Socratik

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a university, where I run our online marketing management programs. For this project, I was actually tapped from another division internally for assistance with their marketing needs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Socratik?

We have a college of medicine that operates a medical practice as well. It’s available both to staff and students as well as members of our community, and they needed some help using marketing to increase new patient appointments. I turned to Socratik to provide professional expertise on the organic SEO aspect of that effort.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with them to do a site audit and then develop specific recommendations for on-page optimizations and redesigns, content development and enhancement, and back-linking opportunities as well. Their team does the analysis and makes the recommendations, and then write the actual copy for all of the changes that we approve as well.

What was the team composition?

Most of our contact flows through Tyler (Co-Founder), and then he has a couple other people working with him to address the various tasks and issues as they come up.

How did you come to work with Socratik?

They were actually referred to us through another agency that I’ve done some work with in the past. They had more of a local community, small business focus, and some experience in the healthcare sector as well, so we decided to move forward with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent a total of about $40,000 with them in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in February 2020 and is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In terms of results, it’s a little bit harder to measure because of all the externalities that have occurred in the midst of this project and having to shut down the clinics for about 4 weeks across March and April. But despite those complications, we’ve seen nearly 130% increase in organic traffic to the core service pages that we were focused on, as well as a 36% increase in time on site and an average of 25 positions higher ranking for our targeted keywords.

One thing I really like about working with them is that the individuals we speak to about strategy and management of the project are also the same individuals who are executing on the backend. They all really understand what’s going on and are able to deliver impressive results because of that.

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

The whole collaboration has been fantastic. They are always on the ball, receptive to ideas and suggestions, and also proactive about presenting ideas that they think will benefit the engagement. They have a really straightforward, down to earth approach that we greatly appreciated. On top of that, they provide a really accessible dashboard where we can see and follow all of the trends in our data to inform how we might want to tailor our approach.

They’re open and genuine and provide constructive criticism when it’s useful, which is a very rare thing for an outsourcing agency to feel comfortable doing. The whole team is easy to get a hold of, very engaging, and always ready to discuss an issue or challenge so that they can get a grasp on the problem and start working toward a solution as quickly as possible.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are a lot of agencies out there who can push content quite quickly, but the quality is far more often questionable than not. One of Socratik’s main strengths is that they deliver fast results, but they do it by producing really strong content. We’ve been really pleased with the image they are putting out on our behalf and haven’t had to correct any information or give them many revisions that slow down our production timeline.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don’t have any complaints. They have lived up to all of our expectations with regard to the work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just be upfront and transparent early on and articulate your goals and internal challenges as specifically as possible so that they have all the context they need to deliver the best work that they possibly can for you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product marketing associate for a cloud software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Socratik?

We needed help with our SEO and digital presence.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were doing a complete website overhaul, and they helped with our SEO and digital marketing presence, within the world of ranking, in the backend of Google. They did a lot of our blogs, which entailed blog and keyword research. The team helped with auditing our site as well and creating backlinks to get us noticed on other websites.

What is the team composition?

We work with Andrea B. (Co-Founder & Director of Ops) and Andrea W. (SEO Analyst).

How did you come to work with Socratik?

We really liked that they’re a smaller organization that’s able to cater to everything we need.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2019, and our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve been very happy with the service they’ve provided. All of our metrics, from traffic increase to blog flow, have seen a steady increase. We haven’t had any dips, which shows that our strategy is working and that the SEO and keywords have been effective.

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great with project management. We communicate regularly via email and video calls. We also use Google sheets to track our content marketing work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re amazing folks to work with. We thoroughly enjoy getting to know them, growing our relationship, and building our business partnership.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’ve been very satisfied with everything we’ve used them for.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to have open communication with what you’re looking for. We’ve had some business changes in the direction of the company and they’ve been very helpful with moving through that change and maintaining productivity.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital director at Realty ONE Group, we’re the corporate office for a bunch of brokerages and a franchisor for real estate brokerages. We have almost 300 locations and we provide all the digital support and performance marketing for them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Socratik?

We hired them to help migrate our website and relaunch it. We didn’t want to lose any traction with our rankings on search engines. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a complex system, in which every time a real estate agent or office joins through our backend system, it creates a profile page that gets sent to our website. We had over 40,000 indexed URLs and they were able to create the redirect file, migrate, and do all of the technical SEO. 

We have an all-encompassing retainer agreement that includes technical SEO, a content audit, a site and a code audit to ensure everything was properly tagged and placed. They make sure everything can be crawled and Google’s bots can read it. 

What is the team composition?

I mainly work with two people, Tyler (Co-Founder & Director of Search) and Andrea (Co-Founder & Director of Ops). They manage the project as well as working on the SEO, but they also have a team supporting the project. 

How did you come to work with Socratik?

They were referred to us by an industry peer who had worked with them, so I knew they knew their stuff. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $17,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in May 2019 and our engagement is ongoing. This project was completed but we’re going into another related project. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re very pleased with their work and they’ve achieved everything we’ve wanted. We have a very complex system and they were able to grasp that workflow, so we were very happy with their ability to take that on. 

