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Company: Wynyard Consultants Ltd
Project: Weschenfelder Search Marketing

http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk

Dates: Jan 2007 to Mar 2008

How did the project start?

Wynyard Consultants Ltd provides a full internet marketing service to our clients. We were asked by Weschenfelder Ltd. based in Middlesbrough since 1921 to find ways that we could help them to promote and drive sales from their new website selling sausage making equipment. The site was a substantial investment from their perspective and over a long period since its launch it had seen next to no success in terms of sales, or achieved any search engine visibility for the company. Weschenfelder needed to know if it could be made to work or whether it was better to stop investing in it.

What options did you consider?

We looked at organic search marketing, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing and directory submission principally. We considered the major PPC engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft AdCenter) and ran trials which soon revealed that Google Adwords would provide the best return on investment and that over 80% of the available and relevant traffic came through Google.

What help and expertise did you receive?

We have all of the expertise to run the campaign in-house. We invest heavily in ongoing training and have greatly benefited from support from the Institute of Direct Marketing, supported and part funded by the Train To Gain initiative.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

The principal technical challenges lay in finding a way to optimise a website build around an Open Source e-commerce platform. Although many plug-ins were available we needed to evaluate these to find the most effective means of for example, converting urls to be search engine friendly, automating submission to Google Base and adding relevant content in locations that would be correctly 'spidered' by search engine software. In respect of the Adwords side we have learned that long term commitment to refine and research new keywords and ongoing manual bid management pays big dividends in greatly reduced click costs. We have also learned the importance of optimized landing pages for sales conversion and the extent to which click through rates can be greatly influenced by small changes to the wording of ads. We also learned that Adwords has a significant branding impact alongside its more obvious client acquisition benefits.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

The client has seen the business grow from next to nothing to a profit well into 6 figures in 2007. The return on their advertising spend is consistently around 500% with new clients acquired for around £2.50 and average order values climbing steadily as repeat business grows and clients become accustomed to the site. Although all of the tasks in administering the fulfillment side of things are currently shared amongst existing employees our client has to all intents and purposes created a full time role in managing the website.

What are your plans for the future?

We would like to enhance the site with more relevant and interesting content, although this would probably mean a redesign. We would also like to launch a blog and some instructional videos to You Tube to exploit Google Universal Search. We also have plans for a database driven e-marketing campaign as our client now has a high quality database of over 5000 clients.