Independent Performance Marketing Agency
Multi Award-Winning Independent Performance Marketing Agency.
Making the Complex Simple.
Integrated Search | SEO | Content Marketing | PPC | Display & Programmatic | Paid Social | Mobile | Amazon Management | Data Science & Analytics | Customer Experience | CRM
Part of Independent Network TIPi Group
headquarters
Focus
Portfolio
Experian Tranline Freesat GoCompare Real Techniques The Stars Group Aveva Access Group Audible Camelot Hastings InsureandGo Nextbase
ROAST and Nextbase achieve dash cam domination in UK search results
The Client
Nextbase is the market leading dash cam brand in the UK.
Challenge
Nextbase’s objective was simple, they wanted to become the Number 1 ranking dash cam brand in the UK.
Innovation
Our first 6 months focused on technical workarounds with the theme to improve Google’s accessibility of the site and content optimisations to obtain featured snippets. Our initial work proved positive, but we eventually realised we hit a glass ceiling with the current website and its restrictions.
Our SEO and Devs worked closely to create a new scalable, search-friendly website. The new site addressed many technical issues which weren’t fixable in the old CMS and enabled the SEO team to make changes quicker. This streamlined the processes of editing and optimising the site leading us to achieve Nextbase’s objective of becoming the Number 1 ranking dash cam brand in the UK.
Results
Position 1 - rankings for ‘dash cam’ and ‘dash cams’
+141 featured snippets
+73% organic traffic
Summary
Nextbase is now the number 1 ranking brand for dash cam queries in the UK.
Through technical and content optimisations we obtained position 1 rankings for “Dash cam” and “Dash cams” (up from position 14), improving traffic by 73% YoY 2019 vs 2018 (Jan-Oct)
Alongside improvements in non-brand traffic, we obtained 141 featured snippets since 2017 which improved brand visibility for long tail dashcam queries.
What the client says
“We have been working with ROAST for almost three years now and the fantastic results we have achieved together have enabled our business to grow to the point that we are now dominating the UK market whilst expanding globally. I would highly recommend ROAST to any growing business.”
Bryn Brooker, Head of Marketing at Nextbase
Using best practice SEO to help a long-established brand forge into a new market
The client
Experian - A consumer credit reporting agency.
Challenge
Experian, traditionally were looking to expand into the money comparison industry which had greater potential for growth than the crowded credit monitoring sector.
The client came to ROAST to tackle this challenge limited to using only SEO and CRM channels, with all other channels continuing to focus on credit monitoring.
Innovation
The first step was to put together a business case – an in-depth forecast – 10,000 keywords in the money comparison space assessing competition in the niche product verticals to determine what chance Experian had of gaining market share from established price comparison websites.
The business case revealed that there was significant opportunity in the price comparison space for SEO, so off of the back of this, ROAST devised a two-year strategy. The SEO strategy had a focussed objective which was to increase association between the Experian brand and money comparison in both Google and the user’s eyes.
We did this firstly by fixing historical technical issues, before focussing on expanding the money comparison section of the site. This was done by constructing a clean site architecture from which we could expand and then publishing new content in each of the product verticals to increase our chances of ranking for a variety of high-volume search terms. To complement this technical expansion, ROAST published regular SEO campaigns which tied in with search demand peaks over the course of the year and these had the sole aim of increasing brand relevance within money comparison.
Results
+106% YoY increase in clicks on Money Comparison keywords
+47% YoY increase in Comparison leads
What the client says
“We work with ROAST in a very collaborative way; we are partners rather than agency and client. We learn together and we trial together. They are experts in their field, and us in ours, and together we are doing great work.”
Elinor Faulkner-Porch, Search Marketing Manager at Experian
Building automation tools for the in-house team of a major financial services comparison website
The client
GoCompare is one of the UK’s leading price comparison sites
Challenge
The objective of the Automation project for GoCompare was to streamline the efforts of a major comparison website’s in house PPC team.
Innovation
The key thrust behind the project was simplification – streamlining the process of managing cumbersome accounts.With usability front of mind, the first step was to create a dashboard which could easily visualise the current health of a google ads account. This dashboard gave an overview of the client’s 14 accounts at MCC level with top level metrics split out by device and could be filtered by: Ad extension coverage,Historical quality score, Audience and targeting scores
This software provided actionable insights for the team on which ad groups were missing any of the above. This was done by providing a google sheet export of any ad groups that did not meet the thresholds in the script that analyses all the data.
