IMPACT

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the manager of operations for Digital Media Training (DMTraining), which is a sales-training company that focuses predominantly on helping sales organizations come up with repeatable processes and change sales behavior through coaching. I handle a lot of the training content development as well as the marketing areas.

What challenge were you trying to address with IMPACT?

We are a small team including myself, the CEO, and an extended network of people that aren’t on staff. Our main struggle was resources and time.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our main priorities were to change our blog outline and optimize it for better keywords, make it user-friendly, and transfer the blog to the IMPACT package. We’re also starting a new initiative, so we thought it was timely to start working with them on it in order to start increasing our blog momentum as well as the inbound methodology. We needed their help to become fully integrated with that approach.

IMPACT is awesome to work with; they've created a very strategic outline that helps us identify the key points of a blog post. Then, they hand it over to us to write the blog post or we use an outsourced writer who helps us keep the momentum going.

We had dabbled a bit in SEO, but we’re clearly not as knowledgeable as IMPACT. They’ve been going back to the blog and re-optimizing some of our older blog posts that weren’t stocked with the keywords that we wanted to be ranking for.

They’ve made some changes to our website, and we’ll be doing more updates to it in the future. Our main focus was the blog, as well as revisiting our downloadable offers like eBooks, infographics, etc., and optimizing the landing page for those. We worked with their designers to create some new call-to-action buttons to get more lead generation going.

We’re launching a new training program in a few weeks for which they’re building us another landing page that will clearly articulate the mission of the new product. They’re also helping us revise the header and footer of our website.

How did you come to work with IMPACT?

We had someone that had been leading our marketing, and she was the one who found IMPACT. Based on their inbound marketing strategy, she found a few of their blog posts and reached out to them. At the time, we didn’t have the budget to start working with them.

We had a few conversations and it seemed that our content aligned together. We started contributing a monthly blog 3 years ago, and we’ve been doing that ever since. It seemed like a natural fit to start working together.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of the project has been between $10,000–$50,000 so far. We pay $5,600 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

I don’t have any statistics since we’ve only been working together for a few months, though I can’t begin to express how great of an experience we’ve had so far. IMPACT’s process is very seamless and they bring a lot of energy and expertise to the table while also being responsive and flexible. I’m continually impressed with all members of their team.

The guidance they provide is exactly what our small business needs to stay focused, helping us be more consistent in our content. Our lead generation and blog traffic have gone up significantly because of this, especially during the first 3 months of working with them. There are some seasonal dips in our business — the summertime isn’t as good, so we haven’t seen as much traction in the past few months.

How did IMPACT perform from a project management standpoint?

They are exceptional at project management and I enjoy working with everyone on their team. They’ve been strategic, helpful, and constantly provide valuable information and assistance. I look to them as an extension of my team.

We have a weekly call every Monday for an hour where we set the agenda for every week that we review. For anything else that happens during the week, we’ll have another call or we’ll communicate through Basecamp. We’re able to stay updated and see the status of everything.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re the first agency we’ve worked with so I don’t have much to compare them to. What attracted me to them is that they practice what they preach.

We know that the things we’re working on now and have planned are going to bring people to our website and help generate even more leads. Our teams are growing together and we’re looking forward to the future.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We originally started working with one person and then we transitioned to another. It wasn’t made clear at the beginning of our relationship that that would happen. It wasn’t a big deal, but I wish they would’ve set that expectation.

Please describe your organization.

We're a software SaaS [software-as-a-service]-based company called Applango. We work in the SaaS space providing software to end clients on their usage of other cloud computing platforms.

What is your position?

I'm the VP of marketing.

What business challenge were you trying to address with iMPACT Branding & Design?

I was looking to do better marketing and wanted an agency to help me do that.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

When I initially approached iMPACT, we were on a WordPress site that had been developed by one developer and then revised by another. I needed to track visitors to my site better and be able to synchronize that data with our CRM [customer relationship management] to better track leads. I had used HubSpot before and knew I was looking for an integration.

How did you come to work with iMPACT Branding & Design?

I had a few bids from different companies. In that process, I was able to vet out and land on iMPACT. It became clear that they would be a great choice.

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

Our initial project was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We're still working together and tweaking our project.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Initially, they were able to take a functional WordPress site and replicate the look and feel of everything that we had designed for the original WordPress site. We wanted to move away from WordPress but still wanted it to look the same.

With regard to increasing our traffic, we've been able to increase the traffic to our site by tenfold. I would say that I've experienced a 10-times increase on almost all of my metrics. When Applango was responsible, it was hovering in the high 80 percent bounce rate and now, through our continual efforts, we've gone to a low of 5 percent. We hover between 5 and 15 percent on any given month. That goes to the alignment of getting not just eyeballs on the site but getting the right eyeballs on the site with the right content.

How did iMPACT Branding & Design perform from a project management standpoint?

Vin [Gaeta] is my project manager over at iMPACT. He pulls in the other departments and other resources when I need them and from that perspective, iMPACT is awesome to work with.

What distinguishes iMPACT Branding & Design from other providers?

iMPACT works as if they're part of the team. We have a great dynamic that's going on. The iMPACT team is always able to roll with project fluctuations and keep moving forward. They let me know how it might affect deliverables but never let it hinder progress.

Is there anything iMPACT Branding & Design could have improved or done differently?

Not that I can think of. Not everything that we have done has been a home run but I wouldn't want them to change anything. I always want to be trying new things, new tactics, and new ways to make sure we're not missing anything and they're right there helping us do that.