The Project and the Goals
Hireology originally came to Solid Digital to create a website to reposition them as a people-centric employment process solution. As they added new companies to their suite of solutions, they also saw an expansion opportunity with their customer base. The collaborative spirit between the teams wasn’t ready to stop just yet, especially with imminent growth waiting to be ushered in with a little boost, just on the horizon.
The Hireology team that was originally in contact with Solid was well-versed in quality content creation. Their segmentation, branding, conversions and engagement were all present and accounted for (and working!) after the website launch. Yet there was a missing ingredient to make their strategy really stand out and succeed. Hireology needed more guidance around:
- PPC
- Tailoring thought leadership content (with SEO)
- Increasing web visitor volume (along with MQLs)
- Creating a consistent product content structure and formula (the right message to the right audience) and
- Clarifying the SEO strategy
Hireology wanted to leverage Digital Growth to drive predictable top of the funnel opportunities with qualified leads—and turn MQLs into SQLs. Along with this, they wanted a better way to report IQLs so they could reach out to marketable contacts.
Results
With internal site updates made easy after CMS training during the website redesign project, Hireology was positioned to carry out next steps on their new website marketing strategy while allowing Solid Digital to work their Digital Growth magic. Solid’s team listened to their concerns, collected data, and gave clear guidance on best practices with proven methodologies implemented in their Digital Growth program. The Hireology marketing team enjoyed watching their Digital Value go from a negative number prior to starting the program all the way up to a positive 21.82 as of December 2022. The Digital Growth program also helped Hireology in these ways:
- 12% increase in organic traffic, due to an SEO strategy focused on valuable keywords, pages, and audiences within that traffic
- Reaching monthly MQL goals by the end of the year—a lagging indicator of successful digital marketing efforts
- 97% increase in number of top 10 SERP keywords over the 10 months in Digital Growth
DATA=PROVEABLE PROGRESS
With positive numbers and improved statistics, the marketing team is following the process—using the latest Digital Value score, the marketing team employs a tactic that every C-suite enjoys: data that shows progress. The word “Value” is part of it for a reason.
The Process
Digital Growth contains four big steps: setting goals, measuring and tracking, taking action, and forming the right habits. Each step contributes to continued growth beyond the new website launch.
Once the objectives were discussed and the teams worked out what was working, what was not working, and what the future state of Hireology should look like, Solid Digital provided the four KPIs to measure success by, including:
- Number of pieces of content created (could be blogs, success stories, webinars, etc.)
- Number of organic website visitors
- Number of top 20 keywords (>200 search volume) and
- Number of website conversions
The bottom line with the identified KPIs was to show how new traffic was getting to the site, and how to best engage with site visitors. Further in the process, Hireology and Solid Digital worked through the remainder of the worksheet, including lists of:
- Negative forces – rated by impact
- Positive forces – rated by impact and cost/effort and
- Monthly Action Items corresponding to each KPI, with a singular person tied to each deliverable
When setting out to improve each area of digital marketing, Digital Growth helps narrow the client focus: What should be prioritized? Where can we make a high impact with less effort within those top priorities? Solid Digital also brings in more of their team to help create structure and offer expertise around the growth phase, offering specialized creative, development, and SEO help. One of the biggest differences with this Digital Growth program is the empowerment of the client’s marketing team: Rather than fixing a problem that arises, Solid Digital opens a discussion around the data and creates a corresponding plan to help the client’s team accomplish the task.
Approach
The marketing team wanted specific recommendations for realistic goals and strategy suggestions for how to get there. For example, how to make use of FAQs or the best methods for SEO, like schema markup and particular keywords to focus on. Additionally, they were advised by Solid Digital to update their previous blogs instead of starting from scratch each time. In this way, they were able to implement SEO best practices and see a shift (upward) in their website traffic.
One advantage to Digital Growth is to see that data and work towards replicating similar success. For example, right when the term “quiet quitting” was popularized and trending, Hireology published a blog on the topic. Because of its timeliness, the blog landed in the top 10 search results almost immediately upon being published and brought in a lot of new organic traffic. Solid Digital examined the data with Hireology and recommended they leave space in their content calendar to write about something that is a trending topic, idea, or keyword. Rather than writing only content that was planned 6 months out (which is great), a little breathing room in the schedule allowed their content strategy to stay agile and dynamic, to try to replicate that “hit blog post” magic.
In Action
Solid Digital typically recommends aiming for at least 10 pieces of content to be published each month. Hireology has come in (more than once) with over 20 pieces of content in one month. And for those pieces of content, Solid Digital guided them to take one researched keyword phrase and break it out over 3 or so pieces of content (e.g. “candidate sourcing”). By pulling all the data together and working with the client collaboratively, Digital Growth is a living thing, too. Solid’s team listens to the client, gathers data, guides methods, and helps track additional data and growth after marketing actions are taken.
Hireology’s team likes to talk about things they can test, too. One of these was conversions (one of the original metrics they selected.) With this, they tried out a few CTA changes in their top nav, and tested out whether their audience preferred to “schedule a demo” or “take an online virtual tour.” Once they determined which one was more successful, they gated the content (per Solid Digital’s suggestion) for the virtual software tour and began to collect contact data of—you guessed it—qualified leads.
As data continued to roll in, Solid Digital noted that many visits were based on the keyword “certified nursing”—so they encouraged Hireology’s team to offer something that could be helpful to that audience, while allowing Hireology to capture that user’s information to nurture those leads.
Special topic exercises are part of the process, too: Google Analytics training was offered to support their team, meetings on email automations were held, and one of Solid’s SEO experts gave a virtual presentation to help guide them toward best practices.
Ultimately, Digital Growth is more than how to read the data and take action based on what it tells you. It’s what your team can do with it to improve and grow. Solid Digital listens to the client’s industry knowledge and brings guidance for cadence, design, messaging, and CTA best practices—a true meeting of the minds that makes a difference in the long run for your team and your company: When your marketing team has a hard time sharing data or is constantly being labeled a cost center, start sharing exactly what you’re bringing in with your Digital Value score.
Hireology is truly performing at a high level, with lots of tracking, internal scorecards, and a host of metrics. Each team member has defined goals to meet and track. With Solid Digital’s Digital Growth program, they’ve been able to set priorities and fill the gaps in their team with Solid’s help, making choices based on Solid’s experience-informed, data-backed recommendations. Being guided toward what matters most right now will help Hireology grow in the future.
