Hive Digital

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a strategy associate currently managing our social media platforms, email marketing, and Google Analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Hive Digital?

We hired Hive Digital to help administer our Google AdWords grant and improve our SEO.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to make the best use of our available funds to increase awareness of the programs and events we offer. We have focused so far on Flash Drives for Freedom, a program that disrupts the North Korean regime through information, and the Oslo Freedom Forum, our flagship human rights conference.

SOLUTION

Describe the project in detail.

The Hive representative regularly checks in with me over email about the status of our advertising campaigns and asks for any information she needs to effectively administer them. We also have phone calls as needed.

What was the team composition?

The team consists of me and a project analyst at Hive.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any statistics or metrics that speak to the quality of their work and impact of the engagement?

Our campaigns are running at the levels needed to maintain our grant, which is an improvement over our past performance.

How did the Hive Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Our Hive representative is very timely, professional, and helpful.

What impresses you about the Hive Digital?

Their team is well-organized and happy to help with any aspect of the project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The Hive team could be more proactive, since they are the SEO experts, rather than waiting for our direction about how to proceed with the campaign. We would like to receive more strategic input rather than just implementation based on our vision.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization and your role and responsibilities.

The company is a nutraceutical company. We sell supplements and vitamins over the Internet as well as providing consulting services. I am the owner and founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Hive Digital?

We've been with Hive Digital ever since 2004, which is when we began operations. We use them for SEO services.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

We used them for SEO work. Back then, they were doing some Web work and Web design for us. We worked very closely with their SEO team, using link building and paid search, which we continue to do with them to this day. We've been very satisfied.

What was your process for selecting Hive Digital with which to work?

I also worked with them before at another job, for a couple of years. We sourced them because we knew what they could do from where I worked before. We also wanted a company that we were familiar with and one that we had already established and proved to be reliable with us. We knew how they worked. We knew their commitment, honesty, and reliability.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

Through the years, our investment has been in the thousands of dollars, maybe the hundreds of thousands. We've always received a good return on our investment. If there were ever times that I thought things could be better, they've always been very open to hearing what I had to say. We would talk about ways that we could implement new ideas.

They were always very open to providing us with services that were cost effective for a smaller firm. We shared our budget with them, and they were able to work with us. I can't think of a time when they haven't been able to work within our budget.

We are a small company and, in the beginning, we spent about $1,000 a month with them. Our return on investment was much more than that.

When was the project completed?

It is still ongoing work now. It’s all SEO [search engine optimization] work and the Web design and development concluded years ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They helped us achieve much higher rankings for dozens of keywords.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

I haven't worked with any other companies as closely as I've worked with Hive Digital. In my personal opinion, SEO companies are lot like going to a car dealership. You never know when the salesman is telling you the truth.

We had already established a relationship with Hive Digital, and I've worked with them in some form for about 15 years. It is very important to me that a company I work with has honesty and integrity. Has everything always been perfect? No. They have owned up to anything that needed to be changed. If there was something that they missed, they owned up to it and didn't try to wax it over with something or even blame it on the customer.

That integrity piece is tremendously meaningful to me. I need to know that people tell me the truth, whether it's what I want to hear or not. Hive Digital has always been good at doing that.

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

There may have been times when I thought that there had been specific instances of small details being missed. I don't really know what to say specifically since those issues were minor and forgettable. We've had a very open relationship. There have been times, as with any company, when you get a little frustrated. However, I've always felt that I could go to them and say that we need to do better on a particular item or that we need to find a solution to a challenge.

There was one time that I was a little concerned about the communication aspect. Because we know them very well, a lot of our communication is through email. It's quick for me, and it's quick for them. There was one time that I felt that they weren't understanding me or they were passing it around. I mentioned it one time, and it was taken care of. It wasn't something they were doing on purpose, but they heard a customer complaint and they did something about it.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

I work for a major nonprofit foundation. We have about a $2 billion endowment. We do grant making primarily around entrepreneurship and education. Education is mostly Kansas City-based. Entrepreneurship we look more nationally.

What is your role and responsibilities?

My role is director of digital strategy, so I handle oversight of Web, social media, email, and all related activities. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Hive Digital?

We've been using them for quite a while, maybe 10 years or so. Our original engagement was for search engine optimization, and they still help us in this area. We were not showing up in search results for keywords around entrepreneurship, and so they looked at our primary website and suggested some changes, so that was the start of it.

At this point, we still use Hive Digital for SEO [search engine optimization] for several of our sites and they provide consulting on analytics and Web metrics. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

We have done some paid search engagements with them the past couple of years. Currently, we're not doing any advertising. We have had a few engagements for consulting here and there on social media. A small percentage of their work is related to content marketing and Google authorship.

What was your process for selecting Hive Digital with which to work?

