or their other clients versus us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can be good at a lot of things, but you can't be great at everything. Think Strategy's CEO explained this to me as "superpowers," essentially, and it's true—every organization has one or two things they really excel at, but they also waste a lot of time and money on things they're bad at. I think organizations that realize this quickly do better in the long run because they outsource their weaknesses to firms that have those strengths. If you're going to hire an outside firm, trust their expertise, basically.

My other suggestion is don't go for the largest agency you can find because you might be assigned to a junior staff member who doesn't understand the vertical relationships, and as a consequence, you won't see the best results. Think Strategy is great in this respect because their other clients are in the same verticals that we are, so their team understands the nuances of what our needs are.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Sales Force Europe, a sales agency primarily focused on helping tech companies expand into Europe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Strategy?

We needed to increase our exposure to growing U.S. companies and convey that our services provide a better, faster way to expand into new markets.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Think Strategy manages all of our digital media, including our website and social media accounts. They also assist in content creation for our newsletters and blogs. Whether they recommend original ideas or write content based on our suggestions, Think Strategy handles final editing and publishing of all digital text.

In terms of SEO, they oversee our linkback strategies and Google AdWord campaigns to drive traffic and leads. While we had an existing set of keywords, they helped fine-tune that list to better reflect our focus on Europe. They also paid special attention to the fact that our company name is similar to another well-known business.

They also updated the design of our website, and we plan to rely on Think Strategy to create a new site in the future.

What is the team composition?

We worked almost exclusively through Bernard [Ablola, Founder, Think Strategy], who communicated our needs to their support team.

How did you come to work with Think Strategy?

We worked with another vendor to build our website, but ultimately found them too big to give our project proper attention. Think Strategy was recommended to us, and we liked the dedication we saw from their leadership.

How much have you invested with them?

Between $30,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2015 and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our web leads have increased by 25–50% and the quality of those leads has improved dramatically.

While we’ve worked with a range of companies in the past, Think Strategy’s success gave us the confidence to assign them a greater share of work. This allowed us to consolidate our business.

How did Think Strategy perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Asana to track open action items, and because we work directly with the founder, they have a very streamlined process. We don’t have to wait for a project manager to approve details with upper management.

They also stick to budget estimates. We have an agreement for a base fee supplemented by commissions, and they’ve never asked for more money to complete a task.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have in-depth knowledge of digital marketing and are able to execute any task we request.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There's room for growth in any company, but they've proved themselves capable and responsive.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t stress about the day-to-day strategy, just focus on their results. If you articulate your goals and business perspective, they’ll guarantee a successful outcome.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Owner of a Supplement e-commerce website.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Think Strategy?

PPC

What were your goals for this project?

Grow revenue at a positive ROI

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Came highly recommended

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Entire PPC strategy from start to finish

What was the team composition?

3 people

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

No specific figures, but we definitely grew our revenue through this channel

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Extremely easy to work with and very responsive

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are the type of people you could see yourself grabbing a beer with. Their team is super friendly and extremely professional.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Other than having an office here in Seattle, no. :)