1. Background

Our client sells e-cigarettes to customers in the UK. They don’t have a physical store — all sales come through their website. When we started working together, the business was already doing well by the standards of a small business. But they decided to take some of their profits and invest them by increasing their online marketing spend. That proved to be a wise investment.

We started work in October and in the first full year, we increased sales by 56.47%, from £230,000 to £356,000 per month. In the second year, sales increased by a further 41.63% to just over £500,000. This year, the company had another record sales year, doing a cool £670,000 each month.

Caption: the graph above shows how sales increased for our client in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

2. Objective

Our client had taught himself the basics of online marketing and made many smart marketing decisions. But he’d reached a point in his business where his time was needed elsewhere. We came on board to take over every aspect of his website’s online marketing, so he could focus on running his business.

3. Strategy

As e-cigarettes are regulated, we couldn’t rely on PPC advertising or paid advertising on social media. We looked at our client’s website and saw we had a decent chance at success. The business had a good range of products and sold them at reasonable prices with free shipping available on larger orders. Visitors who came to the website were converting, so we could see the business had potential.

In the first year, we managed to increase the number of people coming to our client’s site through Google searches by 75.82%, by splitting our efforts between two goals. The first was to improve the client’s website and get it ready to handle more visitors. The second goal was to make sure that when potential customers typed “buy e-cigarettes online” into Google, our client’s website came up as one of the first options.

• We looked at the words and phrases used by potential customers when they searched for e-cigarettes online. We improved our client’s website by making sure it used the language of their customers.
• We wanted potential customers to visit our client’s website rather than any of their competitors. To this end, we edited our client’s page titles and meta descriptions to make them more appealing to searchers.
• Internal links — the links on a website to other pages on the same site — help potential customers to easily move between the different parts of the site. We reviewed and improved the internal links on our client’s website.
• New blog content on a website can attract more visitors. The content must be highly relevant — otherwise, your visitors won’t become customers. We started publishing blog content once a week, covering the latest developments in e-cigarettes and compared the risks of smoking versus the risks of using e-cigarettes.
• We discovered many potential customers were overwhelmed by the number of products available on our client’s website. To help new customers make the right purchase, we created in-depth product guides that compared different brands of e-cigarettes. These guides varied in complexity, depending on whether they focused on new or returning customers.
• By positioning our client’s brand as a trustworthy source of information for e-cigarette enthusiasts, we grew business significantly. We did this by writing about e-cigarettes on several different websites. We even secured a regular column in one of the industry’s top websites.

Caption: the graph above shows the total number of visitors coming to our client’s website growing over time.

4. Package

Our client started on a medium-sized package and upgraded to one of our largest packages when we showed them they were making a return on their investment. We’ve been working together for over three years and the site is more visible — and successful — than ever.

5. Results

• We increased the number of monthly visitors on our client’s website by 110%.
• We increased the number of visitors coming to our client’s website via Google searches in the first year by 75.82%.
• We grew monthly sales from £230k per month to £680k per month.

Caption: the graph above shows how often our client’s website is visible to people making searches on Google and other search engines. Note the turbulence around Google’s Medic update. However, we came out stronger than before.

Our client is extremely pleased with the results. His website has increased sales year-on-year, making a massive return on his original marketing budget. He’s rightfully proud of the progress his business has made.