The Challenge
BizzyWeb completed a marketing audit on Ocient, revealing a huge disconnect. While there was a wealth of information, visitors could access everything freely on the site, and the tech company couldn’t follow up with interested prospects.
Furthermore, their technical SEO was sparse and couldn’t stand out amongst competitors. Without a coherent SEO strategy, it was hard for their site to push through and rise to the forefront.
Lastly, the client’s in-house marketing team was so overwhelmed with information that they didn’t know where to start or how to simplify. Fifteen separate PPC campaigns were being utilized simultaneously, unintentionally competing against one another, driving up their costs.
Because of the inactivity in some areas of marketing and too much activity in other areas, Ocient had one major problem: new leads weren’t coming in.
Client Priorities
- Get contact information from leads coming to the site
- Increase brand recognition and awareness in a highly competitive market
- Know what marketing tactics to prioritize internally
- Have a concrete and clear plan of action for technical SEO and PPC
The Plan
To help Ocient create more leads, we decided to leverage their wealth of information to create targeted inbound marketing campaigns. These campaigns would convert freely available information into gated ebooks, white papers and other downloads that could only be accessed through a form submission. This allowed Ocient to capture contact information for leads.
For the leads, this offered superior and high-value content. With automated email follow-ups, leads would be unobtrusively nurtured along their buying journey. We decided to use HubSpot to build workflows and automations, so that we could tap into information from the connected CRM to further target and tailor communications for buyers.
To help get these new inbound campaigns in front of the right audience, we transformed Ocient’s SEO strategy. Instead of a hyperfocus on extremely competitive keywords, we shifted to highly optimized yet more niche searches that were relevant to their audience. By focusing on search intent rather than short-form and highly competitive keywords, we were able to meet Ocient’s target audience during their buying journey. We shared our strategy with the Ocient team, so they had a roadmap to follow for any additional internal marketing efforts.
Since SEO is a slower build over time, we also needed a quicker way to start getting new leads in. We turned our attention to the disorganized PPC strategy. Our team created a comprehensive strategy that echoed the goals of the SEO strategy: meet leads at the right time during their buying journey and provide them value. Instead of competing on expensive and highly competitive short-tail keywords, our ads focused on the buyer’s journey and search intent to hit that sweet spot of highly qualified leads at a lower cost-per-click.
The Results
%
Engagement rate compared to 37% industry average
15%
Increase in organic traffic in just 3 months
10%
Average conversion rate on landing pages
The inbound marketing strategy ensured that prospects found the right content at the right time. By gating content, this highly-qualified audience needed to exchange contact information for this content. This created actual leads and not just pageviews. We found that the nurturing emails helped coax these leads from the awareness stage of their buyer's journey towards consideration and decision. This meant that once the Ocient sales team directly contacted these leads, they were more primed and more likely to convert.
The SEO strategy improvements also yielded great results, with organic traffic increasing by 15% in the first quarter. By focusing on search intent instead of highly competitive keywords, we were able to increase rankings on less competitive searches, which in turn created these overall increases in traffic back to the website. To top it off, the technical SEO health score of the website, overall rankings, and SERP features rose.
The Ocient team now also had a guideline to follow when creating new content assets to be gated, as well as how to approach supporting content efforts with SEO on landing pages, website pages and blogs. This direction gave the team more confidence in their internal efforts alongside BizzyWeb’s marketing efforts.
We streamlined Ocient’s 15 PPC campaigns into fewer, more targeted campaigns. This meant less money wasted and more leads coming in from PPC. With the strong foundation of the inbound marketing content assets and the supporting SEO, the PPC campaigns saw a huge boost in the number of conversions.
Ocient went from overwhelmed to unstoppable. By transforming content into lead magnets supported by longer-term SEO and immediate PPC efforts, they finally started getting the leads they deserved. With a smart strategy and clear plan, they’re not just keeping up with their competition - they’re getting ahead.
