When SEO Services Beg Question

In mid-2023, we were approached by a seasoned player in the financial services industry. Under protection of client confidentiality, we’ll refer to the client as X. At the time that we were approached, X already had a solution in place for SEO, Social Media Management and Paid Media Advertising (including generous spend on Google and Meta Ads) with a competing agency. The approach to us pertained to video marketing to supplement their existing digital marketing and SEO services. Knowing that the optimal combination of SEO, Social Media and Paid Media is unlikely to ever not yield results, to the question “why” X felt it necessary to supplement their marketing, the response given was a decline in leads from their then online marketing strategy.

X services its clients’ financing needs, including the very lucrative cash loans market. In an economy where consumers are cash-strapped from rising interest rates, inflation and rising fuel costs, it is a growing market. It didn’t require the sharpest commercial brain to recognize that something had to be misfiring in the digital marketing strategy for results achieved to be sub-par given the healthy budget availed by the client for their online marketing.  The question to be asked, therefore, should not have been “should we try video marketing to increase website leads?” but rather “why is our existing strategy not delivering better returns?”

As our conversations unfolded with the client and we came to understand the services that they wished to supplement in approaching our team, we suggested a detailed review of their digital marketing strategy to assess whether a video strategy was in fact advisable and if it could redress the decline in leads. 

Our investigation revealed significant weaknesses in three primary areas:

Digital Marketing is severely compromised where the anchoring SEO strategy is absent or weak and is not supported by both Social and Paid Media initiatives, especially if the brand in question has a significant portion of or is entirely driven by B2C business.  This case proved it yet again. In addition, the business was significantly compromised by the development of the new brand as the anchoring brand for Meta Ads.  Simply put, an unknown brand became the overnight face of a formerly established brand – the implication of such a setback can be financially devastating.

In late June 2023, we were onboarded for SEO, Social Media and Paid Media (Google and Meta Advertising). Our team set to work in July 2023, with the agreed targets being:

• Eliminate the alternate and restore focus on the primary brand. This included research and implementation of a grounded SEO strategy, followed by a reconstruction of the primary and removing the alternate brand website.
• Restoring Meta ads to the primary brand and removing the alternate social pages.
• Aligning the Google Ads strategy with the new SEO strategy.

The new website was launched in early July and within a fortnight of commencing the engagement, the remaining milestones were in place.  Our SEO team was then hard at work developing the online reputation needed to cultivate organic rankings.