Impression

Please describe your company and your position there.

Stanhope is a leading provider of niche and specialist insurance to the UK home insurance market. We have a clear mission and clear values and we focus on providing solutions that fit outside the standard UK home insurance norms. This could be an expensive item of jewellery, a property that is thatched or a home that is undergoing renovation works.

If you can’t find the solution through standard insurance platforms you will most likely come to us as your next port of call. I am the co-starter and Director of Stanhope Insurance - a subsidiary of Stanhope Cooper. I am passionate about leading Stanhope to become the UK's most trusted non-standard insurance brokerage.

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

We enlisted Impression for PPC and SEO services. To drive relevant, high-quality leads to our website, increase brand awareness and rank well across core service areas.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The commencement of this strategy in 2019 represented a big shift for our business, so it was important that we got it right and that we found the right partner. We had a shortlist, ran the pitch process and Impression stood out as the agency to take things forward for us.

They had taken time to understand our business, had the short term plan to get us started but also had the scope in their services and thinking to keep us growing through 2020 and beyond, hence why they are still our digital performance agency in 2022.

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

To drive quality leads to our website, Impression attracted relevant clients through a solid content strategy. We work with Impression’s SEO team who have developed a comprehensive content strategy with the goal of increasing our brand awareness, improving the visibility of the site, and driving more leads through organic search.

Whilst we have often relied heavily on paid traffic in the past, Impression identified that there was a huge opportunity to improve our organic position. Previously we had not ranked for a lot of relevant keywords, and there was lots of room to improve our keyword positions. Impression is helping us to improve our organic performance and the foundations of our website. They conducted audits to identify and fix prominent issues, set out a clear roadmap, and continue to produce quality content.

As a business, PPC leads are incredibly important to us; it’s our highest investment activity and it’s therefore imperative that our agency partner can drive quality leads at an efficient price. Impression continually looks at areas of opportunity to reduce CPAs across campaigns, products and the business and they have been able to maximise our number of conversions whilst maintaining a high quality of leads.

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

We have direct contact with a dedicated Client Success Manager in addition to the senior paid specialist and senior SEO specialist who are responsible for the delivery work. We are also in contact with some of the wider Impression team who also support on the account, helping the senior paid and SEO specialists. We’re pleased that our account team has expanded in line with our own growth.

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

Impression has been able to drive Year on Year growth of +66% (2021 vs 2020) and +71% (2022 vs 2021) in leads whilst maintaining a sustainable CPA. This growth has helped us to increase our number of staff and also branch out into new product areas for the business, offering services we would not have been able to otherwise, without external investments.

This stable and consistent flow of high quality leads has ensured that as a business, we’ve not only been able to weather the turbulence of the past few years but we’ve also been able to grow and become a stronger business as a result.

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

We have weekly calls with the team where we regularly review performance and outside of that, all communications are responded to quickly and efficiently. The team is agile and available to implement reactive changes promptly.

More recently we’ve started to work with content trackers so that we can see everything in one place, this also prevents things being lost across emails. The Impression team upload research, ideas, and changes to copy into the tracker so that we have visibility on what’s going on and how it aligns with our strategy.

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

They really care about the work they do and they understand what makes us tick. The team is very reactive to budget changes to align with our business’ needs and always find alternative solutions when needed. They offer the perfect balance between reactiveness and proactiveness.

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

Right now, we’re very happy with the way the account is progressing!

Please describe your company and your position there.

We're the world's largest independent funder of cancer research with the vision to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured I am the marketing planning manager, part of the planning team. I am the centralised point of contact for Impression and I’m responsible for marketing strategy and agency integration.

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

We appointed Impression in early 2019 to manage our paid search activity. Our goals are to drive awareness and maximise conversions (e.g. donations, fundraising sign ups etc) and to ensure that PPC campaigns integrate with our wider marketing activity

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We sent out an invitation to tender to various agencies. We needed an agency who would work collaboratively with our internal marketing teams and our other agency partners that are responsible for the management of other marketing channels

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

There are multiple individual marketing teams, across several paid search accounts. Each of our teams have varying KPIs that change year-on-year, from lead generation to donations and ecommerce purchasing. Impression work closely with all of our teams to meet our audience needs - marketing the right message and the right product to the right audiences.

This was particularly important during the Covid 19 pandemic where we needed to adapt to a significant change in our audience needs. Impression helped us to ensure that our audience could find the health information they needed as well as developing a contingency plan which allowed us to move spend from our lower performing areas and focus on maximising our higher performing areas We tasked Impression to come up with a contingency plan.

