Big Leap

Please describe your company and your position there.

I worked as Social Media & Community Manager at an online review platform. My day to day included helping execute a social media strategy as well as a community management and online reputation strategy.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap, and what were your goals?

We needed extra hands on deck so we worked with Big Leap for SEO services to help improve our rankings in search results.

How did you select Big Leap and what were the deciding factors?

We did our research, read reviews and testimonials and spoke with lots of agencies, but found that the team at Big Leap was the most qualified for what we were looking to do and the team was great to work with.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

We worked with Big Leap and helped them get to know our company and goals. They put together short term and long term strategies to achieve those goals and helped us implement those. We worked with Big Leap on optimized content, links, site fixes and clean up, social media posts and more to help improve our rankings and they delivered monthly reports to track our progress.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had an account manager and 2 SEO experts that we met with on a biweekly basis. They always checked in with us on those meetings and via email to make sure we were all in sync and communicating with us regarding any updates.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Since working with Big Leap in implementing SEO efforts, we saw our results in search improve. They definitely helped us reach our goals and delivered what we were looking for.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Big Leap was awesome to work with! They're organized and efficient and made sure they communicated everything to the team either in the biweekly meetings or via email. We used Google Suite for most campaigns, which made it easy for both us and them to collaborate on new ideas. They always met any deadlines and always helped in pulling together reports as asked.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Big Leap's knowledge and professionalism has been super impressive. They helped the team to understand SEO and how to achieve our goals in a simple way.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I can't think of any! They're creative and helpful and always walked us through any new initiatives that they came up with so everyone was really happy with that.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a nonprofit organization raising awareness on controversial and polarizing issues.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap, and what were your goals?

Our nonprofit organization works in addressing controversial and polarizing issues. Over the years, our efforts have come under some inaccurate scrutiny from individuals in industries across the aisle, which has unfortunately caused people to have a misunderstanding of our mission.

How did you select Big Leap and what were the deciding factors?

Big Leap has helped to combat this negative misinformation by creating new content on different websites that directly address this misinformation, all while using the popular keywords and search terms people are usually using when looking for this information.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Big Leap has helped by picking content we've created, having their copywriters rework the articles, and find other credible sites to host this content to.

Their team meets with us biweekly to go over results, update us on progress, and address any more of our concerns.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've had several Big Leap team members work with us, however, we've worked most closely with our Account Manager from Big Leap.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The content that Big Leap has helped us create has increased these positive pieces in our Google search ranking and has caused "hit pieces" to rank lower in search results.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

With our team, Big Leap has used Google Sheets and Google Documents to collaborate with our team on projects.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The most impressive part of working with Big Leap has been their understanding of the sensitivity of our work. The importance to correct misinformation.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

N/A

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the marketing manager of a nonprofit committed to the eradication of child sexual abuse and its impacts.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap, and what were your goals?

Big Leap was brought on to help support us in our organic growth goals and to consult on our content development from our in-house team. Our goal was to start ranking for major terms for our services.

How did you select Big Leap and what were the deciding factors?

We previously had another SEO company who did not work very well with us. Instead of working with us on solutions they consistently told us we needed to change our content and the scope of our offerings to be eligible for more terms. That was a no-go. As such, we did a vendor search from a small pool of companies for a project to launch a new website.

I had previous experience with Big Leap from another job and they were added to the pool. Their proposal was the most cohesive and collaborative of the bunch we got. They also provided an amazing level of support through the project and thus convinced our executives to let us switch to them permanently.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Our engagement started by doing a vendor selection and asked each SEO vendor to scope our the project to launch a new website. Big Leap provided that scope and also set up several calls with us to talk through any of our anxiety points as well as to talk through timeline and game plan to make sure we felt supported.

Once they were selected as our vendor, we were in regular communication while launching the website and in the days following. They followed up on all the proper audits and fixes and talked me through additional projects we could undertake in-ouse once they were no longer on the project.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 3 people initially: The Digital Marketing Director, the Digital Marketing Manager/Account Manager, and the Salesman who part part of the initial pitch.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The website they helped up launch and have subsequently continued to work on has shown triple digit growth over the last 2 years since the launch. Big Leap was also able to help up turn around the negative growth that was happening on another one of our sites and we have seen double digit growth after the initial year of fixing a lot of problems introduced by the previous company.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

They are very collaborative and supportive. Given the structure of our business, marketing and content creation are separated by departments. Big Leap does an excellent job of bridging those departments and helping us and them form a cohesive team.

They send us monthly reports on our performance as well as reports on additional projects. Recently, Big Leap has helped us with a bunch of content creation and they have consistently been sending us outlines and finished drafts every week.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their willingness to listen to their customer and work collaboratively on solutions, taking into consideration all the quirks that come along with our company.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Honestly, no. They have been an excellent vendor.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our organization is based in Japan, and we’ve recently established a business in the US. We sell haircare products, mainly online. I’m the CFO of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Big Leap?

