Client Info:
Name: FileLater
Website: FileLater.com
Summary: FileLater – the leader in tax extensions – provides a secure online solution for individuals and businesses seeking to e-file an IRS income tax extension.
Length of project: 6 months
FileLater’s Goal(s):
Due to increased competition in the tax industry overall, and specifically in the tax extension niche, FileLater came to Brand5 with the following goals. For the sake of this case study, keep in mind that tax season runs from January 15 – April 20.
- Drive profitability in the following ways:
- Lower the spend on Pay Per Click by increasing organic traffic by 25%
- Increase revenues driven by other domains owned by FileLater by 100%
- Manage FileLater’s affiliate marketing program with goal of turning it from break-even in previous year to profitable
Services Performed:
Results:
The first two goals go hand-in-hand. Essentially, FileLater wanted us to make their marketing efforts more profitable. By increasing organic traffic’s overall share of the pie, they planned to spend less (and more efficiently) on their PPC campaign.
Here are the results of our efforts:
- For the entire tax season, organic traffic went up by more than the goal rate of 25%.
- Overall organic traffic*:UP 38% (13% higher than the goal rate)
- Google organic traffic: UP 32%
* Organic traffic includes Google, Yahoo!, Bing, AOL, Ask, Alta Vista
Worth mentioning is a secondary metric that further illustrates how our guidance improved FileLater’s positioning in search:the amount of organic keywords that sent traffic to the website went up 35% during the peak season. That means going forward (and they are already seeing the benefits with an overall increase in organic traffic) there are more than one-third as many keywords in the search engines resulting in traffic begin delivered to the website.
Next, in terms of our affiliate marketing approach, we advised that FileLater implement a content strategy on the micro sites they currently had up-and-running while at the same time activating some of the unused valuable domains they owned. By activate we mean that we want active websites ranking high (higher than FileLater’s main website if possible) in organic search. The goal was for these sites to capture more qualified leads and send them to FileLater for conversion.
Here are some of the micro sites we created:
Here are a couple of examples of simple landing pages we built. We wanted to test to see what differences, if any, would occure with conversions between a full micro site and these simple landing pages:
The results were phenominal. Not only did these sites perform well in search, they also converted extremely well. The goal was to double revenues from domains owned by FileLater. We nearly tripled their sales – the increase in this area was 197%!
Search positioning-wise, some of these micro sites now completely dominate highly relevant, high-volume terms. Take eFileForm4868.com for example. The microsite we built now ranks #1in all of the following searches:
In some cases, the micro site adds a second link to page 1 of the search engine results, giving FileLater two options for users to click. Here’s an example, this is for the search “efile 4868”.
NOTE: the micro site we launched ranks ahead of search giant IRS.gov (indicated with the arrow).
Last but not least, the ROI FileLater receoved from using our services.
Cost: we charged FileLater for 6 months of services + the fees they spent on clicks in the PPC campaign + affiliate marketing commisions.
Revenues: any sales resulting from their organic search, paid search, affiliate sales, and micro site sales.
ROI: The final calculation shows that FileLater nearly got back double their investment in our services, or 92%, over a 6-month period.