Brafton increases organic traffic by 22% YoY for Career Profiles
Challenge
Creating a marketing strategy as a recruitment agency has a few unique nuances. Not only do recruitment agencies need to attract business clients, but they also must bring in qualified job candidates. Balancing B2B and B2C marketing goals requires thoughtful strategies. Profiles, a creative, marketing and technology recruitment firm, wanted to bolster its marketing initiatives to capture new clients’ attention and bring more traffic to its website. Profiles is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, with supporting offices in Philadelphia, Richmond and Washington, DC, and has a growing presence in Chicago, Dallas, Northern New Jersey and San Francisco. With a wide range of audiences, it was important for Profiles to work with a marketing agency that could create a structured marketing plan that would drive more traffic to Profiles’ website. Polly Brady, Director of Marketing at the firm, began her hunt for the right marketing partner by searching for agencies and reviewing contractors on freelance platforms like Upwork. Nothing quite fit the bill until a colleague from another firm recommended Brafton. In March 2012, Polly contacted Brafton to see what a content marketing plan could look like for Profiles.
Solution
Brafton compiled a five-person team to build out Profiles’ content marketing plan, which included two long-form articles that Profiles could post weekly. While some of the other agencies Polly reviewed had fancy add-ons that came at a premium, she appreciated Brafton’s targeted vision that focused on the end goals of the campaign. She also valued the responsiveness of the team and her content marketing strategist’s willingness to answer questions promptly. The success that comes from the relationship is also very reliant on the efforts you put in as a client. It is not a ‘set it and forget’ journey. It takes a collaborative team to produce an impactful outcome to your business. “The team is always available and we communicate by email, except for our monthly meetings by phone,” Polly explained. “The success that comes from the relationship is also very reliant on the efforts you put in as a client. It is not a ‘set it and forget’ journey. It takes a collaborative team to produce an impactful outcome to your business.” Strong content marketing plan; simple workflow Prior to content creation, Brafton and Profiles collaborate to build out a content calendar that incorporates targeted key phrases that reflect their business goals. Profiles’ content writer at Brafton produces twice-weekly content that incorporates the keywords and phrases, and Brafton optimizes the articles with page title, URL, header tags, links to internal pages and alt text. Every article comes with imagery as well. Polly and her team enjoy the regular deliverables and simple workflow. Each article is delivered via email for her approval, and she can respond to request edits if necessary. Once the content is approved for the Profiles site, it’s directed straight into their content management system for publishing. “A weekly cadence of deliverables had both of our teams in a groove in no time,” she recalled. Since starting the content marketing initiative with Brafton, the Profiles site has received a lot more attention. Organic traffic to the website increased 22 percent year-over-year, and many of those visitors came to the site specifically through a blog. “Writing a good article that can be found is essential to attracting inbound leads, and that’s what they help us achieve,” Polly noted. “ … To know that blogs alone contributed to 16 percent of that increase tells a big story.”
Results
After Profiles’ relationship with Brafton had grown, they decided to shift focuses slightly to target B2B client lead generation. Brafton was up to the challenge, and their content marketing specialist’s knowledge of SEO, web best practices and digital marketing instilled confidence in Polly. “Understanding the challenges of B2B marketing and then seeing the results in organic traffic is very telling of Brafton’s impact,” Polly said.
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