It probably wasn't that scientific. Since we look at entrepreneurs, we had heard of their founder because he started Hive Digital from his dorm room basically. We'd done a series of articles about young founders, so we just decided to give him a try and stuck with him since then.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they've done for you?

We're below $100,000, but above $10,000 annually pretty consistently during the past 10 years more or less. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

The SEO and analytics are ongoing and successful.

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

It's an ongoing SEO effort. It never stops. We have been well represented for entrepreneurship-related terms. There was a while when we had several results on the first page of returns for entrepreneurship. I think it's gotten a bit more competitive since then, but we still show well.

In that regard, it's been great. It's really hard to quantify anything on the analytics and metric side of things because that's just sort of pulling together key performance indicator sheets and ongoing discussions about what's performing well and what isn't. We have done some split testing projects like trying to drive more signups for our e-newsletter. I don't remember the exact percentage but, in time, we were able to bump the sign up rates at least several percentage points compared to where they had been through Hive Digital's efforts.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

It's hard for me to compare since I've been using them for so long, but my sense is that it feels like a unique team, especially on the SEO side. Hive Digital has a great depth of knowledge on the topic in a way that only people who specialize in it can know the topic, all the ins and outs, how the Google algorithm is operating, etc.

It would be hard for me to find another firm that understands Google analytics and the various KPIs [key performance indicators] as well as Hive Digital. They're a small company, so I get that type of close relationship. I never feel like I'm lost among a crowd of clients. They're very familiar with what we're trying to do. That seems unique compared to a lot of companies in this space.

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

On the flip side of being a boutique, there's not a lot of bench strength, so there's times when they are pretty stretched to get the amount of attention or the immediate response because I know they're juggling a lot of clients with just a few employees. I'd say this is a fairly minor issue. When I really need to get attention, it will happen without question.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

I work for a major training hospital run by a state university. We treat patients for every disease and have specialists for many hard-to-treat ailments.

What is your role and responsibilities, please?

I am the director of digital marketing. I am responsible for the website and online marketing. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Hive Digital?

We used them for about 10 years, so we had many projects in that timeframe, but I was essentially looking for a very highly qualified partner who could help us with search engine optimization for the long term. We used them for general search engine optimization techniques that could apply to our website across all 40,000 pages of content and then we used them for very specific campaigns where we needed to get higher visibility for very specific programs and services that we offer.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

We wanted to get more patients in our hospitals who had particular conditions because we have certain specialists that might be the best in the country for treating certain conditions. Some doctors are focused on these very small, narrow categories of conditions, so we are incentivized to make sure these doctors are getting the right patients to them. That’s where having a good search engine marketing company comes into play; they can help to draw people with specific illnesses to the right doctors.

What was your process for selecting Hive Digital with which to work?

I love this story. When I was looking for SEO [Search Engine Optimization] companies back when Hive Digital was called Virante, I came across this blog post. It showed how Virante had gotten six subdomains listed in the top four spots on Google and their URLs wrote out you.virante.com, should.virante.com, use.virante.com, us.virante.com. I was blown away. It demonstrated to me that there was a group of guys who actually understood, in a very real way, how to do search engine optimization. That’s when we started talking to them. We had them managing our AdWords accounts for many years and it was consistent month over month, our expenses stayed the same, but our cost per click went down and the number of clicks we got went up. I really can't ask for anything more.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they've done for you?

Our overall search engine marketing budget was around $250,000 a year, and they managed the budget. A large portion of the money was for the ongoing management of several thousand Google AdWords and hundreds of different groups and accounts. They charged a management fee based on the amount of money we were spending with Google. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We ended the engagement about a year ago for a variety of reasons. We wanted to move the management of the SEO to a company that handles other aspects of digital marketing for us.

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

On some pages, we went from one or two visitors a month coming to our website because they found us on Google for that keyword to 20 or 30 visitors coming to our site and that would be a success. Even getting one or two of those patients a month would more than cover our expenses with Hive Digital in that case, so it's a very different mindset when that's your end game.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

I think the thing that makes Hive Digital stand out is that they are 100 percent focused on SEO. That’s their laser beam focus. They do lots of other stuff, but that's their true focus.

These guys are laser beam focused and they have important contacts in the industry. They could reach out to Matt Cutts [head of Google's Webspam team] and ask a question and get an answer from him. It's not something they use all the time, but when we saw something very unusual happen, they were able to get an answer from Cutts.

They pointed me to cutting-edge tools and techniques that I was able to use for my website years before anybody else was using them.  

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

I think that they weren't good at doing a lot of the proactive upsells. You know, a real sales company is going to keep coming to you with all sorts of add-ons and ideas and things like that. They were so focused on executing the stuff that they do really well. Months would go by, and I wouldn’t really hear from them. That's one area they could have been a more professional in.

Hive Digital could be the perfect complement to a person like me who is always being proactive with their web presence. They might not be the best company if you have no in-house knowledge of the Web.