Marcel Digital

Please describe your organization.

We’re a family business that provides freshly prepared meals to people that need to lose weight for health reasons or just wish to maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle. Nationally, in any state where we do not have a franchise, we serve our customers directly via UPS.

What are your role and responsibilities?

I am responsible for most of our Web needs.

What was your goal in working with Marcel Digital?

Initially, all we wanted to do was maximize our SEO [search engine optimization] capabilities and get help with the general Google search population. But, we were not surprised when Marcel Digital suggested that we needed to rebuild our entire website. We knew we lacked a lot in terms of functionality.

Please describe the scope of their work.

Marcel Digital helped with Web development, SEO and our search campaign on Google. We had lots of conversations with them about what we wanted our site to look like. We had to balance our interests with our need to be sure that Google and other search engines could read our site.

The only other constraint we were working under was that we had no leeway on the color scheme because we have an established brand, which we needed to reflect.

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

Although I must have contacted at least 30 companies, many were either unresponsive or overly aggressive. I liked Marcel Digital because they responded immediately, which was very important to me.

Another part of the decision was that we’re not a huge company, and we didn’t want to get lost in a big Web development company. We felt that we could get the kind of individualized attention we wanted from Marcel Digital.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms?

We’ve spent something in excess of $200,000 in working with Marcel Digital, and we believe we have received very good value for our money. Marcel Digital also put in a lot more hours than they billed us for, which we really appreciated.

When was the work completed?

We just launched phase one of the website in December 2014. We have other things we want to add to the website, but at least right now customers can order directly from the site.

How satisfied are you with your work with Marcel Digital?

We’re very satisfied. With having both franchises and a national home shopping network, we could not use an out-of-the-box management system. So, Marcel Digital had to build our site from the ground up, and they really worked hard to understand how we operate. So, there were a lot of moving parts to address to get a functional website up and running.

We probably launched earlier than was ideal because our old site was really falling apart, and we needed to make a December deadline because January is always our busiest time of the year. Marcel Digital was great in helping all of that happen. They actually pulled in some additional hands on the team in order to make the December deadline. They really stepped up to the plate and worked with us to get our site done before the early 2015 rush.

I’ve been involved in many other Web launches in my previous job and I’d say, overall, this was one of the smoothest launches I’d ever experienced.

Is there anything unique or special about Marcel Digital that really makes them stand out compared to other online companies?

They are a small company and, as I mentioned, that’s one of the reasons we went with them. Their availability to the client is really what makes them stand out.

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

In the beginning, we under communicated or forgot to communicate a portion of our needs to Marcel Digital, which required that we needed to spend more time and money than we really should have.

Please describe your organization.

We are a marketer and manufacturer of socks and headwear.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the director of product development and also e-commerce and Web.

What was your goal for working with Marcel Digital?

We were looking to increase our organic traffic on the site.  

Please describe the scope of their work.

It’s basically been SEO [search engine optimization] work. They audited our site and gave us recommendations.

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

They came as a referral from one of the other vendors we utilize on the social side. We looked at a couple other companies that offered SEO but, when it came down to it, they were very familiar with Umbraco, which is one of our main platforms so that was one of the high points and benefits of selecting them.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

[It was between] $50,000 and $200,000

When was the work completed?

It’s ongoing work. We started a relationship with them in January and the work started in February of 2014. 

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

The work they did drove up newsletter signups, retailer look-ups, contact us submissions, and increased online revenue. We saw strong growth and traffic on the landing pages and increased traffic to internal pages.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

We are satisfied with their work. They service our account very well.

Is there anything unique or special about Marcel Digital that really makes them stand out compared to other online marketing companies?

They are very easy to communicate with. They are well versed in weekly changes with Google, which I think provides a great advantage. They know how it actually applies to our specific business. Their customer service is excellent.

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

At this point, I would say no.

Please describe your company.

We’re a brokerage firm. We trade on behalf of clients that trade on the futures markets for corn and gold and things like that. We represent people that want to trade in those markets.

What is your role?

My role is executive director of marketing.

What was your goal for working with Marcel Digital?

We outsource quite a bit of our marketing. I’m a one-man shop so I need help. Our media buying is outsourced and our SEO [search engine optimization] is outsourced with Marcel. We rely on them to represent us on the Internet as far as searches and Google ranking.

Please describe their work in more detail.

They do both paid and organic search engine optimization. They do remarketing, too. We’ve given them banner ads to run plus text ads. We have done some social media marketing including publishing content on YouTube. We use them when we want to do special promotions through YouTube or Facebook.

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

They were already here when I started four years ago. I cannot comment on their selection.

Can you provide a general cost range to give a sense of the size of the project?

I’ve never documented hours. All I can tell you is our budget is around $25,000 a month. When I started it was only $20,000 monthly. We bumped it up to $25,000 in 2013. That includes fees and what they spend on paid search.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Overall, we have been satisfied. We’ve had some issues, but I can’t attribute the issues directly to them. We’ve had some bumps on the road ourselves because our website was built more than 10 years ago. We’ve had issues where the speed of our site and some of the things we’ve tried to do to implement new content have been very slow.

Do you have any statistics or metrics you can share about success of their work?

We are showing growth in 2014 but we have a big "V" trend for the firm’s growth. In 2013, it was a complete decline and 2014 has been an incline in our traffic and our leads. With their help and suggestions, we have been able to do some things in 2014 that obviously have helped reverse that decline we were seeing in 2013. We still have more work to do. 

Is there anything unique or special about Marcel Digital compared to other online companies?

Personally, I don’t have any comparison because they’re the only company I’ve worked with as far as SEO. But, I can tell you from my experience that because they’re not a huge company it’s to their advantage that they’re easy to get a hold of. They’re easy to work with because you have that rapport where you feel like you can call them if there’s an issue. I think that makes them stand out to me.

Looking back at the work they’ve done, is there any significant area of improvement they could do on their end or anything they could’ve done differently?

I think where Marcel is lacking is in reporting. They don’t have the reports to present to clients.