We were doing our own SEO in Japan, but we had no knowledge of the US market. We needed a professional that knew the market very well, and we found Big Leap.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a 3–6-month contract with Big Leap to create content for our website and establish our brand and website in the US market.

We’re continuing to work with them for SEO. They’re helping to bring our name to the top of Google searches. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 5–6 people from Big Leap. Right now, we have three resources and a project manager on their end.

How did you come to work with Big Leap?

They were referred to us by a previous advertising company we were using. We were approached by another SEO company, but we ultimately chose Big Leap.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is $70,000–$100,000. We pay a fixed fee each month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Big Leap in early January 2020, and it’s ongoing.

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

In early 2020, our name didn’t come up in the first 50–100 search engine results pages (SERPs). Also, a brand in another company with a similar name to ours always appeared before us. Since we began working with Big Leap, our name has appeared before that other brand. Many people have started clicking on our links.

We’ve gotten really good visibility after just one year of working with Big Leap. We’re running a lot of ads, and almost 99% of our sales used to come from those. Now, as a result of Big Leap’s work, 10–15% of sales are coming from organic traffic.

How did Big Leap perform from a project management standpoint?

Most of our communication is via email. If we have a quick question, we can get in touch with them by phone. 

We also have videoconferences twice a month with everyone on our teams. They have a tool for measuring conversions and other data on their end, and they give us full reports at the end of each month.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s definitely their communication. They respond quickly whenever I call them, and they give us the right answer. They’re very supportive, and we can see actual results. Our marketing team had wanted to do SEO for a while, but I never believed that it actually worked. I thought that it was impossible to make a brand visible within a year, but Big Leap flipped my expectations.

Also, they always make sure that the project is on track and never late, and they give us reports and answers at the right time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve been working with them for one year, and there’s nothing that I want to ask them to improve.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I definitely recommend them. Apart from what I’ve said so far, pricing is definitely a reason to work with Big Leap. Their price is fixed, so they don’t overcharge us.

They never give us unexpected surprises at the end of the month, and the work quality is always the same. I’ve worked with two other companies, and they always gave us unexpected prices at the end. I think that most other companies do that, but not Big Leap — we can work with them without worrying.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a custom software development company. I am the CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap, and what were your goals?

We hired Big Leap to lead the efforts on the SEO of our website and also direct the content strategy for us as we try to increase our visibility and authority online.

How did you select Big Leap and what were the deciding factors?

We selected Big Leap due to their expertise and depth in SEO. They also already understood our industry and had great ideas on how we could stand out from the rest of the crowd.

The deciding factors mainly centered around finding the right partner for us, someone that would see themselves as an extension of us rather than a vendor. We also had a budget that we needed to fit under. Big Leap checked both of those boxes and gave us a proposal that showed us they could check both of those boxes.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

The engagement started out with an in-depth audit of our site and overall presence online. They then created a detailed roadmap that outlined what work would be completed each month. The work was focused on optimizing the site on-site, off-site, and a content creation strategy. They were able to quickly knock out the on-site optimizations at the beginning and then move to off-site and content.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with at least 5 people on their team. We had SEO strategist, content creators, the head of business development among others.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Yes, we quickly started ranking in the top 10 pages for almost all of the core keywords we were targeting. We also within a month were ranking #1 for our company name, which we had problems with in the past. The work is ongoing and we continue to see an increase in rankings each month.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

They kept us updated each step of the way as they onboarded us and throughout the ongoing monthly fulfillment. We had bi-weekly calls with the team to go over progress and the upcoming work.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They really are a partner instead of just a vendor. I felt they did a great job of putting themselves in my shoes and understanding my concerns and apprehensions. They were transparent about what I could expect and what I shouldn't expect. This has led to a healthy and productive partnership between our company and Big Leap.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

It's really hard to find something here, but there is always room for improvement. They did an excellent job on everything we've done so far. The only thing I can think of is the actual content creation. Our industry is really tough to write for and requires a lot of expertise. They have done a great job, but if there was one thing I had to point out it would be going deeper on the content.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of demand generation for a company in the training, learning, and development space. We sell courses and products that help people in a number of different ways.

What challenge were you trying to address with Big Leap?

I brought them on board to start building our SEO channel. Our company has a great reputation in our space but organically, people couldn't find us. We had a ton of content but needed people to be able to find it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Big Leap primarily helps build our organic traffic. They help with strategy, implementation, and execution.

We leverage them for a number of use cases, such as content generation and content marketing initiatives. They create content to help us rank for certain terms and topics. Their team helps with optimization too. If a piece of content isn’t performing, they’ll take a look and figure out why.

