180Fusion

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a small company selling goat and lamb meat across the US, both online and to restaurants in our area. We have around 1,000 breeding ewes and goats combined. Our business is growing and we hope to continue doing so. We're located close to Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

We handle our animals humanely and keep them on a grass-fed diet, which is a niche in the industry. A lot of our customers have food allergies, so they need a specific meat, with less hormone and antibiotic contamination. They are a small group, but they offer continued business. We give the reassurance that our meat is obtained through just our grounds, and not ones from South America or other places.

What is your position?

I am a co-owner of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with 180Fusion?

The business represents our retirement plan. I'm 68 years old, and my husband is almost 70. We hope to keep it active until we're in our 80s. It's something that we have fun doing. It's not just a business, but a lifestyle, and we aim to keep growing it.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

180Fusion offers us organic SEO work and PPC services. Currently, we have three active pay-per-click campaigns, with varying degrees of success. We haven't been doing this for long enough to get accurate results. We've recently increased our budget for them. Organic SEO is our strongest driving force at the moment.

We also did some social media work, but that didn't work well for our product. Facebook didn't offer the right type of customer.

Periodically, 180Fusion does a review of our website in order to see what can be improved. We follow up on their findings and do everything necessary to keep Google Analytics happy. This includes adding certain keywords, optimizing our blog, and so on. Many of these steps are things I would have no idea how to take care of myself, nor would I have known what is important or not.

We work as a team. 180Fusion couldn't do everything themselves, and a consumer follow-up is necessary. We've never had success with having a paid writer create all our blog content.

How did you come to work with 180Fusion?

I would have preferred to work with a local SEO company, especially since there are many people engaging in this activity at the moment. Because we're a small company, we receive certain federal grants which we could use for this purpose. As such, we tried using a larger agency. We had the typical meeting in their big, modern offices, and agreed to a four month trial at $3,000 per month, which yielded no results. More so, without my permission, they allocated $100 per day for ad words. They knew we had money, and there was no paper trail for their expense. When we confronted them about our bill, they assumed we would have approved.

I then switched over to 180Fusion, who has been more attentive to our account than the previous vendor.

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

The cost of pay per click is around $600 per month. SEO work pricing is $5,000 for a six month period.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with 180Fusion for at least three years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

My main hope for pay per click work was that that it should at least pay for itself with the added business it garnered. The results were better than that: we've covered the ad costs and make money on top of them. Previously, it was a total loss.

Our website sales have doubled over the past year, while direct sales to restaurants have stayed level. In our mind, this shows that SEO work has been paying back. Restaurant delivery is a way to circulate our merchandise and maintain fresh products for online sales, but our website is what is driving our business forward. We may actually need someone who could do SEO work targeted at the restaurant industry.

There was a period of time between agencies, in which we didn't do any SEO work. Our sales got to a third of what they came to after we started with 180Fusion. The effort certainly increases our organic reach.

How did 180Fusion perform from a project management standpoint?

We've had a mixed experience with their account managers: our first one was very good, while the second didn't have such a great an interest in our company. We're now working with our third, who cares about our business very much.

Results can vary a lot depending on who is working for your account, and what that person's feelings are regarding your specific business. Overall, 180Fusion has strong business ethics. They've constantly looked at what work elements their customers need to know and give consent on, contrasting with other companies that would take over and bill their customers without any responsibility for results.

As a thank you for their work, we sent out a package of lamb chops to their crew. They sent us a video of their team eating them.

What distinguishes 180Fusion from other providers?

For a lot of companies, SEO is a way of getting money without doing much, whereas web design takes more time and effort. As a consumer, it's hard to see what they're doing, or whether they're getting real results. A graph can be misinterpreted easily.

180Fusion is more trustworthy than past agencies because they let us know of any expenses or activity upfront. We have a contract, and we get reports. They talk me through any questions. I may have, and ask for permission before moving ahead with any work. I've seen results over the years. With ad words in particular, when our previous company was involved in the process, we had no results at all. They kept throwing money in numerous directions without any strategy. This happens a lot with entities involved in this type of work.

SEO is a tough endeavor for a small company like ours to undertake. We can easily be taken advantage of, and actually were. I haven't had this experience with 180Fusion.

Is there anything 180Fusion could have improved or done differently?

Not that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Found Animals Foundation is a non-profit whose primary goal is saving pets and enriching lives. We have several innovative programs, including microchip registry, spay and neuter research, local adoption centers, and so on. We also provide grants for supporting other animal welfare organizations. Our goal is to help reduce the euthanasia of pets in animal shelters across the country, keep pets in homes, and enrich people's lives by having a happy and healthy pet in their home.

