By: Rick Kieser, Ascribe CEO

AMA Cincinnati has offered 2016 Pinnacle Award Winners and Finalists to contribute to the AMA Cincinnati blog to share details and insights about their award-winning projects.

Ascribe won in the Best Use of Website & SEM category.

Marketing Excellence – Collaboration is the Trick Up Our Sleeve

I am not a marketer, but I am a believer in the “magic” of marketing. I see it in the intersection of talents across the spectrum of creative, technical, strategy and delivery. Combining the best of each skill set in an integrated team approach put our website at the top of the pack to win the 2016 AMA Cincinnati Pinnacle Award for “Best Use of Website & SEM.”

Ascribe’s Challenge – New Website for a New Customer Base

Ascribe is the leading global provider of verbatim management software, transforming open-ended comments into actionable insights. We have a long history serving the world’s leading market research firms, and recently extended our service offering directly to corporate users. This meant shifting the focus, messaging, tone, content and structure of our website, and at the same time modernizing it for appearance, user experience (UX), responsive design and dramatically improved Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Ascribe’s Solution – Critical Success Factors

Marketing excellence requires both a broad, strategic view and a keen focus on details. One without the other paints an incomplete picture and yields inferior results. With that in mind, we approached our website revamp with three overriding strategies:

  • Right People: Assemble team of external resources, including content, web design and development, graphic design, SEM and digital strategy, to collaborate with in-house subject matter experts on strategy and execution
  • Right Process: Incorporate SEO/Keywords and strategic external links in original design and content development with ongoing monitoring for continuous improvement
  • Right Technology: Capitalize on plug-n-play technologies as foundation with customization in key adaptable areas

Results – Early and Ongoing

Armed with a strong baseline of KPIs from Google Analytics, we logged immediate impact, including:

  • Mobile traffic up by as much as 250 percent
  • Exemplary site audit scores, a direct driver of improved UX
  • Average monthly web leads up 20 percent
  • Conversions up 42 percent, increased site traffic, page views, session duration, new users, return users, and decreased bounce rate
  • LinkedIn followers increased more than 50 percent with our blog as the anchor

We have also been able to make real-time adjustments in both content and structure based on actual visitor behavior. For example, we observed an under-performing page with higher potential: Session duration of only 25 seconds and a very high bounce rate despite a positive 75 percent scroll rate. We restructured the page, and within one month, duration improved from 25 seconds to three minutes and bounce rate improved by 19 percent.

Magic of Marketing Excellence

We are extremely proud of our new website – not just how it looks and feels, but how it performs for us, and our customers/prospects. It is only magic if the audience believes, and AMA Cincinnati Pinnacle Award for marketing excellence is further evidence that the art, science and hard work of collaborative marketing can do the trick.

Special Thanks to the Team

The Sound Press (Adam Smith, Josh Chapell)
SEO Exposed (Matt McKeown)
Steady On Sales (Gina Bonar)