We needed to look to reduce spend from lesser performing areas to provide income through higher-performing channels, as well as aligning messaging and timing with our ATL activity. Impression also secured early access to the very first Microsoft EMEA advertising grant, which they launched with us and has been utilised to drive higher awareness through the account

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

We have a senior paid media strategist who is responsible for setting and delivering our accounts strategy and ppc specialists who support when required. We have a dedicated client success manager who is ultimately responsible for the overall performance of our account and who ensures integration with our other agency partners

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

The work that Impression carried out had a significant impact on our performance during the pandemic. Impression reduced overall spend whilst maintaining year-on-year and month-on-month growth by refocusing the account priorities, and helped us to achieve an increase in income.

The work that delivered on our account during the COVID period has also been recognized and shortlisted for awards. In 2020, their work was shortlisted for the ‘most effective use of paid search’ (DADI Awards, 2020), for ‘best use of search - not for profit’ (UK Search Awards, 2020) and for the ‘community response award’ (Microsoft Advertising Partner Awards, 2020).

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

We have a two-way feedback loop that allows us to have honest conversations on a regular basis which in turn, means project management is always very effective. These regular check-ins have led to changes in requirements for the number of meetings and Impression communicates openly and honestly about hours and priorities to make sure our expectations are met. We always have honest conversations about what’s going well and what’s not. Impression also effectively integrates with our other agencies, which allows us to implement fully integrated campaigns

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

The team at Impression are always quick to respond and communication is clear and consistent. They set clear deadlines that are always met and respond very well to our requests and any new challenges that arise. They have a good understanding of our projects and are clearly experts in their field. They are proficient at keeping on top of varied projects, budgets and general workload. They are just generally very ‘on it!’

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

Impression are experts in their field and provide very detailed analysis and reporting - which is a good thing. However, this can be difficult to digest sometimes for non PPC experts so we have worked with Impression on how best to structure monthly reports and commentary to ensure that communication is as clear as possible

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a retailer of bicycles and cycling equipment. We have a chain of 14 retail stores and a meaningful contribution from our online store. As Ecommerce Manager, I am responsible for all things digital at Rutland Cycling including online trading, merchandising and paid digital marketing.

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

We wanted to consolidate our digital marketing activities under one roof; benefitting from a single view of all activity, more streamlines processes and of course agency expertise.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We needed a partner that had the expertise to manage all of our core marketing channels. We were looking for innovation and new ideas to help us grow our business and we wanted a hands on partner with a culture that aligns with our own. Impression demonstrated that they could deliver all of this with an aligned strategy covering all channels.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

The project required handing over multiple digital marketing channels from other agencies/ internal departments. Impression built a digital marketing plan which focussed on quick wins while building for long term growth. By aligning upper and lower funnel channels under a single agency, we now have much greater control and visibility of the full user journey.

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

Day to day we have a primary contact at Impression who manages the projects and liaises with other team members to communicate our priorities and trading actions for all channels. That being said we do have direct contact with channel owners (for paid/ social etc) as well as a strategic account lead who looks after the overall trajectory and relationship.

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

We have seen a meaningful increase in visitors and revenue since going live with Impression. The re-structure of our campaigns and the single view of all digital marketing activity has also allowed us to be much more nimble and responsive when it comes to trading decisions and spending activity.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We trialled a few methods of communication at the outset, but ultimately have settled into a good rythm with a primary day to day contact and regular performance reviews.

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

They are hands-on, innovative, and feel very much part of our team. They have experts in lots of fields to call on in order to help us drive forward our digital marketing strategy and grow our business.

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

There was some 'overservicing' of certain tasks early on in the relationship which used more hours than were needed. However it's better to have had too much info than too little, and we are now in a good rythm when it comes to comms and priorities.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Abigail Ahern specialises in soft furnishings, homewares and interior design. I am the Founder and Creator of the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Impression?

SEO, PPC and paid social consultancy, which we then migrated to a retained service

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to increase traffic, online visibility, revenue and attract new customers.

How did you select Impression?

When we were looking to select an agency partner, it was essential for us to find someone who was up-to-date on key trends and changes, and Impression ticked this box.

We were interested in SEO and PPC and wanted to adopt a more coordinated approach, bringing these services under one umbrella and Impression demonstrated expertise in these two areas.

We recognised that they had a solid experience working with well-known e-commerce brands, instilling us with confidence that they could unlock new opportunities and drive results.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Since starting with Impression, they have helped us deliver an integrated marketing strategy making our channels perform better when used together. To give a brief overview, their SEO team has improved our organic visibility, initially focusing on technical considerations and content optimisation.

Their PPC team has created profitable ad campaigns using data-driven insights. Their paid social consultant has advised us how to better connect to our target audience across our social channels.

