Blogging is the backbone of PetRelocation's online marketing strategy. Here’s how they are using their blogs to power lead nurturing campaigns, Q&A, e-newsletters, social media, and more.
The Challenge
PetRelocation runs a tight ship where every dollar matters. But that doesn’t mean that they are willing to settle for a sub-par marketing strategy. As a matter of fact, they are committed to being marketing innovators in the way that they reach their niche market of people needing to relocate their pets. This means that there is always a need to do more with less. Just two people run the whole marketing operation at Pet Relocation, which consists of a social media strategy, a targeted email nurturing campaign, a monthly e-newsletter, great content for SEO, and a customer/prospect Q&A. Having used Blogger and then Drupal for a combined forty-five months, PetRelocation needed something more sophisticated.
The Solution
In May of 2010, PetRelocation moved their blog to Compendium. For the first time since its launch, their blog was now organized for usability and SEO, which improved their organic search traffic. The blog has become the backbone of PetRelocation’s online marketing strategy. After PetRelocation launched a Q&A component and started collecting customer testimonials using Compendium, the blog became a support piece for sales interactions. Both pieces leverage Compendium’s Story Capture feature to gather customer content. PetRelocation’s administrator can then add an answer if appropriate, publish the story, and trigger a follow-up email to the customer/prospect that encourages them to share their newly published content.
All of this terrific content fuels their marketing strategy in the following ways:
- Social Media: Popular posts are published on PetRelocation’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.
- E-newsletter: Top posts and customer stories are used to populate their monthly newsletter – allowing them to get more mileage out of their best content.
- Sales: PetRelocation’s sales team finds relevant customer stories on their blog to highlight in prospect interactions – sometimes even connecting the pet owners over the phone.
- Lead Nurturing: After filling out a quote on their website, prospects are provided links to similar-situation customer testimonials. In the ensuing email nurturing campaign, valuable blog posts are also highlighted to build credibility and drive visitors back to the site.
The Results
If just being able to pull all of this off with two people isn’t enough to get you excited, these stats will do the trick:
- 107%: The percentage increase in content production that PetRelocation has been able to achieve since switching to Compendium
- Two: the number of months before PetRelocation significantly reduced their PPC spend after moving their blog to Compendium – thanks to the nice increase in search traffic that they experienced from Compendium’s SEO-friendly architecture
- 28%: The click-through-rate that the great blog content used in the monthly newsletter generates
- 241: The number of customer testimonials collected and published to date
- 509: The number of questions answered and published on the Q&A section of PetRelocation’s site to date
“The ease of use of the Compendium platform means that anyone can become a content creator. Whether they are a senior salesperson, an overjoyed customer or a new hire just starting out, all of these perspectives are what makes blogs interesting and compelling to read. Given the additional value of working with a platform that organizes and publishes highly optimized content for search engines, using Compendium has helped PetRelocation.com grow and tell our story in new, highly-engaging ways.”
—Rachel Farris, Director of Operations at PetRelocation
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To get a first-hand look at PetRelocation’s blog, visit blog.petrelocation.com.