Knucklepuck

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and Founder of Ultra Pressure Cleaning in south Florida www.ultrapressurecleaning.com(link is external). My name is Harry and I own Ultra Pressure Cleaning in South Florida. We have worked hard to be successful and the key, not surprisingly, to this success is.........SERVICE, duh!

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Knucklepuck?

To make (and keep) Ultra Pressure Cleaning's website and online presence at the very top of mind (and clearly in sight) for anyone looking for services in our field here in South Florida

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Brett Snyder & KnucklePuck Media came very highly recommended by our website designer

Describe the project in detail.

 Well, KnucklePuck (Media), the company with the unique and unforgettable name, and the company that I mention above, has been with us from early on (we have been in business since 2003). Some years ago I set up our website. I am not a tech expert nor do I have any knowledge to speak of in how to keep my company relevant and 'highly visible' in Google's (and all of the other search engines) web searches. I nonetheless soon realized that I would need to do something to keep my company from 'living' on the 4th or 5th page of a prospective client's web search. Fortunately, a person who I respect immensely and was instrumental in our website design recommended that I speak to Brett Snyder. And years ago, I did just that............ 

What was the team composition?

We are very pleased here at Ultra Pressure Cleaning to have (and continue to) work closely with not only the CEO, Brett, but many of his expert associates to keep our website fresh, relevant and at the very top of all south Florida searches by anyone looking for our various services

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Let me start right up front by saying that KnucklePuck Media with its founder, Brett Snyder, is an SEO and marketing firm that has been, in a very large part, responsible for our success in keeping my company & website highly visible & right at the very top of Google searches. And I mean page #1. Isn't that what its all about? Why have a website if someone needs to scroll past all of your competitors first or, heaven forbid, to page #3, 4 or worse?Well, I have found that it is Brett and KnucklePuck Media.

We have seen year to year growth each year and tremendous traffic to our site. This is driving dozens of calls, emails and texts each month asking for our service. Even in this terrible CoVid-19 time where, though we have seen a big slow down, the calls that we do still receive are exclusively those who have seen our website at the very top of their web searches. And I know that this is because Brett and KnucklePuck have been working each week to keep our site fresh, relevant and 'plugged into' all possible prospective leads. 

They are even now, diligently working this entire time of pandemic. I cannot speak highly enough and express the great depth of my gratitude to Brett and KnucklePuck. I think that anyone who has a website or needs help in developing one should call Brett at KnucklePuck Media. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Always available, expert and on-point!

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The expert, and in depth attention to our specific needs combined with the integrity and humanity of the CEO, Brett and his staff. These guys & gals are brilliant.......!  Brett runs an outfit that is brilliant, innovative, creative and responsive.

Brett is a founder and CEO that I have worked with personally for years now (along with his many talented staff and associates) and I can also say that along with their competence and integrity, he is thoughtful, honest and a caring business man who I am so grateful and proud to have doing my company's SEO, website maintenance and marketing.

Especially in these trying times with so much turbulence and uncertainty, Brett and KnucklePuck has been there for our company. Even, going way above and beyond, in a period of personal tragedy for me, Brett and his associates have shown not only their expertise and business acumen, but also a deep sense of compassion and empathy. Who does that these days.........? 

Are there any areas for improvement?

So, the cliche answer goes like this......'of course there's always room for improvement'..... the respondent retorts solemnly.... And I say, "I see improvement all the time, so I guess there were areas to improve". But because the KnucklePuck team constantly monitors our site and follows the always changing algorithms that Google and all the other relevant engines use...they respond to keep us on top of all the searches in our field... So as we are, in point of fact, improving month after month.....by extension, Brett and KnucklePuck clearly sees that month after month there is always something to improve Hence, our numbers (aka, facts) show it!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I am the Director of Marketing for a financial website that informs people about annuity and structured settlements.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Knucklepuck?

We were trying to grow the website from a traffic perspective. We also needed help with our paid marketing efforts. We have our internal team, but we believe Knucklepuck was the best option to scale our efforts.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Knucklepuck played a big role in developing content ideas, performing technical audits on the website, and gave on-page SEO recommendations such as title tag suggestions, internal links, H1s or H2s. Another challenge we were trying to solve through Knucklepuck is around our paid marketing efforts. They run our paid marketing campaigns. We were trying to acquire clients that were interested in selling their newly restructured settlement on the paid side of things. They also did all of the on-page SEO, technical SEO, and content marketing for us. They did link building to some capacity. At the beginning of the year, they were the only ones building links. They were pretty successful at it. Knucklepuck wrote some content for us, but the branding wasn’t a major thing that they do. We’ve been working on these websites for such a long time. A lot of the branding was already pre-defined. They did help us tweak it, but that wasn’t the main part of the work that they did. They were primarily focused on the digital strategy for us.

How did you come to work with Knucklepuck?

Our company is owned by a marketing company that has interests in Knucklepuck Media. We met Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck] about four years ago. He was helping us with one of our other websites at the time to get it out of an algorithmic penalty. At that point, he was trying to start his own business. The owners of our company invested in his company and that’s how Knucklepuck was established. We have a really good working relationship. While our owners have a financial interest in Knucklepuck, we firmly believe that they’re a really good online marketing agency. That’s proven by the fact that we hired Brad before helping fund his agency. We’ve worked with a lot of experts in the SEO space. People have done audits for us. To be frankly honest, Knucklepuck’s audits are top notch.

How much have you invested with them?