In the past, our marketing strategies focused on branded keywords and driving sales through frequent promotions; we didn’t feel this reflected our brand very well and were keen to move away from this approach.

During Black Friday 2020, we challenged Impression to run a successful Black Friday campaign whilst maintaining our brand’s luxury status. Like any other e-commerce business, Black Friday is an important event for us.

Impression helped us prepare for the event months before, with their SEO team researching and implementing a keyword targeting strategy for key category pages. They then optimised these pages with the addition of high-quality content.

Adding additional content to pages that needed it drove organic traffic and supported search query matching for audience-targeted Dynamic Search Ads to attract non-brand search queries through paid search.

Instead of using sales-led ad copy, Impression opted to use copy that accurately reflected our brand’s quality. They used ad extensions to highlight the current promotions rather than promotional copy in the ads themselves.

They improved our Shopping campaigns with search query filtering, and they implemented display and paid social campaigns, utilising retargeting to help convert traffic from each channel.

We were so pleased with the results we achieved during Black Friday that we instructed Impression to adopt the same approach for the Boxing Day and January sales. We’re excited to see what more we can do together in the future.

What was the team composition?

We have an SEO lead, a PPC lead and paid social lead. We have direct contact with all of these individuals who manage our account; this is key as it ensures clear communication directly from those working on our account.

We also have a dedicated client success manager who supports where required with ways of working but primarily focuses on spotting growth and process opportunities for our business and ensuring success in whatever form we need.

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

By moving away from a cycle of constant promotions, we could promote great value offers desirable to our target audience through Impression’s work across our digital marketing channels.

By targeting users who were more willing to pay for a premium product for our upper funnel activities, we successfully reached and engaged an audience who were primed to respond well to our brand.

We enjoyed great success with our Black Friday, Boxing Day and January Sale campaigns with considerable increases in revenue and ROAS year on year.

It’s clear that for our customers, the brand’s status and quality is an important factor in their purchase decisions, meaning Impression’s advice to lean into brand-first messaging has been a real success.

Having a team who understand and guide us in areas we have limited experience with is a real asset to our business.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Each delivery team member manages their workload, but we also benefit from a client success manager who can step in to assist should we need anything extra worked on or if we have any ad hoc queries.

We manage communications through Teamwork to organise all our projects and workstreams and have regular status calls to check in on the progress of actions.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team’s inherent ability to aim high and deliver whilst having fun and getting under the skin of our brand and product range. Impression feels like a true extension of our own team, and we thoroughly enjoy our working relationship together.

They work hard to manage our expectations, keep us up to date and explain results and performance in a digestible way. They are always keen to hear feedback and aren’t afraid of change if we wish to try something different.

Their approach to open and honest communication is refreshing!

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that come to mind - we have had to undertake this project 100% remotely, and it has been one of the most effective projects I have worked on

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner and director of Great Bean Bags. Based in Nottingham, we are a dedicated manufacturer of bean bags, focused on design and quality. We have been successfully trading since 1992, running an established e-commerce store.

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

We started working with Impression in 2015, hiring them for SEO and PPC services – since then, we’ve also outsourced our digital PR work to Impression. The project goals were to increase traffic to the site, make us more visible in search and boost revenue. Specifically, we tasked Impression to:

• Increase our rankings in the organic search results; in particular, we’d had a significant drop for our header keyword, ‘bean bag’, and wanted to return to the top 10.
• Boost the number of transactions and the amount of revenue we were receiving through our online store.
• Improve our ROI through paid advertising.

How did you select Impression and what were the deciding factors?

Prior to our partnership with Impression, we were signed on to a ‘lite’ package with another agency but weren’t happy with the results or client services that they offered. We were referred to Impression by a friend who runs a web design company in Nottingham.

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

The first phase of the SEO work Impression completed for us centered around improving our backlink profile. The team discovered that our rankings were being hindered by some spam links directed towards the site and disavowed these on our behalf.

Impression then completed some technical SEO work for us. They made sure our site was being crawled effectively by search engines, as well as fixing some duplicate content issues that arose from our e-commerce platform. Their on-page SEO work helped us to get back to position one for our header term, ‘bean bags’.

Impression created and optimized content across the site, as well as assisting us to launch new pages – most recently, we launched a range of themed children’s bean bag pages designed to improve our topic authority in this area and increase sales of high-value products.

From an off-page perspective, the team has helped us to build links to the site from the national press, as well as a wide range of niche-specific publications that focus on key target segments such as students. Throughout this period, Impression’s PPC team has been working to improve the ROI delivered by our online paid advertising campaigns.

