PriorTax.com: Reaching Out to Users — on a tight deadline

Some businesses are seasonal. But few can compare to the tax business. So how does an online tax preparation service use a multi-month marketing campaign to get results over just a few days?

Simple:

• * A long-term SEO strategy to lay the groundwork.
• * A rigorous, analytical paid-search strategy.
• * Lots of community involvement, accelerating during tax time.

Before SEO:

After SEO:

Our SEO Strategy for PriorTax.com involved two distinct kinds of activity: building a site that search engines could understand, and bringing in relevant links. The results speak for themselves:

From October 12-18*, PriorTax.com’s search traffic’s sources:

2% SEO

32% PPC

(*October 15th is the filing deadline for those with an extension.)

From April 12-18, their traffic soared 380% from the previous tax season:

34% SEO

28% PPC

Pay-Per-Click advertising is a great way to bring in visitors fast, but you get what you pay for. All too often, pay-per click (PPC) advertising targets the wrong users, or attracts good potential clients who aren’t ready to make a purchase. By carefully analyzing the traffic from different keywords, as well as the actions users took based on what they searched, they were able to optimize their PPC strategy to bring in visitors who were ready to make a purchase.

Active community involvement was the final ingredient. Through blogging, twittering, and forum participation, Blue Fountain Media helped PriorTax.com reach out to users who were looking for exactly the services they offered. By responding to hundreds of online queries about filing late taxes, getting ahold of old forms, and generally dealing with tax-time nastiness, we were able to drive thousands of users to PriorTax.com.

Compare the numbers from two “tax seasons” (as a company that specializes in late filings, PriorTax finds mid October — when people who filed for an extension need to finalize things — are nearly as busy as April).

Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation: Finding an Online Audience for a Good Cause

Not all of our clients measure results in dollars and cents. For Gift of Life, there’s just one important measure: the number of lives saved through bone marrow transplants and cord blood donations. Blue Fountain Media originally worked with Gift of Life to redesign their website, but we’ve also started working with them to reach out to people who might be interested in their site.

For Gift of Life, our outreach program is designed around three major purposes: we’re helping to raise awareness of how easy it is to join a marrow registry, we’re broadening their donor base, and we’re giving people the chance to raise awareness through social media, whether or not they themselves donate.

So far, the results have been compelling. By commenting on blog posts, responding to tweets, and emailing online journalists, Gift of Life has attracted lots of online attention. Among the highlights: hundreds of hits from My Special Ks and their Facebook group, as well as more hits from niche bloggers, twitterers, and more. And to top it all off, we got linked by Boston.com, home of the Boston Globe:

Our work with Gift of Life is still in the early stages, though. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out new social media features for their website, getting more involved in blogger outreach, and continuing to keep in touch with the thousands of volunteers and donors who make Gift of Life the extraordinary success it is.

Tags: Design, Gift of Life, PPC, PriorTax, SEO