Search Engine Optimisation

Absorb helped Sky to cut costs on their combined search advertising spend (PPC and SEO) through a number of on-site search engine optimisation enhancements. We helped to shape and manage this evolution and our work resulted in Sky being able to transition some of its marketing spend from the paid search channels to free organic search.

Following our SEO improvements Sky’s cost per acquisition was as much as 75% cheaper than the equivalent PPC acquisition cost, meaning Sky had to spend far less in order to continue achieving their acquisition goals.

Development with Sky

Sky TV, the largest satellite TV service provider in the UK, required a team to facilitate some of its internal marketing functions working on their transactional website packages.sky.com . The Absorb team based internally at Sky headquarters in West London were responsible for homepage management, extensive content management of Sky’s programming assets which evolved around channel specific program promotional campaigns through to full Sky Brand campaigns (implementation of seasonal brand campaigns and Sky+ and Sky+HD product related campaigns.

We also provided copywriting and social media services through other area’s of the business such as Sky1 and Sky Arts.

Program Management

Not only were we responsible for internal management of the Sky Programming Assets, Absorb were also responsible for the day to day management and liaison with Sky’s creative agency AKQA. There was a close working relationship with AKQA and Sky where close management of budgets and timelines on both sides needed to be adhered to in order to meet technical and live campaign deployment deadlines.

Absorb were also involved in extensive redevelopment of the packages.sky.com platform during which time the Sky “Buy Page” was extensively redesigned in order to enable smoother package configuration, coupled with dynamic basket functionality, and creation of up-sell message functionality through the newly optimised checkout process.

In 2009 Sky launched an annual mass cycling event across a number of cities in the UK know as Sky Ride. These mass cycling events – last year over 65,000 attended the London Sky Ride – have quickly grown to a nationwide cycling program incorporating large city rides and smaller ‘local’ rides running across 11 cities.

Social Media Audit

At the beginning of the Sky Ride initiative Sky came to us to scope out social media opportunities. After carrying out an extensive social audit analysing where cycling conversation was occurring across social networks, blogs, forums and Twitter, as well as analysing topics and drivers of conversation, we fed back our findings, recommendations and strategy for what we saw as a great opportunity for social media.

Social Media Outreach and Facebook Management

Absorb managed extensive advocate outreach across blogs, forums, offline cycling communities and clubs, as well as setting up and managing a branded YouTube channel, Flickr page and Facebook page. Our Facebook advertising campaign saw 1,000’s of targeted people being driven to the Sky Ride website to engage with the ride information and registration. Paid and organic activity here has seen the GoSkyride Facebook page fan numbers increase by 300%, all at very little cost.

For the 2010 ride schedule we also designed and developed a bespoke Facebook registration application and landing tab for the GoSkyride Facebook page, enabling fans to register for rides within Facebook itself. This within-Facebook signup process is far more in fitting with consumers’ usual online activity and therefore aids Sky in collecting even greater numbers of registrations for their Sky Ride events, capturing greater volumes of consumer data.

Sky Arts

Absorb helped Sky promote their Sky Arts channel, reaching out in new ways to its niche audience. Using a variety of social media channels we promoted each show, utilising the advocates and conversation drivers we uncovered on related blogs, websites and forums. Tapping into existing online communities we were able to directly place articles and exclusive video clips among Sky’s target audience.

Results

Our outreach resulted in thousands of internet users interacting with Sky Arts’ content, a great success for a channel with a difficult to reach target audience.

Social Audit

Our social audit for Microsoft Project revealed some key areas which weren’t being exploited by Microsoft in their marketing efforts. There was:

• A disconnect between the keywords which were being used in their current search activity and those industry terms which were seeing larger search volumes
• An excellent performance on branded search but Microsoft were invisible on generic search terms, which had much greater volume

From this research we identified the conversation topics and drivers, as well as the online venues where this activity was taking place. We uncovered the most active forums, social network groups and specialist communities discussing the product and the particular area which they focused on. This enabled Microsoft to target their message depending on the audience.

Threats and opportunities

From the foundations laid down by our research we made numerous recommendations to Microsoft all focusing on how to better place their product within the social media landscape. We established that:

• Dearth of product advocacy – share of voice for Microsoft was inverse to market dominance
• Passion around an emerging competitor signalled a threat which needed monitoring

Our work with Microsoft helped to focus their social media efforts to the areas in need, as well as increasing efficiency being able to target their message. This also enabled us to offer benchmarks upon which future activity could be assessed.

Sky 1

In 2008 Absorb took an innovative step in bringing Sky 1’s Gladiators to Facebook, creating an official hub for the show. This social venture was something new for Sky and we were keen to demonstrate to them the powerful marketing opportunities that these new social channels offer.

Results

Targeting the Facebook platform we achieved Sky’s second highest traffic driver for the campaign, at the lowest CPAs – a perfect result of high traffic volume at low cost.

