Sked Social Increases Organic Search Traffic to Their Blog by 760% in 90 Days

Sked Social is an instagram-first, social media scheduling app. With over 10,000 customers and an impressive roster of businesses like Groupon, BBC and Voice of America. It’s no wonder Sked has become a top choice for many social media teams who need to save time and manage their workflows more efficiently.

Sprint 1: Standing Out from a Sea of Instagram Schedulers

Problem

  • They only had a marketing team of one with a handful of part-time freelancers
  • Their content was getting little-to-no traction despite posting very regularly
  • Almost all of their conversions and activations originated from a single keyword: their brand name

Solution

The very first thing we recommended was an SEO content audit. It’s perfect for identifying on-page quick wins and opportunities to fix.

Since there were 50 blog posts, we knew they were sitting on a goldmine that would soon pay dividends.

During the optimisation process, we also analysed their competitors to identify the best possible keyword each page should target.

The Result (Initial 3 Months vs. Previous Period)

a screenshot of Sked Social's Google analytics dashboard showing a 3 months' growth comparison
  • SEO Traffic: +74.09% (46,808 vs. 29,898)
  • App Signup Conversion Rate via SEO: +89.85% (0.82% vs. 0.43%)

Playbooks Used

  • Competitor Analysis (Market Research)
  • SEO Content Audit (SEO)

Sprint 2: Editorial Inconsistencies and Churn

The Problem

  • First-time visitors weren’t immediately aware of the product’s primary/secondary features and how it could help them save time, improve engagement and increase sales
  • Sked’s blog was generating very little leads even once traffic improved
  • Traffic was steadily increasing but the blog was vastly inconsistent with no clear editorial guides

The Solution

During this sprint, our focus was to raise awareness about their primary and secondary product features.

Some customers would churn because they felt Sked didn’t have specific Instagram-native features like other platforms. However, these features did indeed exist, customers just weren’t aware of them.

We overcame this problem by creating more product-focused landing pages targeting personas at different journey stages.

In addition, we experimented with showing how the product helped customers achieve specific goals through the use of in-app screenshots within their content.

We tested this experiment on their 10 top performing articles to see if it would translate to more signups and conversions.

The test lasted one week.

It was so successful, that we implemented the process on 50 additional blog posts and coined the term “product weaving”.

Finally, we created detailed editorial guidelines for writers and publishers, designed to maximise conversions whilst increasing organic traffic. This came in the form of an “Editorial Guideline” and “Editorial Calendar”.

These two documents became very powerful as freelance writers and guest authors knew exactly what they had to write, in order to get published.

The editorial calendar was a simple Google Sheet which contained content ideas guaranteed to drive targeted traffic and leads.

The Result (Next 3 Months vs Previous Period):

a screenshot of Sked Social's Google analytics dashboard showing a 3 months' growth comparison-2
  • SEO Traffic: +348.11% (180,810 vs. 46,980)
  • App Signups via SEO: +79.42% (2,824 vs. 1,574)
  • App Signup CR via SEO: +0.42% (0.83% vs. 0.82%)
  • SEO Traffic via Blog: +769.24% (155,838 vs. 17,928)
  • App Signups via Blog: +1,176.32% (485 vs. 38)
  • App Signup CR via Blog: +93.06% (0.25% vs. 0.13%)

As you can see, the number of signups via SEO, the blog and the app signup conversion rate via the blog increased dramatically.

Playbooks Used

  • Content Strategy (SEO)
  • Competitor Analysis
  • Landing Page Design
  • Product Weaving

Sprint 3: Lead Quality and HubSpot Analytics Attribution

The Problem

  • Current analytics couldn’t accurately track users from first-time visitor to customer, so it was tough to deduce which channels and/or content contributed towards subscriptions
  • Getting an insane amount of leads from previous SEO and content strategy efforts each week but trials would struggle to convert into activations
  • HubSpot’s implementation service would take 6-10 weeks to complete

The Solution

As expressed in Sprint 2, the product weaving experiment was a success; so we rolled it out to 50 additional blog posts.

In order to accurately measure the full customer journey, Sked switched most of their marketing and reporting stack to HubSpot. Due to this, we were all able to get a 360 view into our customer’s behaviour.

There was a steep learning curve to getting up and running with HubSpot. Especially, as we haven’t used it before.

Due to the tempestuous nature of switching platforms, we got stuck into HubSpot’s HUBL and created our very own template.  

a screenshot of Sked Social's website

Support told us it would take up to six weeks for internal templates to be created, but we couldn’t afford to be idle.

Once everything was migrated, we continued designing and publishing landing pages aiming to capture prospects by targeting middle and bottom of funnel keywords.

Finally, to combat poor lead quality, Sked’s founder made a clever move. He added an email filter to their signup form to trigger required credit card fields when users attempted to signup with free email addresses. E.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc.

This had an impact on signup conversion rates, but improved lead quality. Resulting in lower churn rates, higher activation rates and fewer support tickets.

Moreover, less time was wasted delivering product demos to prospects who didn’t have the budget in the first place.

The Result (Next 3 Months vs Previous Period):

a screenshot of Sked Social's Google analytics dashboard showing a 3 months' growth comparison-3
  • SEO Traffic: +52.76% (276,209 vs. 180,810)
  • App Signups via SEO: -14.09% (2,426 vs. 2,824)
  • App Signup CR via SEO: -32.59% (0.56% vs. 0.83%)
  • SEO Traffic via Blog: +57.50% (246,282 vs. 156,369)
  • App Signups via Blog: +44.33% (700 vs 485)
  • App Signup CR via Blog: -8.00% (0.23% vs. 0.25%)

Playbooks Used

  • HubSpot Template Design
  • Landing Page Creation
  • Product Weaving
  • Form Optimisation
“David's great, his expertise ranges from top-level SEO and content marketing to the more nuanced product marketing and user experience. He's an outstanding writer, a hard worker and great to be around!”
- Dunja Lazic

Our Work with Sked Social

Since working with Sked Social from June to December 2018, inbound marketing has continued to have a tremendous impact on their bottom line.

Sked Social Case Study Results
  • 45% increase in leads (from 3,789 to 5,491)
  • 43% increase in sales (from 1,040 to 2,030)
  • 341% increase in search traffic (from 145,223 to 648,326)
  • $35,158 in MRR generated from SEO alone
  • Lifetime impact: $1.5m

If you’re a B2B SaaS company looking for marketing help from an established provider who understands your market and speaks their language then get in touch with us today.

David Oragui
We teach and implement fast-growth product marketing strategies across the entire funnel for SaaS companies and B-Corp organisations with products designed to make the world a better place.