PBJ Marketing

What was the scope of their involvement?

They started by doing a deep dive analysis on the site to find all the keywords that our competitors’ sites were using. They did a UX [user experience] overview. They helped us come up with a strategy to get higher Google rankings. They got us on some search ranks and some search engines that weren’t on.

They also helped us decide what content to create and focus on and made a lot of improvements to our page theme. This included making images smaller and standardizing a lot of things. They taught us how to use an SEO plugin we needed and to create SEO friendly titles. Now, they’re helping us with the website redesign strategy.

What is the team composition?

There were 3–4 on the team. We worked with Phillip [CEO, PBJ Marketing] and David [Chief Security Officer, PBJ Marketing], the owners. They switch off depending on what we’re working on. We also work with Michael [Head of SEO, PBJ Marketing] who is the specialist who does the fast-linking, and Wenyi [Digital Strategist, PBJ Marketing] who does a lot of the competitive research.

How did you come to work with PBJ?

They were a referral from a web designer. We selected them because they understood our site feeds, where we needed to go, and what we needed to do next. It was clear that they had special skills that we didn’t. They were the first company we talked to, so we decided to give them a try on a monthly basis and ended up sticking with them.

How much have you invested with them?

$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2016 and the work is ongoing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their involvement has been just incredible. We talk almost on a daily basis. I don’t think any of us anticipated the daily interactions that we’ve been having, mainly because we were accustomed to our previous vendor who we would talk to once a month or once every six weeks, which probably was indicative of some of the challenges we were having. PBJ was able to do an under-the-hood assessment of all three target areas, and they identified several red flags for us to be concerned about. They put forth a proposal to address those red flags. They also helped us in what we needed to do to accelerate and increase our success rate on PPC and AdWords and also SEO which we’d never done before.

When we decided to work with PBJ, one of the first things that we did was just start to overhaul our website. Our website has tens of thousands of items, and it needed a major overhaul just because of the years of mistakes. They’ve done extensive work with just renaming photos, renaming product descriptions, working on our search filter, and working on the overall feel of the website as far as the interaction on the site itself and interaction on the cart.

We consider PBJ part of our company because they know everything about our products. They know where we want to spend, how we want to spend, and take into consideration our high-profit margin products. They have taken a comprehensive approach to how we’re spending our money and making sure that we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck.

On the SEO side, one of the biggest components that we’re learning is getting back links to non-affiliated sites to Foremost but sending them over to our website. What we did over the past six weeks is launch a blog. They’re in charge of doing all of our blog entries, which have been pretty extensive, along with a calendar of when those blog entries will go up over the next six months, twelve months, etc. They’re responsible for writing all of those blogs, finding the information, and putting the keywords into those paragraphs so that we can get higher results on organic search.

They’ve also taken on our email marketing campaign. We’re reaching out and targeting specific current customers of ours, and then we’ll expand that to include future customers.

We have four people from PBJ who we work with consistently, including Philip [CEO], David [CSO], Michael [Head of SEO], and Bennett [Digital Marketing Analyst]. I know there are people behind the scenes working with them on their team.

How did you come to work with PBJ Marketing?

We had talked to a lot of other companies by doing an interview process. It really seemed that PBJ knew what they were talking about, but they weren’t just interested in what they were talking about. They were really interested in us as a company. When they started talking to us about profit margins and making sure that we were spending money on products that we’d make money on, it was really fantastic. They really care about how our company succeeds, not just about how they look on the clicks. We felt that they had the most detailed assessment and were the most engaging and articulate. In the tech world, one of the challenges is that sometimes when you deal with people that are non-tech oriented, such as us, things get lost in translation. Being able to communicate what they were trying to achieve but also listen to us was really paramount in making sure that we had a company that we wanted to partner with.

How much have you invested with PBJ Marketing?

We’ve spent between $40,000 and $50,000 on their services. Including our AdWords spend, we’ve spent between $120,000 and $150,000. We’ve increased our budget consistently because we’re really satisfied with the results and trust them. It is really a sign of our true partnership, I think.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January of 2017, and the work is ongoing. 

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

PBJ Marketing has done different types of advertising and have updated the website for the National Osteoporosis Foundation. They do a lot of search engine optimization and are able to help an organization gain a larger following online. They also created a flipbook for people that have recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis that explains the medications and physical activities you should do to prevent the disease from progressing. We've been impressed by them.

How did you come to work with PBJ Marketing?

I met them through one of their clients who was satisfied with their work. I was looking for some professional help as I started my blog and, once we met, we hit it off from there. That was three or four years ago.

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

The cost of the work for my blog was about $10,000, and the work for the National Osteoporosis Foundation is between $50,000 and $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I've worked with them for a little more than three years on my blog, and I'm very satisfied. We actually just relaunched a new blog with catchy designs. It's fantastic.

I started working with them at the National Osteoporosis Foundation about two and a half years ago, and we are still very engaged with them. I don't even put out RFPs [request for proposals] any more. We exclusively use PBJ Marketing.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

PBJ Marketing has provided research on our strategy, competitors, and competitive landscape. They did an SEO [search engine optimization] audit of the site, created a blog to improve our ranking, and designed content for multiple special events invites. We're currently developing our go-to-market advertising and customer retention plan with them.

How did you come to work with PBJ Marketing?

I interviewed a bunch of agencies that I found through referrals and through the WeWork coworking network. I was looking for a smaller agency that was agile and used to working with startups. We needed more attention and focus.

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

We spend an estimated $60,000 to $100,000 yearly.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for about five months. We consider them an agency of record, meaning that they have a pivotal role on our team. They provide us with connections to other providers, and they help us coordinate, schedule, and manage other vendors. We're about to enter into the next phase of our relationship, which is the heavy roll out and launch of our targeted online advertising.