All of our pages are still able to be found as they were before the migration. Even though it’s a delicate process, our rankings haven’t dropped and our performance has been really successful. We’ve actually seen more traffic hit more of our content, too. 

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

They provide all of the documents we need, and they provide a concise outline in layman’s terms for the executive team to understand. They clearly outline what they’ve seen, what their plan is, and their hypothesis on the results. 

With so much going on, we wanted to make sure we could have a conversation about tasks and deliverables and they could take it and run with it without us micromanaging. They’re transparent —talking everything through and educating our team as well, especially helping some parts of our marketing team that doesn’t understand the technicalities of it. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re really well attuned with best practices and make sure everything is done right. Post-launch, they don’t just disappear; they monitor performance and have access to our analytics to remain invested after completing the work. 

They’re very knowledgeable about the development process and working in interesting environments. As a director overlooking a lot of different initiatives, being able to partner with a team like Socratik where we can have a conversation to outline expectations and trust them to do everything is great. They meet our expectations for communication, timelines, and deliverables. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everything from A to Z has been how we imagined our best-case scenario. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Before you approach a company, make sure you have as much of your plan outlined as you can. They were great in questioning during the discovery phase and there were things we should have been more prepared for, so make sure you give them access to do the initial audit. Have your main objectives ready — preparedness is key on the client-side. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an operating partner for Norstone USA. We’re an importer and distributor of natural stone products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Socratik?

Socratik manages our paid advertising campaigns, as well as project by project work for SEO.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They manage our monthly advertising budget for paid advertising on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. They have complete control over what our ads look like and what they say. We collectively look at the metrics to determine which are performing and which aren’t.

Additionally, we’ve had them do SEO audits. They look at our site and other websites in our portfolio to find opportunities and problems. They make a list for us and we either engage them to fix the problems or we address them ourselves.

What is team composition?

Tyler (Founder) is our main point of contact. He’s a straight shooter. Some other people are there on calls and meetings.

How did you come to work with Socratik?

We had actually worked with Tyler at another agency 3–4 years ago. When he left to start his own agency, we eventually followed because Tyler was the talent at his previous agency.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s been $18,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them back in May 2019, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve worked with numerous agencies and have handled paid advertising for years. We know how it works. Our previous agency made the process unnecessarily complicated. It was working, but we felt like we lost control. Tyler came in and rebuilt everything — making it work more easily while preserving success. It’s really been impressive.

We can now look at our AdWords and know what’s going on. That peace of mind as a business owner has been very valuable. It’s a testament to his work ethic and ability to take the bull by the horns and get better results.

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

We generally have a monthly stewardship call to review reports, results, and more to talk about paid advertising. We also use Asana. We’re very pleased with the project management, and they made it super easy to transition to working with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The results are my favorite part. I speak very, very highly of Tyler. He keeps his promises and does things the right way. They have a cohesion of business culture there that’s very respectable. Beyond all that, they get results. PPC and SEO are a results-driven game, and he brought us to the next level.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think so. This is the fourth or fifth agency we worked with — they’re fantastic.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to change. We were reluctant to let someone take what was working and completely tear it down. We made that leap of faith and they delivered impressive results.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of search marketing at a cruise line.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Socratik?

We hired them to support several different SEO projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They act as an extension of our internal team. They provide copywriting and support various SEO technical projects. The core of their engagement is content marketing and link building initiatives. They help manage manual outreach efforts.  

What is the team composition?

We work with 3-4 team members consistently. I have one main point of contact. 

How did you come to work with Socratik?

I worked with one of the co-founders, Andrea, in the past, before she established her agency. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together for about two years, and our relationship is ongoing. We started working together in July 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our work with them is highly data-driven. They’ve been able to achieve higher rankings for key searches. They continue to impress me as their work keeps getting better. They’re experts in their field. 

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re in constant communication with them via Slack. We have weekly video conference calls as well to stay in touch. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have consistent and clear communication. I also appreciate their accountability and ownership of the project. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s always room for improvement. However, they take the initiative to improve themselves by trying new strategies and tactics. They continue to push and challenge themselves. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

They’re a small shop, but I would say that actually benefits them. I’ve worked with large agencies in the past, but they’re very bureaucratic. With Socratik, I have direct contact with the people who are doing the work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a digital creative agency. We mostly handle the production side of things as far as building out the design and creative elements of campaigns that run across social and other digital channels. I’m a partner with the agency and handle all new business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Socratik?