Absorb are working with the Marketing Society, the UK’s top marketing network for senior industry professionals, as their official social media partner. Working alongside the Society we have created a comprehensive online strategy for the role-out of their digital presence in order to position them as a marketing thought leader, through the creation of significant social assets and networks to help mirror and promote their high profile events and cutting edge industry content.

Communicating and Syndicating Branded Content

Whilst the Society website did well to communicate their events, we felt that their industry leading content would be better suited to a news style blog, which would push it out to the forefront of the Society’s online activity and better demonstrate to their advocates the significance of the Society within the industry. The new Marketing Society blog boasts thousands of page views each week, a great result for the powerful branded content which, without the new blog, would have remained largely unseen.

Twitter is used to syndicate content further as well as keep members updated with and during the events. Absorb redesigned, promoted and trained the Society on how to use its Twitter feed, this now boasts over 1,800 followers.

Social Networks

LinkedIn Groups was another opportunity we proposed to the Marketing Society as a way of creating a social network for their members. The Group now pools discussion and commentary from over 1,200 members making it a valuable source of marking information for members, as well as a direct communications channel for the Society itself in order to source feedback, promote events or just get involved with the discussion going on. The Group also serves as a lead generation tool since, as it has grown, many non-members using LinkedIn have come across the Society and expressed an interest in getting involved.

There are a number of additional online projects were currently working on in conjunction with the Marketing Society, watch this space for these exciting developments!

Quick Cash Payday is a start-up affiliate company working to generate leads for loan providers. For the online financial industry pay per click marketing is very competitive so Quick Cash Payday came to us to help them with their search engine optimisation in order to benefit from free natural search traffic.

On-site Optimisation

Absorb began by conducting research into the industry in order to formulate a keyword strategy for Quick Cash Payday, i.e. mapping out which keywords they should be targeting. We also carried out a full technical and usability audit of their website, making numerous recommendations on website tweaks which the search engines, such as Google, would like as well as changes which the consumer would find useful.

Off-site Optimisation

Following on from our keyword strategy we devised, and currently manage, a comprehensive content and link-building plan on behalf of Quick Cash Payday. This involves creating promotional copy to increase brand awareness as well as utilising this copy online to build links search engine positions for high traffic driving keywords.

Pay Per Click

Absorb are currently running four of the five lastminute.com Travel Category accounts, equating to 90% of the overall PPC Category revenue. Our work with lastminute.com involves bidding on over 1 million keywords, across thousands of campaigns.

We manage pan-European bidding across :

• Hotels
• Holidays
• City Breaks
• And most recently, Flights

For more detail please see our lastminute.com – Pay Per Click page.

SEO

Our SEO overhaul at lastminute.com introduced a comprehensive marketing strategy, robust processes and best practise techniques. We conducted SEO analysis of high value pages including technical, content and internal linking audits.
We also devised a comprehensive Link Building Plan:

• We focus on content and quality
• Built contextual, relevant links from high quality websites
• Supplemented with PR and content syndication

In addition to these enhancements we also introduced a rigorous and standardised reporting process in order to ensure marketing managers and key stakeholders were able to see the impact our work was having.  For more detail please see our lastminute.com – Search Engine Optimisation page.

Analytics and Tracking

We have designed and managed a full-scale implementation of lastminute.com’s analytics and reporting solution. This has enabled lastminute.com to:

• Enjoy robust PPC reporting
• Utilise a sophisticated cross-channel marketing dashboard
• Conduct clickpath analysis – showing the path to sale and enabling cross-channel optimisation
• Make significant affiliate savings – de-duping and partial payment

For more detail please see our lastminute.com – Tracking & Analysis page.

Foreign Language SEO – Canal Digital

We were approached by Norwegian Cable TV provider Canal Digital to provide SEO optimisation for new pages on their canaldigital.no website. Considering client aims we made effective use of keyword research and in-depth content audits of existing and proposed pages to devise a strategy that successfully ensured optimal SEO benefit.

Investigations allowed the new ‘HD TV’ section to be incorporated into the site while ensuring optimum application of SEO. Our provision of high quality content, optimal use of meta data and focused internal linking resulted in speedy indexing of the new pages and high visibility for desired keywords.

Social Audit

Absorb helped the NHS target an audience of young West Londoners for a Chlamydia check kit, a highly targeted area and demographic. Our Social Audit revealed:

• Key online venues to engage with
• The conversation surrounding Chlamydia
• Where to prevent/correct negative sentiment

Social Outreach and Results

Our Social Media Implementation resulted in thousands of people interacting with the campaign. 7 of the top 10 referring sites came from us. Our Social media campaign was very successful and the PPC campaign was deactivated. Our use of video, utilising a Channel 4 Peep Show clip, resulted in over 3,000 views alone.