What is your position?

I am the vice president of marketing. I lead the internal marketing team along with some external resources in order to amplify our foundation's mission to as many pet owners in the US as possible. We also aim to strengthen the relationships we have with animal welfare and advocate organizations around the country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with 180Fusion?

We wanted to create awareness for as many US pet owners as possible. We wanted our foundation and brand to be better known. We also work with 180Fusion in order to create a good content strategy and gain strength, especially in the digital marketing space. We want to have robust and relatable content that helps pet owners.

We also want to draw traffic and create PR [public relations] awareness for what we're doing. We want everyone to join our mission by either keeping their pets in their homes, or adopting more pets.

180Fusion has also collaborated with our web development agency, proving to be a partner in this respect.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

180Fusion's work involves primarily organic SEO. However, because we're a non-profit foundation, we have a Google grant for AdWords. 180Fusion support us in maximizing it and driving as much traffic as possible through it.

How did you come to work with 180Fusion?

Prior to joining the foundation, I was working with a large veterinary hospital in the US. Through its marketing team, I was introduced to 180Fusion, among other agencies, during a request for proposal process. When I moved to the Found Animals Foundation and saw that there was a need for SEO and marketing work, I reached out to 180Fusion and brought them in.

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

The projected annual budget is around $60,000. It's a small budget, but we are a non-profit starting at the ground level. As we continue to build our strategy and develop our site over the course of the year, I see the scope growing. We have lofty objectives in reaching millions of pet owners in the US.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2015. The relationship is ongoing. We're just getting warmed up.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've only been working together for a few months. We haven't gathered specific metric results, but with regards to 180Fusion's help in strategic planning and the general setup and collaboration, they've offered outstanding client service.

How did 180Fusion perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a performance and conversion-based operating model; a business approach to marketing. 180Fusion aims to drive results based on our objectives, whether they be sales, adoptions, conversions or actual offline activity. Other firms present results as the number of clicks achieved, 180 is results focused.

They are also immersive in assessing what the nature of their client's business is. When they come back with recommendations, those amount to more than a spreadsheet. 180Fusion put themselves in our shoes and addressed both main points and objectives.

What distinguishes 180Fusion from other providers?

We launched the first phase of our main website in December. Usually, whenever we made a transition, we experienced a significant dip in traffic. Due to 180Fusion's recommendations regarding keywords, tagging and so on, we didn't see a significant drop. This, in my eyes, is a success.

Is there anything 180Fusion could have improved or done differently?

They have an office in Utah and one in LA which they're organizing constantly to better serve their clients. It would help me if I had a better idea of how their model works. Other than that, I can't think of anything significant right now.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an auction house.

What is your position?

I am a consultant. For this client, I am head of the private sales department, and a project manager for marketing campaigns within the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with 180Fusion?

We wanted to increase traffic to our website, both through PPC campaigns and Facebook advertising. We wanted to centralize the digital marketing effort. The overall goal is to get more users to the site, both buyers and sellers of memorabilia and art.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

They offer us social media marketing and PPC services. We're also working with 180Fusion on SEO, specifically link building.

How did you come to work with 180Fusion?

I had researched and called a number of similar companies. 180Fusion is a Google partner and is one of the top ten national SEO companies on various sites.

Once I contacted them, they were the most clear cost-wise. They offered rates and open proposals based on similar businesses to ours. We were given information on how much other businesses typically spend for on-site and off-site SEO. The analysis prior to signing up with 180Fusion was an important resource. Other agencies would have charged us for it, but it came completely free. Selecting them was an easy choice.

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

The typical annual cost of working with them is between $50-100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work is ongoing. I've collaborated with 180Fusion over the course of three years for other companies, as a consultant.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We're in the early stages of our work. I am satisfied with them, but results in this area start coming only after four to five months. This can be frustrating for a customer, as they will want to see immediate growth. In this industry though, there are no quick fixes, and building a campaign takes time.

How did 180Fusion perform from a project management standpoint?

180Fusion offers the right tools and does setup for a company's campaign, almost as if they were part of the internal staff. The customer is no longer concerned with keeping different campaigns running. This type of collaboration is essential for any business that doesn't want to hire its own digital marketing person.

What distinguishes 180Fusion from other providers?

Their client service is excellent. They are able to talk to people who don't know that much about digital marketing, and put their work in perspective in a way that makes sense (why it would be beneficial to do X, Y and Z). 180Fusion is very hands-on and accommodating.

Is there anything 180Fusion could have improved or done differently?