Between 5K and 10K a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them November 2016 and have been working together since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck] is one of the top experts doing technical SEO audits. He has a great team around him. I’ve worked with a lot of the people at Knucklepuck. I believe they are really good digital marketers. While they were working on the site, we got out of a really tough algorithmic penalty. That was a Penguin update, which penalizes or looks at backend profiles and determines whether they’re good or bad. That is a major thing that Knucklepuck helped us with. Moira, [Paid Media Manager, Knucklepuck] their Paid Marketing Manager took over the campaign from one of our Paid Marketing Managers here. She’s been doing a really good job. She’s very responsive. She’s always willing to accommodate our needs, as clients. It’s actually special because yes, we invested in the company, but at the same time, they gave us the respect and the time of an actual client. That message comes from Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck]. He feels he’s in a unique situation with us because we should be the ones giving them the most constructive feedback in order to help him grow his company over time. We have a very good relationship and over the years it’s grown and developed more and more.

How did Knucklepuck perform from a project management standpoint?

Compared to a lot of other agencies, they are pretty solid. They are still small enough to where I or anyone on my team can get a hold of Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck] at any time and pick his brain on any specific recommendations about any project they’re working on.

What distinguishes Knucklepuck from other providers?

One thing that they’re really good at is their technical SEO skills and their content research skills. Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck] is a good friend of mine as well. He’s one of the best ones at doing technical SEO audits in the SEO world. I’ve personally been to Knucklepuck in D.C., and Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck] definitely has a really good culture going on, which I believe contributes to the overall performance of the employees there. They’ve gone up and down in size just like any other startup, but overall, I feel pretty confident they’re going to make it through and people will be hearing about Knucklepuck for many, many years.

Is there anything Knucklepuck could have improved or done differently?

They’re trying to find their identity as an agency. In the meantime, they might try to do too many things at once and I think Brett [CEO, Knucklepuck] already realizes that. Maybe he says he can do X, Y, Z, but he does not have the capacity to do that. Maybe he can only do his specialty, X and Y. Over time I think he’ll find the identity of the agency and he’ll move away from committing to too many different things that they agency as a whole may or may not be an expert in.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an information website based on addiction, treatment, and recovery. We started back in late 2015, and have been building out the site every since. I am the Director of Marketing, and we have a team of writers, a marketing team, designers, and developers on our staff.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Knucklepuck?

We worked with them to try and grow our website as much as we could, and also find gaps and technical issues that we may have overlooked.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

They’ve written content for us, helped us find content gaps, done web page analysis in comparison to competitors, and helped us find design and developer resources. They also did some extensive research by talking to people who had been through rehab, which was used as a feature piece on our site. We struggled with trying to find link building opportunities that were geographically based, and they helped us with that as well. They were able to find opportunities for us based on specific locations. They not only sent over some opportunities that we could use ourselves but also found opportunities they reached out to themselves and had acquired links for. We told them what areas of our site we wanted to focus on, and they researched those topics as well as competitor’s similar pages, as well as overall search traffic related to both.

They’ll send us a list back of opportunities, what we need to do to make updates to our website to grow those pages and specific areas where we can grow. They’ll monitor rankings and incoming traffic based on the updates that have been made, and also manage on-page optimization, including finding missing alt texts and updating headlines to optimize SEO.

They look at the CTAs we have on our website, checked out our landing pages compared to the industry average, and then provided us with feedback on what we could to do to update and improve those. They worked pretty closely with our designers to get those things updated, and since we’ve done that, we’ve been able to increase our conversion quite a bit. We’re excited about that. They offered remarketing, PPC, Facebook advertising, and a few other things, but it just wasn’t something that we were ready to jump into with them right away.

How did you come to work with Knucklepuck?

Brett Snyder [Founder, Knucklepuck] actually spoke at conferences we’ve attended and is a phenomenal speaker. He sold us on some of the stuff that he went over, and we wanted to work with him there. He also worked one of our sister sites that we have and did a full Pando audit for the site back in, I believe, 2013 or 2014, and managed to get it to higher levels than it had been at before. The work that he did on that was extremely good, and that was some of the reason we wanted to work with him and his agency.

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

About $5000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2016 and have been working together since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Since we’ve been working with Knucklepuck, we’ve grown at about a rate of 30% every month and continued since then in organic traffic. We also have been able to quadruple all our qualified lead opportunities. Those are probably the two biggest metrics that we’ve been able to do, which are pretty huge numbers and we’re excited about that. This growth has continued since we started working with them, and a lot of the feedback we receive is about how informative and detailed our website is. The reason for that is Knucklepuck going back in and looking at our content, finding areas to expand on, and making it as informational as possible.

How did Knucklepuck perform from a project management standpoint?

We work with them through Basecamp, but they have told us that they would be willing to work with different project management tools. They’re really responsive, whether it’s a call, emails, or however we’d like to communicate with them. They set up a Slack channel with us so that we could reach out to them directly. We have a lot of different tools that we’re able to communicate with them on, which makes it really easy for us. In addition, we don’t need to constantly remind them about sending us updates or that something is late. They generally send it to us and give us the feedback, so it’s very little work on our part. They’re just providing the opportunities for us, and we can either take them or leave them. We talk to them once a week or bi-weekly, and then they send us updates throughout the week. We do a monthly recap with them as well.

What distinguishes Knucklepuck from other providers?

I’ve seen them work in different areas, and I think they have a good ability to jump in and learn the actual space someone is in. I’ve seen that in our case, where they learn about the competitors, figure out the type of personas you’re going after on the website, and are able to quickly provide good detail on things that can help your website.

Is there anything Knucklepuck could have improved or done differently?

No, I don’t have many critiques for them right now.