Digital Marketing for B2B Lender
- Other Digital Marketing
- $10,000 to $49,999
- Apr. 2015 - Apr. 2017
- Quality
- 4.5
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"Their communication with us was fantastic. Nothing was ever too much trouble for them."
- Financial services
- San Diego, California
- 11-50 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Leap Clixx redesigned a website to generate more leads and implemented a methodical SEO and organic traffic system through the website. After successful keyword optimization, they began providing PPC services.
Leap Clixx improved online lead generation significantly, and it is now 15% of business. The team was service-oriented and always kept an open line of communication. They prioritized the needs of the client no matter the size of their spend.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Mulligan Funding LLC is an alternative business-to-business lender. We provide short-term working capital funding for small and mid-sized businesses across the country. I’m the CEO.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Leap Clixx?
Until contracting with Leap Clixx, we had been generating leads purely by direct mail. We had done no online lead gen at all. When we engaged Leap Clixx, the two projects were, firstly, to redo our website completely with a view to using it for proper lead capturing and lead generation purposes; and then, secondarily, to get involved in more methodical SEO and organic search traffic through that new website. We had worked with an outside organization just to create the website which we had at the time. They didn’t take any responsibility or do any work for us in terms of SEO or paid online lead gen.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
The creation of our website was a project which Leap Clixx basically project managed. I don’t think they wrote all of the code or created the actual website internally, but they’ve handled the design and development of the website in collaboration with us, which was incredibly helpful. We did not have those resources and that capability in-house.
Once the website was created, they engaged in two different things for us. The one was content creation. They took care of the regular publication of blogs to our website which fit very well with our positioning to our target audience. They published four blogs per months for a fairly lengthy period of time and the result was to create a lot of what I consider to be really terrific content on our website that allows us to direct people to it. It allows us to reinforce our positioning in terms of our market. They also began the process of taking care of SEO work on our website, keywords both in our blogs and on our actual landing and other web pages, and to assist us in trying to get our business ranked better for certain key search terms that are relevant to our industry.
Much later on in the process, they began a project of managing a pay-per-click activity for us. We’d give them a budget every month and they would then manage within that budget a PPC campaign to try to generate paid leads that way. In the process of all of this, we moved our website over to HubSpot, which allowed us much better ability to automate email, outreach to our client base and to track the leads and understand where our online lead gen was coming from. Our target market is national and it’s small to mid-size businesses across the country in all sorts of industries. It’s actually easier for me to list the industries we don’t serve rather than the ones we do.
How did you come to work with Leap Clixx?
We had just made the choice that we were going to move onto HubSpot and to subscribe for their services. After discussing it with some of the HubSpot representatives, I went on their website where they had a page, at the time, listing all of their authorized preferred partners. There were two different tiers of partners. There were ordinary partners and premier partners. I reached out to three or four of those, one of which was Leap Clixx and ironically some of the others didn’t even bother getting back to me. Leap Clixx responded to my contact submission form almost immediately. I spoke to Chans Weber, the CEO of Leap Clixx and just immediately felt that there was a good fit. I liked him enormously. He got what we were trying to do and understood our business and I felt very comfortable going ahead with them.
How much have you invested with Leap Clixx?
We spent between $10,000 and $12,000 per month.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with them April 2015, and we stopped the relationship in April 2017. We hired some in-house marketing staff over the last year or two. We also hired a high-level marketing person and we’re looking to build out their capacity and ability in-house. We feel like we need to manage this internally because it’s a core piece of our business.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?
When we came across Leap Clixx, we were getting visits to our website in the low hundreds on a daily basis. We’re now getting 6,500 visits a month. We were generating no business at all online and we’re now generating approximately 15% to 20% of our direct business online which is a big change for us. We’re still sending out a ton of direct mail, that’s still a very key component of our business, but it has been a material shift over the last year particularly towards online generated business.
How did Leap Clixx perform from a project management standpoint?
Of all of the things that is praiseworthy about Leap Clixx, their service levels stand out to me. It was extraordinary. Their communication with us was fantastic. Nothing was ever too much trouble for them. I had interaction primarily with Chans, but the people who work for me in the marketing department had interaction directly with Amber Callan [Inbound Marketing Strategist] and she just could not be more agreeable or cooperative or willing to go above and beyond. They’re just terrific people and I never got the feeling that we were just a number in their lives. I got the feeling all along that we were an important client of theirs, even though in terms of spend I’m sure that’s not accurate. I’m sure they have far bigger and more lucrative clients than we were. We communicated mostly by phone and email. I met up with Chans on one or two occasions. He came here, I met him at the HubSpot conference. Whenever an opportunity arose for us to get together, we did, but they’re in the Midwest and we’re on the West Coast.
What did you find most impressive about Leap Clixx?
Primarily, the service levels. The fact that we knew we could pick up the phone at any time and get our needs taken care of. They were very transparent and communicative. We never felt like they were a huge machine and we were just a tiny piece of the puzzle for them. We always felt like we were someone important in their lives and the several levels of service we received were commensurate with that. Their approach very much aligns with our client relationship philosophy and so it felt like a great fit for us.
Are there any areas Leap Clixx could improve?
No, I don’t think anything realistically. I think there are things we understand about our business and about the intricacies of our client base that are always going to be difficult for an outside consultant provider to understand as intimately. I think that we’re always going to be better placed to do this ourselves than any consultant, provided we have the skills in-house to do it and we just weren’t at that point until recently. I think there is something fundamental about the consultant model that puts it at a disadvantage to an in-house capacity, but within the paradigm of a consultant model no, I think they were terrific partners to have.
RATINGS
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Quality
4.5Service & Deliverables
"<p>We haven’t done this with anybody else so I don’t have any frame of reference, but we were very, very pleased with what we got from them. Their content creation services and their PPC services were great.</p> "
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Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
"<p> We never had any issues with that. Everything they said they would do, they did.</p> "
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Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
"<p>They were very competitive and willing to be flexible with meeting our budgetary requirements.</p> "
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Willing to Refer
5.0NPS