They should be more forthcoming about SEO work in terms of off-site and on-site activity, offering a way to better quantify their work from a client's perspective: how many links they're putting out, where are articles published, and so on. It's a cloak and dagger process and, speaking as a customer, I don't have a clear idea of what's going on.

This is why clients need to find companies that they trust. They're investing more than $2,000 into SEO, without really understanding the efforts that are being made, beyond being told that there are links being put out, ranking has improved for certain categories, and so on. There is nothing concrete, but this is an industry-wide problem.

I think the people at 180Fusion are very smart and I trust them, but my concern is related to how the industry as a whole can be improved. There needs to be a way of regulating this work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a utility cost recovery company for the multifamily housing industry.

What is your position?

I am the vice president of marketing within the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with 180Fusion?

We hired them to help us with our SEO [search engine optimization], as well as our PPC campaign.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

180Fusion set up our PPC account quickly and got it up and running. They did all the work in terms of helping us develop keywords and ads for our company.

I was requested to fill out a creative brief from in which we further refined our targets and what keywords we wanted to rank highly on. They wrote the actual ads and populated our SEO content with relevant keywords. I am satisfied with their work.

How did you come to work with 180Fusion?

We started with online research, looking at the field of competition in terms of SEO and PPC management. 180Fusion were rated highly on several websites, and were among our top three choices. We had phone interviews with each company we considered, and found that 180Fusion met our needs the best.

The search was nationwide. 180Fusion being a local company was of no importance to us.

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

The total budget we have with 180Fusion is between $10-50,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

The relationship is ongoing. SEO is a continuous process. We've been working with 180Fusion for about a year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We have achieved our goals for several SEO search terms. We turn up on the first page of Google searches for a few of them, and the rest are climbing. The results are overall moving in the right direction. I'm happy with 180Fusion's work.

How did 180Fusion perform from a project management standpoint?

They're easy to work with, handling much of the work for us. We told them our expectations, gave detailed directions, and 180Fusion did most of the heavy lifting.

What distinguishes 180Fusion from other providers?

The kind of work that they do is mostly behind-the-scenes. I'm glad that I was able to find a company that actually comes through on the promise of SEO results.

Is there anything 180Fusion could have improved or done differently?

I can't think of anything. There's definitely nothing major to complain about.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I first used 180Fusion in a company called PPC I started up. That company worked with consumer credit products. I sold this company recently. Then, I started IMCA Capital, which is an equipment leasing company that operates in the business-to-business market.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the Founder and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with 180Fusion?

I needed to increase pay per click and messaging on the landing pages of my website to drive leads and new business to my sales team.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Pay-per-click and organic search work were the only services provided.

What was your process for selecting 180Fusion with which to work?

I had worked with three other similar companies who could not get the job done. I followed the CEO of 180Fusion and knew that he had accomplished some great things. I decided to give them a chance to complete the project. 

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

I started out spending five figures a month and went to six figures per month by the end of the first year. 

When was the work completed?

It was approximately 2010 when I started with them. It’s ongoing work that has lasted more than four years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

Our cost-per-sale figures have gone from $90 to $150. 

Are you satisfied with their performance?

They really did a good job. They pay attention to the little things.

Is there anything unique or special about 180Fusion that really makes them stand out compared to other online marketing companies?

They have really smart people working for them. They have good historical expertise and time spent in the space prior to working for 180Fusion. Other companies may have one or two on their teams that are smart but you’re working with the rest of the team as well. 180Fusion has dozens of really great minds. They’re very strong in communication. They provided good direction to us and pushed us to get smarter ourselves. They were the best performing campaign we had, and the investment quickly paid for itself.

What advice would you give to future clients of theirs?

I would tell a future client to invest with 180Fusion because they provide actual results. They were more expensive than some others, but you get what you pay for.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

No. I don’t think so. Some of my team was complaining that it took them a while to return calls, but I realize they’re busy and it seemed reasonable to me.

BACKGROUND

We are a digital agency headquartered in the Los Angeles area. We have team members spread around the world. We specialize in branding and offer many digital services. I am the CEO.

SOLUTION

We knew that we had to work with the best possible SEO [search engine optimization] and digital marketing agency to grow our new agency. We are familiar with the industry and had heard that they were the best in the industry. We hired them out of a shortlist of four or five firms.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

We have been a client of 180Fusions for more than a year now and we could not be happier. As one of the nation's leading SEO/PPC providers, they have provided tangible value to our growth while providing the thought leadership, technology expertise, and customer service to ensure we are growing smartly.  

We have seen a 20 times return on our investment consistently per month since starting the PPC advertising. We have seen strong SEO growth with page 1 and 2 ranking for about a dozen keywords. 