Big Leap did a competitive market analysis and now, they’re creating a strategy based on their findings. We also have strategies in place, and their team uses their expertise to optimize them. They perform technical SEO audits to optimize our website too.

What is the team composition?

On a week-to-week basis, I work with 1–2 people from Big Leap. However, the team changes in some cases.

How did you come to work with Big Leap?

I found them through coworker referrals.

How much have you invested with them?

Their services cost between $50,000–$80,000 a year.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them at my current organization in January 2021, and it’s an ongoing relationship.

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

Ultimately, I measure our organic search ROI. Additionally, I track traffic, click-through rates, and keyword rankings, which are leading indicators of their campaigns’ success.

In a previous role with them, we did a lot of training with our internal team that was in charge of producing content. We basically didn’t have to train Big Leap. We spent about a month measuring the difference in performance between Big Leap’s content and our internal team’s content. In almost every case, Big Leap’s content outperformed our own.

How did Big Leap perform from a project management standpoint?

Big Leap’s organized and in some cases, we leverage their project management offerings. We will also pass them into our own project management system for other projects. We seamlessly work together and no matter the form of project management, the work gets done. They’re a great partner because their team can help on a variety of different fronts.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Big Leap connects the dots. A lot of SEO agencies are fluffy but not Big Leap. They build specific strategies based on our goals. Their team also has great project management skills. They create project road maps and monitor them. If we need to make a change, Big Leap communicates it to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Broadly, I’m pleased with their project management. However, there are opportunities for individual improvements. Big Leap should also try to prove a project’s ROI. It’s often the client that needs to prove it, but it would be easier if their team did it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know what you want but also be open to them providing their expertise. If you don’t know what you want, it’s easy to be steamrolled. It’s important to have an experienced member on your team if you want to scale your offering. Have a solid contact in-house running the day-to-day operations.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of digital marketing at Modere. We sell healthcare and personal care products.

What challenge were you trying to address with Big Leap?

We wanted to make sure that people could find our company and products easily online. We hired Big Leap to help us improve our Google rankings and manage our online reputation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They supported SEO and social media outreach. They also created content for our site and suggested we partner with new sites to increase exposure to our content. They also helped us manage our online reputation by pushing negative posts down so they were less visible.

What is the team composition?

I worked with at least 10 people on their team, including their president, managers, content creators, and social media specialists.

How did you come to work with Big Leap?

They have a good reputation. I heard about them from some other companies and I knew someone who worked there. We contacted them to discuss their services and pricing and decided they could help us meet our goals. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $40,000–$80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from February 2018–July 2019.

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

They always provided reports that covered our Google ranking and the number of people who saw the site. We really enjoyed working with them.

How did Big Leap perform from a project management standpoint?

Their customer service was fantastic. They always hit their deadlines and communicated well. We met in person on a monthly basis, had a couple of Zoom calls, and emailed back and forth.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with the results and their customer service. They did a fantastic job explaining why it was important to do certain things and why it took a while to see the impact of their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We never had an issue with them. We, unfortunately, couldn’t implement all of their suggestions because of internal limitations, so maybe they could offer alternative solutions.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You should meet with them, ask tough questions, and let them explain what they can do for your business.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President and CEO of the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce. We connect businesses, thought leaders, and community initiatives to make our towns a great place to live and work.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap, and what were your goals?

We hired Big Leap to create and execute a long play SEO strategy that engaged our community across multiple platforms and channels.

How did you select Big Leap and what were the deciding factors?

We have been impressed by their management team and ability to scale with their clientele. Big Leap delivers on the basic strategies of SEO while exploring new methods and compelling engagement opportunities with our desired audiences.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

After the discovery phase, we outlined our goals and objectives. Big leap helped us with keyword research and performed an analysis of our online presence. From there, they made on-site changes and created new collateral with our updated tactics and keywords. Their team also manages our content calendar and posts regular blogs for our website, gearing it toward our target demographic.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We engaged three specialists from Big Leap, including organic search, content writer, and SEO strategist.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our rankings continue to climb and our community shareholders more easily find us and the relevant topics we care about.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Big Leap utilizes the best in class tools of the trade. We coordinate well through the use of online platforms of communication, task tracking, and collaboration.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Big Leap's management is first class and they continually attract the talent and skills from the community to deliver on their promises and delight their customers.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Big Leap regularly calls our team to provide updates, share new ideas, and receive constructive feedback.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Xyngular is a direct-selling company that sells weight loss and health supplements in the US, Canada, Mexico and in the Caribbean. I was hired in October of 2017 as the Director of Communications and was then made Director of Digital Marketing in early 2018.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap?

Many direct-selling companies typically have SEO issues as many competing products vie to catch search traffic and also review sites compete for search rankings. Xyngular initially brought in Big Leap to help its SEO rankings and did so by helping to optimize the Xyngular website and blog content. They would also provide strategic direction in regards to content and digital marketing efforts as Xyngular really had no digital marketing to speak of prior to my arrival.

