Question: IT at Work
Haley Marketing Group Enhances SEO through Social Media
Haley Marketing Group is a marketing services company, based in western New York, started in 1996 whose mission is to help companies in the staffing services industry develop long-term, profitable relationships with their customers. According to Haley's president David Searns, "In the early days, direct mail was our main communication vehicle for nurturing relationships. That evolved into e-mail marketing. But today, social media allows us and our clients to create, maintain and enhance relationships in ways that were never possible before." Haley Marketing Group makes strategic use of social media. Everything they do online is part of an integrated plan to accomplish specific business objectives.
Chief Operating Officer (COO) Victoria Kenward notes, "While we are a marketing company, we don't have an unlimited marketing budget. Like our clients, we need to maximize the impact of every dollar we spend to promote the company. That's why we don't do anything unless we have a very clear objective and we track everything to make sure that we're getting the return we need on our efforts." SEO and Social Media Like many other businesses, Haley Marketing is interested in making sure their company ranks at the top when prospective clients use search engines like Google to identify companies in their industry. Search engine optimization (SEO) involves a number of strategies to influence how search engines categorize, rank, and list web pages when people do searches. Google, among others, is particularly influenced by the amount of traffic that flows to a web site.
More traffic means a higher ranking on search results. Increasing Web Traffic via SEO and Social Media Haley Marketing Group relies on inbound marketing techniques for sales leads. Historically, direct mail and e-mail marketing provided a sufficient quantity of well-qualified sales leads, but in recent years the responses from these lists has declined. The volume of sales leads being produced was insufficient to meet corporate goals. The Members of Haley Marketing's network that want to subscribe to the blog can do so using an RSS feed button positioned next to each post. Readers also help promote the Ask Haley Blog by sharing links with their Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter Networks simply by clicking on a small button next to the post. Performance Improvements Traffic to the Haley Marketing Group web site has increased by 344 percent in the 18-month period that they have employed their ISM strategy. Unique visitors to the site have increased 504 percent, and page views have increased by 105 percent as well. Most importantly, the volume of traffic from search engines has steadily increased from about 300 per month to over 1,500.
Questions: 1. How did Haley Marketing Group define their objectives? What type of metric-for example tool, tactical, strategy, or ROI- did they use to evaluate the success of their ISM strategy?
2. Did Haley Marketing Group use appropriate metrics for evaluating their efforts? What additional metric should they consider?
3. Compare Haley Marketing's traditional approach to communication with its social media tactics. What advantages does the company gain by using social media?
4. While the case discusses Haley Marketing Group's attempt to optimize search engine optimization (SEO), what other social media objectives might they pursue with the tools they are using?
5. Research SEO. Can companies like Haley Marketing Group increase their rankings on popular search engines? Explain.