My Favorite Success Stories

        SEO is a powerful strategy, sometimes amounting to the fortune of an entire business (or in some worst cases, it’s downfall). Most of the time when people want to build the case for SEO, we say blurbs like:

“SEO has a return of investment of $22 per $1 spent…”

“91% of the web is not optimized…”

“There are 100 Billion searches every month according to Google…”

“Search’s ability to convert a potential customer is 54x that of TV…”

The virtues just go on and on. 

While Maven facts like that really get me worked up in a very curious industry, those are not the stories that float my boat or get me inspired every morning to come to work and pay 12 hours of my due. For the sake of their privacy, I’ll withhold their identities on this article. So yeah, you’ll have to take my word for it that the stories are true. What I will personally guarantee is that these are the stories that wake me up every day, motivate me through 2 hours of traffic (one way), forge through a daily 12 hour work day, and give me peace at night.

CLOSING DOWN

There’s a restaurant in Brisbane Australia that had a problem with booking and occupancy. In short they didn’t have enough customers. The pub owner rented the space on the ground floor of a modest hotel in the neighborhood and gave up his job because he wanted to create a place where people could converge, celebrate the local culture, and just relax and mingle.

After a not-victorious 2 years, the owner decides to try digital and they come to our partner agency. 

We created a strategy that could drive the most interest, traffic and awareness about them in the shortest time possible. AND – with a small business budget in mind.

After 3 months, (which is exceptional digital results velocity in Australia), they began being fully booked round the week, and after a few months, almost through the year.

The guy that took a risk saw his dream business come to life and pay off in spades.

I don’t recommend SEO as a saving grace for any business (the keyword for SEO is “Momentum-driven”). But in this specific story – late really was better than never. And better than never wound up being better than ever.

UNSUNG HEROES

One of our clients is an auto-repair shop proprietor. The client is the breadwinner of his family working 60 to 80 hours a week, and has 2 kids. And we all hear too many of these stories and know too many of these people – heroic dads and moms doing whatever it takes to put food on the table.

My Dad was our family’s breadwinner and my personal hero. And this is why this story resonates with me.

After the work we put in, he began getting booked all over the place, getting customers from as far as 15 miles away from Monday to Saturday.

But the long short of the story is this e-mail from the client:

“When I started working with you guys, I worked 12 to 16 hours a day and that’s with one part time employee. The year’s come and gone like a whirlwind. I now have 4 full time employees and 2 part timers. We’re booked with more customers than I know what to do with. I only need to work 12 to 20 hours a week now. Thank God my boy is only 8 and it’s not too late for me to be his Dad.”

BETTER THAN OBAMA-CARE

This one is particularly personal to me –my best friend being a Cancer Survivor herself. 

2 years ago an HVAC business signed up to our service and we got them ranked on the first page for 80% of their keywords in a 6 month period. It goes without saying – we try to be the best marketing decision our clients ever make – and we were!

Before the year was done though, the owner of the business was diagnosed with stage 2 cancer. They left the campaign to run on auto-pilot in spite of being incognito with our project manager or agency partner.

A year later, his wife writes us a letter telling us the story of the diagnosis, the cancer, and the year’s ordeal. She closed off the letter with this:

“I don’t know how we would have been able to put a child through college, afford chemo, and still put food on the table if we hadn’t decided to go with you guys 2 years ago. Thank you very much for all the hard work. This letter doesn’t capture what all your work has meant to a Mom and a Wife but thank you nonetheless.”

MARKETERS TELL STORIES

There are more stories like:

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in our business. A return on investment of 1700%!”

 “This has been the best marketing decision we’ve made for our business.”

“Working with your team has been an absolute pleasure. I wish we did this years ago!”

But in my opinion, none are more powerful than the three I’ve just shared. There are dozens more, and when time permits I’ll share more. But in the meantime, I hope every Digital Marketer reading this article comes away with the right message. It’s not about rankings, leads or traffic.  It’s about people and the difference we can make in their lives.