In addition, once we started to implement more digital marketing efforts, budget was freed up to look into marketing automation, a service Big Leap at the time offered with HubSpot. We soon implemented HubSpot as our official ESP as Big Leap helped provide direction to our IT department and training for our marketing department copywriters. This gave us the ability to better segment our email lists, in order to provide better and timely content and sales to specfiic audiences.

We also started to use Big Leap in our content marketing efforts as content creators. They would provide keyword research and we would prioritize blog articles and other content pieces like infographics, etc. They also helped us with some social media management help as well.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals for SEO were simple, we wanted to clean up page 1 of Google. The impacts on Xyngular were huge, because of the direct-selling aspects of the business - many potential customers would use search engines to find out more about our products and business. When there are competing products and misinformation still on page 1, it can definitely impact the companies bottom line. Our goals for marketing automation/ESP were simple.

We wanted to increase our engagement and CTR for emails and to get better analytics and feedback from our audiences. We also wanted the ability to create a better look and feel in our emails and to segment and automate emails where necessary to increase sales and average order size.

How did you select Big Leap?

Before I was employed at Xyngular Big Leap was already doing SEO work for the company and helping with content optimization. Once we started to look at increasing our marketing budget and looking into marketing automation, we re-looked at Big Leap's capabilities and also looked at other local vendors. We quickly narrowed it down to Big Leap and another marketing company.

I met with both companies face-to-face along with our COO who was overseeing marketing at the time as he was the ultimate decision maker. Ultimately, the biggest factor that led us to staying with Big Leap was because we had already had several months of SEO work being done and we didn't want to interrupt that. Plus they could also offer Hubspot as a marketing automation option, something the competitor could not offer.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

I was the direct point-of-contact for Big Leap and would often have bi-weekly phone calls going over tactics and we would always get a monthly breakdown of work done & progress made. The scope of their work involved SEO -they were given access to the Xyngular website to optimize and update content - this included a list of changes and recommendations for links, titles and meta data.

Big Leap also provided blog article recommendations based on keyword research and then later agreed to write a certain amount of blog articles. Big Leap, as a HubSpot partner, was to help us implement and train on HubSpot as an ESP and help integrate with our systems.

What was the team composition?

Xyngular had around 3 different project managers during my time with the company. They would help coordinate updates and go over any concerns we may have had.

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

With Big Leap's help, we saw an increase in organic page views of more than 180% YoY, 75% more page views, and our site traffic increased from 2.8 million in 2017 to 4.9 million through August of 2018. Our social media saw FB organic reach increase by more than 30% YoY, engagement increase +50%, while referral traffic from social increased 465%! The company had its best year in 2017.

With Big Leap's help we successfully implemented HubSpot and saw immediate returns in our emails with a 4.4% CTR (2% industry average), which also helped increase our blog views by more than 20%.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was excellent, Big Leap was very attentive to our needs and also would come with ideas to help. They provided a great monthly breakdown of work and progress and meshed well with our marketing team as well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their knowledge of SEO and keyword research is what stands out, but they were also true partners who listened to our challenges and workload and would offer help and solutions along the way and on time. As someone who managed the vendor relationship, you want to partner with people who are going to do great professional work that produces results, be proactive in providing new ideas and help whenever asked and also work with people you can trust. Big Leap checked all those boxes.

Are there any areas for improvement?

When we first broached Big Leap with HubSpot implementation, I knew this was something new to Big Leap. I think the implementation process was fine and they were extremely helpful. Because HubSpot has a ton of functionality, some possible training would have been helpful for our team to truly feel like we were getting value out of the product--because it was a huge marketing investment.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the demand generation manager of a hot tub manufacturer.

For what projects/services did your company hire Big Leap, and what were your goals?

We hired Big Leap as an SEO marketing agency to help us grow our organic traffic and create content for our blog.

How did you select Big Leap and what were the deciding factors?

We've been working with them so long that I wasn't part of the initial discussion on hiring them, but we've continued to use them based on the quality of their work compared to other SEO agencies.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

They have performed keyword research, technical SEO audits, content audits, written content, and more over the past few years for us. We've generally seen positive results with our organic traffic growth.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've worked with several digital marketing managers and their teams over the years. Since I've been at my company, I believe we've had 4 different managers over 4 years that have been the lead contact for us.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Generally positive results. I believe our organic traffic has grown every year we have worked with them and we've generally hit our goals as well.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

They usually just have 1 meeting per month where they go over a report and talk about next steps. They are willing to respond to emails or schedule other meetings when necesary.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They've been growing a lot and shown that they know how to help companies improve their SEO & digital marketing

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

At times I've felt they don't spend enough time on our objectives or communicating with us because they are too busy with other clients. Depending on the year and team we were working with, content quality has been suspect.