casE studies
How UpBuild Helped Zoomdata Increase Inbound Leads by 67 Percent
“UpBuild understands our business so well they could probably get on a sales call with a prospect and qualify them for us. They’re scientific, creative, and great at analysis, plus they’re enjoyable to work with. Really, our website’s growth speaks for itself.” - Robyn Forman, VP of Marketing, Zoomdata
Highlights
Zoomdata is a visual analytics tool for big and streaming data, empowering business users to visually consume data in seconds, even across tens of billions of rows of data. Zoomdata needed an entirely new website, built from the ground up with the end-to-end SEO optimization that would help establish Zoomdata as a thought leader in the big data space.
Challenges
- Needed to build an entirely new online presence, working in concert with third-party design and user experience vendors.
- A split focus on two types of buyers meant Zoomdata’s website was complicated, but also had to present itself as an equal authority in two markets.
- After launching the website, UpBuild had to help create a robust content offering that would assert Zoomdata as a leader against stiff competition.
Solution
- Conducted heavy research of the industry and its competitors to create a perfectly optimized site architecture along with a web analytics and SEO strategy to track and target key areas of growth.
- Implemented end-to-end optimization, along with consulting to help Zoomdata optimize individual sections and discover keywords that spoke to both types of buyers.
- Oversaw the creation of the Zoomdata blog, along with ongoing content recommendations to help establish Zoomdata as an authority.
Results
- Increased inbound leads by 67 %.
- Increased traffic to specifically targeted sections by as much as 115%, with 35 % organic growth over one year.
- Identified an opportunity for growth around the topic of Embedded Business Intelligence, resulting in 139% growth in views for pages targeting that topic.
Challenges
Turning a simple website into a lead-generating machine
When Robyn Forman joined Zoomdata in 2015 as its VP of Marketing, she had a tough mission ahead. At the time, the business only had a simple, ineffective website — barely interesting enough to generate leads let alone convert them into paying customers.
“One of the first initiatives I needed to take was to build a new website,” she says. “We had basically an online brochure, but we wanted a lot more content, and we wanted to drive a lot more inbound leads. My goal was to completely overwhelm our sales team with leads.”
Zoomdata needed an entirely new website, built from the ground up with the end-to-end SEO optimization that would help get Zoomdata as a thought leader in the big data space.
To stand out in its field, Robyn also knew that Zoomdata needed to assert its authority on the subject through robust and informative content.
There was just one problem: Being a lean startup with limited resources, hiring an in-house specialist simply wasn’t possible. And with a background in SEO, Robyn was keenly aware of the hassle and frustrations that can come with a big agency.
“Because of my background, I understand the value of SEO and I know the pitfalls too,” Robyn says. “With a typical agency, you’re assigned an account manager who is the liaison between the client and the SEO who actually does the work. But I wanted direct access to the SEOs who would be working on our website. And I wanted senior SEOs who knew how to solve problems.”
To transform Zoomdata’s web presence, Robyn needed a team of SEO experts who could understand the highly technical world of big data analytics as well as any member of her team. Someone who could not only do the work, but also identify new opportunities and iterate as time went on.
She needed a partner who was a leader.
That’s why Robyn reached out to Mike Arnesen at UpBuild. The two had worked together before, and she knew firsthand the kind of results he could provide.
“My standards are quite high,” she laughs. “That’s why I went to Mike. I had seen what he could do and I was super excited that it was going to be him and very senior SEO specialists who were doing the work for me, not me communicating with an account manager and then the telephone game happening as it gets to the person behind the scenes who does the actual SEO work.”
“We had a static online brochure website that wasn’t SEO optimized. Our goal was to create a lot more content that could be found by Google and drive a lot more inbound leads.”
Solution
End-to-end optimization and a consultative approach
From the beginning, Robyn knew she had made the right choice. UpBuild didn’t assign her an account manager with dozens of competing clients. They assigned her Laura, a Senior Marketing Specialist who would take the time to understand her vision and get involved in every step of the process.
At UpBuild, each Senior Marketing Specialist only has four clients, so Zoomdata would have 25 percent of Laura’s time each month.
With Robyn, UpBuild created a six-month engagement plan that would see to the launch of the new website.
They thoroughly researched the market and worked with Zoomdata’s contracted designers and user experience partners to create an airtight plan for the website’s architecture.
UpBuild also created a web analytics strategy, including comprehensive user tracking, micro conversion analysis, social engagement, and conversion rate optimization so Zoomdata could track their full customer journey and tailor their website to better fit their users’ needs.
Zoomdata is a highly technical product, and their website is equally complicated. UpBuild worked tirelessly on an aggressive SEO strategy that would target individual sections while still driving traffic to the site as a whole.
Getting Zoomdata’s new website online was just half of the battle, though.
In order to cement their position as an industry leader, Zoomdata needed a robust blog with engaging content. UpBuild researched popular keyword themes and created a content plan so thorough that Robyn was able to save money when hiring content writers.
“They were able to write the content without a whole lot of handholding from us because UpBuild was literally telling them what to write — topics to focus on, keywords to use and the call-to-action,” Robyn says.
When Zoomdata decided to begin focusing on selling to customers who were interested in embedded business intelligence, UpBuild helped create another content plan targeting this whole new market.
Once the website was fully launched, optimized, and brimming with engaging content, UpBuild continued to work closely with Zoomdata to iterate its SEO strategy.
“We didn’t have to worry about the strategy, we just had to worry about the execution. That saved us tens of thousands of dollars.”
Results
Double the traffic and 67 percent more inbound leads
Upbuild and Zoomdata are just entering into their third year together as partners, and Robyn couldn’t be happier about the results.
“They’ve helped me with my goal of overwhelming the sales team with leads, and those leads are actual buyers in the market,” Robyn says excitedly.
The new website is currently generating 67 percent more leads, while more than doubling the quarterly traffic.
More specifically, UpBuild’s detailed strategy helped increase traffic to targeted sections by 115 percent. And their consultative approach towards content planning helped Zoomdata achieve 139 percent more traffic from customers interested in embedded business intelligence.
At the same time, that thorough content plan helped Robyn save thousands by hiring writers who didn’t need to conduct their own independent research.
In total, UpBuild increased organic traffic by 35 percent from spring of last year until now.
“We’d have to be 20 times larger to warrant hiring an in-house SEO. UpBuild gives us all of the benefit we’d get with an in-house SEO, with the added benefit of it being an entire team. They’re scientific, creative, and great at analysis, plus they’re enjoyable to work with. Really, our website’s growth speaks for itself.”