The second stage was to create automated email alerts that would tell the team when there had been significant CTR changes, CPC changes, impression share changes, CPA changes (split by desktop and mobile), quality score changes or average position changes.
Summary
The automation service saves the client team on average 250 hours per week and thus has given room for the team to focus on overarching campaign strategy.
Secondarily, and most significantly, the tool became an effective business tool. By alerting the team to changes in key metrics, the team was able to identify change in the market from competition and raise this internally with GoCompare’s Product Team. The Product Team were able to adjust pricing quickly and feedback to media divisions in GoCompare allowing them to roll out a more competitive message to the market, reducing the impact of competition by protecting key traffic and conversion metrics.
Using content campaigns to generate cut-through for a brand in a highly competitive market
The Client
Maiiro is an organic and sustainable skincare brand
Challenge
Maiiro came to ROAST with the challenge of building a global launch campaign for their brand, to help them create cut-through in a highly saturated and competitive market and establish them as a premium, organic and sustainable skincare brand.
Innovation
Having researched Maiiro as a brand, we knew that sustainability was a core part of its identity. With that in mind, we researched into sustainability in the beauty industry and discovered that it is one of the worst for plastic waste and producing non-recyclable products. We discovered that a lot of brands were guilty of ‘greenwashing’; making out that their products were eco-friendly when in fact, they were not. We realised that Maiiro’s mission to be eco-friendly and sustainable set them apart from their competitors as a “brand for good”, so we decided to tap into this for our campaign theme in order to create cut-through for the brand and awareness of why they were a step ahead of the rest.
With our creative partner agency, Kitty, we created a campaign microsite that housed information about greenwashing, the plastic problem and Maiiro’s positioning on the issue. Releasing press releases and other collateral to journalists, we were able to secure online coverage for Maiiro in top publications and websites, generating an online buzz around the brand and creating a name for Maiiro as a brand worth buying from.
Results
25 pieces of coverage (including Refinery29 and Natural Health Magazine)
27.9m online readership from coverage
79.4k estimated coverage views
15 links to Maiiro from online publications
Summary
With a targeted distribution strategy, reaching out to relevant journalists and publications, and a successful social strategy we were able to generate an online buzz for Maiiro, as a new sustainable skincare brand that were actively participating in reducing the world’s plastic problem.
Increasing conversion rate YoY for all key services through high efficiency
The client
HCA Healthcare UK is a private healthcare company offering world-class healthcare at multiple facilities across the UK.
Challenge
Each hospital previously owned its own website, causing overlap in services. With a new central website with a focus on services and not hospitals, all ads were migrated with a brand-new account structure. This meant there were no previous machine learnings and optimisations, so we had to start from scratch. Another key challenge was that budgets fluctuated greatly throughout the year.
Innovation
By utilising machine learning, automated bidding strategies and tight keyword control whilst focusing a limited budget on top performing terms, we have greatly improved performance in the year since migration.
Each service line has been reviewed to ensure it is using the correct bidding strategy, with many taking advantage of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies. Beyond this however, CPA targets have also been set based on the service line value and conversion rates to hit the strongest performance target. Finally, CPC bids have also been adjusted within these strategies for the most efficient lead generation.
Keyword sets have been scrutinised to ensure budget is spent on top performing terms, and this has allowed us to maximise the contribution produced for the business by focusing on the highest value services and search terms. To optimise further, unique day parting has been implemented for each service line based on performance at different times of day. This has pushed available investment to the highest converting times of the day.
Results
+910% Gynaecology conversion rate
+174% Urology conversion rate
+201% Obstetrics conversion rate
+170% Neuroscience conversion rate
What the client says
“ROAST’s Paid Media team are proactive and highly knowledgeable. Their efforts have seen us massively improve our ROAS over the past year.”
Drew Robinson, Head of Digital Media and Marketing at HCA Healthcare UK
Decreasing Paid Search CPA by 42% in the highly competitive recruitment market
The client
Job Today is an employment app and website that allows users to secure employment contracts within 24 hours or less across the UK, Spain, and the USA
Challenge
Job Today was struggling to drive efficient employer registrations and job posts on their website due to the high CPCs associated with recruitment keywords. Job Today challenged ROAST to help grow registrations volume whilst also improving cost per registration efficiency. As a secondary objective, Job Today required job posts growth at an improved cost per post.