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

Initially, the team on our account was made up of two members: one in PPC and another in SEO. Since expanding our partnership with Impression, we now work with a team of four across SEO, PPC, and digital PR.

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

Within the first six months of working together, Impression helped us achieve ranking improvements across our key terms. Additionally, we saw a 119% increase in revenue, 88% increase in transactions and an 80% increase in e-commerce conversion rate.

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

Impression appoints leads who are responsible for managing our relationships, meaning we always have a main point of contact for each service / channel who we contact any time via email or phone. Our leads give us full visibility of the work being undertaken and we’re satisfied with their approach to project management.

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

Throughout our long-standing partnership with Impression, we’ve been particularly impressed by their commitment to continuous improvement. The team didn’t settle once the first objectives had been achieved.

With page one rankings across the majority of our product categories, they’re still pushing to explore new opportunities and provide us with the best possible online visibility across the board.

Our working relationship with the team has also been something to shout about. They take a relaxed and friendly approach but they’re also very responsive to our requests, getting things done on time and to a consistently high standard.

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

Brand building is an area for improvement that we’re looking to work on with Impression going forward. We operate in a particularly competitive landscape alongside a number of bean bag manufacturers that have a bigger brand presence, as well as competing against established retailers in the online space such as Argos, Dunelm, and Amazon.

There’s an opportunity for us to develop brand awareness further through our work with Impression and increase click-through rates, particularly now that we’re also working with their in-house digital PR team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Managing Partner of a solicitor's firm. We have between 40 and 50 lawyers in the firm.

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

We instructed them in 2014, when we had updated our website design, but we needed to optomise it to ensure we could use it to generate work. Our goals were quite basic in the beginning but we have seen significant year on year improvement.

How did you select Impression and what were the deciding factors?

We wanted an SEO company who were local to us in Nottingham, so that we could forge a close working relationship and meet with them regularly to better understand what they were doing. We researched the options on the internet and selected 3 companies to meet.

At Impression they were fairly new at the time, but they were prepared to put senior members of the team on our project and they seemed to have lots of energy and passion for what they did, so we took a gamble with a newly established small local business, which is what they were at the time!

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

This year the focus was on improving the content on the website, with deeper content, increasing our Google Ad presence, expanding our digital PR with quality backlinks and overall to increase the number of leads generated by the website.

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

Initially one of their founders oversaw the project, with an SEO specialist. We have worked with a number of different people over the years, but they have been careful to introduce new people to the team and ensure they properly understand our business and our objectives.

We currently work with Ben, Content Specialist, Claire a PPC Executive, Saffron a Digital PR Executive, as well as Pete, Head of SEO who oversees the project.

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

Over the last 12 months, we have seen a 25% increase in our goal completions for organic traffic and a 36% increase of new users to the website. our PPC work has seen a significant improvement as well. This exceed the targets we agreed with them at the start of the year.

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

We have bi-monthly meetings now, but with monthly reports on their progress. In addition to this we discuss by email the project on a regular basis. They feedback any PR on a daily basis as well.

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

Their communication is excellent. They take the time to get to understand the business and what we do. We feel that we can ask them any questions about what they are doing and they are transparent about how they spend their time on our project, so we know that our money is being well spent.

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

Not really. They are always trying to improve and develop what tools they use.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Ecommerce Manager for Marmalade Insurance, the UK’s best-known insurance provider dedicated to young drivers. We have a range of insurance options to get cover the young drivers own car, or a parent's car - before and after you pass your test!

We also sell brand new cars packaged with our insurance policies. My role is focused on achieving sales through our direct website channels and improving conversions.

For what projects/services did your company hire Impression?

We needed support and expertise for our paid digital marketing channels and digital PR. Our market is extremely competitive and we always need to be a stand out brand but also adapt very quickly to changing customer needs and their online presence.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to increase our brand awareness while keeping our costs within budget. We also wanted to explore new opportunities through paid search and paid social advertising to expand our visability.

How did you select Impression?

We gathered a short list of 3 highly recommended agencies to interview. We really needed an agency who understood the way we worked and could make an immediate impact to our marketing.

The pitch from the team at Impression brilliantly displayed their expertise and experience in our market but importantly how they could work with our current marketing team.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

The daily management and strategies for paid search and paid social channels. Digital PR creation and distribution of content.  

What was the team composition?

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

We saw cost per clicks drop significantly which helped our spend go further on PPC. 

We increase impressions by 22% YoY through improvements to channels and introduction of new channels. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I love the immediate improvement in performance across our PPC, paid advertisement, and digital PR.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Comminication has been a bit of an issue but is improving.