An Awesome Relationship and a Captivating Content Plan
“SmartBug doesn’t feel like an agency—it feels like they are part of our team," said Maya. "SmartBug has a great team that works really hard for us and we have a great connection. You can tell SmartBug is really invested in how well our company is doing.”
Our team has truly integrated with The Black Swan Group’s team and dug in to determine how we can continue to captivate its audience and provide value.
This thoughtful content strategy has continued to shatter records—proving this inbound marketing plan is unquestionably resonating with The Black Swan Group’s target market.
January was a record-high month for blogging, with no signs of slowing down, but we’ll let the numbers speak for themselves:
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22,000+ page views on a single blog post in one month. This staggering volume in traffic is an amazing testament to the power of understanding your personas and supporting content creation with keyword research.
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51.71% open rate and 28.97% click rate on blog subscription emails. For reference, industry standards for consulting companies like The Black Swan Group include a 19.34% open rate and a 2.28% click rate for emails.
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407.89% increase in organic traffic year over year. This level of organic growth takes time. After nine months of blogging with strategic SEO efforts, The Black Swan Group website is reaping the benefits, with future months trending toward continued growth.
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11.21% conversion rate from organic traffic resulting in 3,616 new contacts. Conversion rate optimization has contributed to an increase in leads in tandem with the growth in traffic for a higher volume of leads.
Not only was this the most significant month for blogging, but visits and conversions from email marketing have also put up impressive results. To support the founder’s book, SmartBug created a study guide with all the bells and whistles of a fully optimized conversion path and promotion plan. These results unquestionably speak to strategic email messaging, CTA alignment, and an awesome content offer that undeniably speaks to The Black Swan Group’s target audience:
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7,649 downloads in the first week from email marketing
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66.15% submission rate on redesigned landing page
With a strong foundation for content creation that is sustainable and will keep running and keep growing, the next phase shifts to setting new goals on qualifying leads and closing those into sales.
“Now we actually have a marketing funnel! Together we’ve defined who qualifies as subscribers, MQLs, and SQLs and can refocus our foundation-setting efforts to working with our sales qualified leads," said Maya. "That part is really exciting!”
What happened next?
We developed a strategy for increasing attendance at The Black Swan Group’s 13 live events in one year using the company’s now segmented database. Using HubSpot as our marketing automation, lead qualification, and content tracking tool, we determined which leads were the best fit for these events and created personalized campaigns to continue to re-engage them.