Innovation
To satisfy both objectives, ROAST devised a dual KPI strategy that combined an audience-centric campaign structure with automated bidding solutions.
Campaigns were restructured and segmented by audience type, targeting users at different stages of the conversion funnel (new users, site visitors who did not register, site visitors who registered without posting a job, and site visitors who both registered and posted). This allowed for budget to be split across KPIs and spend to be weighted across user types in line with conversion opportunity. Ad copy was tailored to new and returning users to streamline relevancy from SERP to landing page. Finally, exclusions were used to avoid the double-serving of ads as users progressed through the conversion funnel from registration to job posting.
Following the campaign restructure, Google Smart bidding strategies were implemented. The campaign structure meant that separate bidding strategies could be implemented to support each KPI. Over time, CPA targets were lowered, such that conversions were maximised to the most efficient CPA possible.
Results
44% YoY increase in employer registrations
42% YoY decrease in CPA for employer registrations
16% YoY decrease in spend
8% increase from Q1 to Q2 2019 in job posts
Reviews
the project
IA Restructure, Site Migration, & SEO for Software Firm
"They're a lovely bunch of people without big egos — they're a great match for our team."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I head up the web team in a fast growing business software company serving the mid-market in multiple sectors.
For what projects/services did your company hire ROAST, and what were your goals?
Our company grows through M&A and we initially hired ROAST to assist with our website migrations of these acquisitions to ensure we're capturing the SEO equity of those websites to bring into the 'mothership' website. We also had a site without an IA strategy.
As the business had grown, new parts of the site were bolted on in siloes. We're hired ROAST to work on us to solve this too. In addition, we also work with ROAST on a retainer for our day to day SEO activities.
How did you select ROAST and what were the deciding factors?
I'd worked with ROAST in a previous company and was happy to find out the company I was moving to was also already working with ROAST because I knew they're a team of experts, who are great to work with and reliable. I'd hired them in my previous role based on a pitch against several other agencies to complete an IA structure in that company too. Their pitch was the most comprehensive, methodical and focused on results.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.
For the migrations, they are multiple and on a continual roadmap. Each one starts with a discovery meeting for that batch, a detailed project plan is drawn up, stakeholders from the acquisition and internal teams are consulted along the way, ROAST and our team work collaboratively to ensure keyword and page mapping, page creation and technical aspects are covered.
KPIs for a successful migration are tracked and updated regularly so we're able to communicate with stakeholders on the success of a migration. The IA project involved a discovery session, a lot of data processing, over 27k keywords were analysed and mapped. Again, it was a really collaborative project with the ROAST team becoming an extension of our internal team to deliver this piece of work.
The end result saw an increase in organic search of 18% in the first 2 months. Through our ongoing SEO retainer with ROAST, we have weekly updates on email with status updates, the 'so what' and actions, fortnightly catch-ups and monthly strategy meetings.
ROAST provide essential and time intensive keyword tracking, analysis and recommendations, freeing up my team to work on other strategic projects.
How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
We have an account director who is my first port of call for communications between our teams. We also work closely with the SEO Director as well as the 2 SEO execs who also work on our account. My team and I are in regular contact with these 4 people as our team within their agency.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
Together, we've successfully delivered 8 website migrations this year and we are queuing up the next 9 migrations for 2021. Through the completion of the IA project, we've seen an 18% increase in organic traffic. We have greater visibility of our keyword ranking across multiple topic areas and sectors and actionable recommendations for improvement.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.
We have regular project Zoom/Teams calls, email most days on various projects, share Google docs so we can see progress and collaborate in real time. They're good as managing expectations with deadlines and hitting them.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
They're conscientious, experts in their field, take feedback on board and feed learnings into their internal processes so everyone gets better. They're a lovely bunch of people without big egos — they're a great match for our team. We're able to be really productive as well as enjoy what we're working on together.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Sometimes, as digital folk, we can be very pure in our field and need to take a step back to think about what we can communicate with certain stakeholders to make the most impact.
ROAST are really good at telling the story and backing up their approach with the methodology behind it - senior stakeholders often don't need/want/understand this detail and just want to skip to the bit that's important to them. T
his is something we're working on together to hone an approach to communicate complex work in an impactful way. It's definitely moved forward massively in the last few weeks with a very successful meeting this week. More of this!