We had a client who wanted us to run their campaigns for them and keep everything under one roof, which we typically don’t do. Therefore, we brought in Socratik as contractors to fulfill the request, and they handled it flawlessly for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were in charge of finding the right types of channels to push the campaign through. Then, they figured out the correct ad spend and budget, as well as monitor and update the campaigns for the 4-5 months they ran to ensure we were hitting the KPIs and targets we set out. As we moved forward, they helped us adjust those appropriately as well. Their work was mostly through Google Ads and YouTube pre-roll ads. We handled the creative and they handled the deployment.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Tyler (Director of Search), Andrea (Director of Operations), and Caitlind (Content Strategist). There were two main points of contact, and a third person helped with the campaign management.

How did you come to work with Socratik?

I was introduced to them through an acquaintance in the south Florida digital marketing community. They also have an office in California, but Andrea, one of the partners and owners, works out of Fort Lauderdale, where we also have an office.

I thought their customer service was excellent. It was super easy to communicate with them anytime we saw a kind of bottleneck; they were accessible, which isn’t always the case depending on the size of the customer. They treated us with a lot of respect and respected our wishes to communicate probably more frequently than is usual since we don’t usually handle the deployment side of advertising.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $10,000 without the ad spend. With that spend, we invested around $15,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June until November 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The campaign turned out well. Our client was happy. We haven’t had any opportunities to collaborate with them recently but we were really happy with them. I think they hit the targets they were looking to hit for the campaign with the spend they were looking to put down. Everybody ended up in a pretty well-off place. Regarding metrics, we saw a two-and-a-half times return on the spend.

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

We touched base a lot in a kind of stand-up or agile methodology. On Mondays, they let us know what they were going to try and accomplish that week and then we’d communicate on Friday about where the campaign stood. It was really consistent. Email and phone calls worked for us. I think they offered to keep us on a Slack channel, but we already have enough of those at our company.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I enjoyed working with them and recommend them. I’m happy to be a reference for anyone looking to work with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m sure there’s probably something but I pretty much enjoyed the entire experience. We didn’t really have any hiccups.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

With any sort of vendor relationship, it’s all about understanding their process fully and setting up metrics upfront. I think what they do well is frontload the project, taking time to educate you before diving in. I think people should take advantage of that and not rush into it. Letting them explain the process to you will result in a comfortable roll-out.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I manage e-commerce and digital marketing at Pepsi. When I was working with Socratik, my role was on the Drinkfinity brand, which is now discontinued.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Socratik?

I needed a website launch for the Drinkfinity, which was a sub-brand underneath Pepsi.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’d pushed a complete overhaul of our branding site which included e-commerce functionalities. They helped conduct SEO for the platform; their scope of work included streamlining all of our backlinks, ensuring that we were listed on aggregate shopping sites, and prioritizing keywords.

We needed to be consistent with our content generation to maximize our SEO performance, so they created a style guide for us to follow across all communication channels. While they primarily provided us with those guidelines, they developed some headlines and description copy. 

They targeted 10–15 keywords. We had around 11 SKUs on our site, and each item had its own keyword plan. Different flavors had a different extent of competition, so they took that into account during their SEO work.

What is the team composition?

I was mainly working with Andrea (Co-Owner & Director of Ops) but Tyler (Co-Founder & Director of Search) was also involved, especially in the initial integration.

How did you come to work with Socratik?

I knew Andrea from previous assignments that I’d worked on, freelance. They also came as a recommendation by a former colleague and acquaintance, so those two favorable conditions aligned.

How much have you invested with them?

We’d slotted around $35,000 for the first year, and I believe we spent most of that money.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between December 2018 and the engagement wrapped up around December 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We wanted to boost organic search against paid advertising by about 5–10%, and we completely surpassed that. We definitely saw increased traffic and higher rankings for individual SKUs.

We were very pleased with the customer care that they provided. Andrea is very hands-on, and her proactivity made the relationship easy to navigate. They also had a great follow-up in terms of measuring against our KPI expectations.

Our communications director was more experienced with traditional marketing and media, so digital was a relatively unfamiliar realm. They excelled at striking a balance between guidance and coaching. They guided us through their processes and were transparent in their communication.

How did Socratik perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication was excellent. For things that we were responsible for the implementation of, they made sure that we were executing correctly. They were helpful and proactive even when they’d just provided a framework. They’d ensure that our webpages and backend were functioning properly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a small team that’s very nimble in their communication. They were always very accommodating about meetings. They collaborated well with several team members and didn’t require one single point of contact.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. We didn’t have a longstanding relationship, but the engagement was successful for what we were trying to accomplish.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront about your knowledge of SEO and SEM. Come in with some clear indicators of what you hope to accomplish. They’ll strike the right balance between grounding and expanding on that idea and suggesting improvements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Owner at ecommerce materials supply company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to improve our SEO and web positioning in order to attract customers more efficiently

SOLUTION

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

I met Andrea at a course at Stanford and she seemed to know the space well and had a good team

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

Review web content, change web content, generate web content, analyze and adjust

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

3 people were directly involved in the project

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have seen a significant increase in our organic traffic and sales have also improved

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

They are very professional, and manage a well organized process and their analysis are very thorough and deep

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

Their level of professionalism was impressive.

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

None at the moment