I would give them a five out of five and recommend their services to everyone that I work with as they are the best.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The company does credit and debit card payment processing.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m president and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with 180Fusion?

We wanted to improve our search engine optimization and pay-per-click capabilities to drive sales.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

It was focused on building a search engine optimization platform and implementing a pay-per-click strategy that we’ve been using for slightly more than three years now.

What was your process for selecting 180Fusion with which to work?

They were referred to us by another company.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

The average yearly investment is more than $10,000. The size of the projects has increased as we’ve been going on.

When was the work completed?

It’s ongoing work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

It’s improved a lot of metrics for us. It’s improved our rankings on Google. It’s improved the fact that people know about our company and call us, which has helped with sales. Brand awareness has increased a lot.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

We’ve been very satisfied to the point that we’ve been continuing to use them.

Is there anything unique or special about 180Fusion that really makes them stand out compared to other online marketing companies?

I think the biggest thing is they are very hands on, very tactical in nature. They explain their services and let us know what will benefit us and what won’t. They are very educated in the space of SEO and pay per click.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

Not really. We’ve been extremely satisfied.

BACKGROUND

Could you describe your organization?

NuvoH20 is a new form of water softening to deal with hard water issues. Up to 85 percent of the U.S. deals with hard water issues, which create residues that can damage appliances, fixtures, plumbing, etc. The industry standard in water softening has been to use salt-ion exchange, and our technology is a salt-free alternative. 

What is your position?

I'm the president. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge(s) you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with 180Fusion?

We actually had outsourced all of our ecommerce to a separate vendor. We had sold our product through multiple channels. We sell through wholesalers and retailers, but our ecommerce had been outsourced. We felt like it wasn’t as effective as it should be, and it was also far too expensive. We were paying a commission of a large percentage of sales to this outsourced company. We wanted to bring everything in-house, which we did. We had a separate group develop our website. At that point, we needed some expertise on Internet marketing. We needed a vendor to handle our pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization campaigns, and social media marketing campaigns. Another huge factor was reputation management. When we turned to 180Fusion, it was for all of things Internet marketing related.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project? Were they conducting keyword research, tagging, link building, etc.?

They did perform all of the keyword research, and that’s been an ongoing process. We had the outsourced company that was already doing a lot of branded keyword campaigns, but not much in the general keyword arena. 

We’ve also moved into reputation management with them about a month ago. One of the challenges we’ve faced as a disruptive technology in a traditional industry, where salt has always been the standard, is that people are writing erroneous reviews about us. They've been blatantly lying on the Internet about our product. As a result, we’ve had to figure out how to combat and mitigate these false claims being circulated. This is of extreme importance to us, because we simply can't afford to have these reviews considered legitimate. 

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

Our range is $10,000 to $15,000 a month, depending on different campaigns and where we are in the process. 

This is an ongoing relationship, correct?

It is, yes. 

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 has delivered?

Yes, I can. One thing is our cost per acquisition for attainment of online sales has dropped by about 30 percent. One of the factors I really look at is the conversion rate on our website. Our conversion rate has increased by about 0.3 percent, which is very significant. That probably translates to about $700,000 a year for us. When we look at a conversion rate, our conversion rate was running in the 0.5 percent range, and now we’re at the 0.8 percent range. That’s a significant increase for us, and the rate continues to improve, too. And this has all happened within three or four months of engaging 180Fusion, which is incredible. 

When working with 180Fusion, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors you’ve worked with?

Like I’ve said, we’ve outsourced in the past. One thing I’ve been very happy with is that they seem to be right there on the edge of being able to keep up with Google’s latest products and whatever the Google changes may be. Recently, we’ve started participating in a beta for the dynamic re-marketing initiative. I was duly impressed that 180Fusion was able to participate in the beta with Google. 

I’ll also say that we’ve been very fortunate. I’m not sure if 180Fusion does this with all of their clients on a certain level, but we’re fortunate to have an account manager that we can meet with on a weekly basis. We go through these status reports and progress reports each week. We review our key performance indicators and strategize how we can improve incrementally. They’ve been adept at managing our action items and ensuring that we're making consistent improvements. That’s how we’ve been able to see such dramatic improvement and results. They're extremely performance driven. 

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

They send out a progress report every week that I access. It seems like some of that is relevant, and some of it isn’t, or perhaps I haven’t been trained to really understand all of it. I would say if there’s anything they could improve upon, it's simply going through that report with me in greater detail. But to be honest, I haven’t even requested that. However, they also haven't offered it upfront. We we began they just started sending me these detailed reports. I’ve had to basically teach myself what I’m looking at. I really don't have any other suggestions outside of that.