Case Study: How We Increased Organic Leads by 50%

Case Study: How We Increased Organic Leads by 50%

What happens when your web traffic and organic lead gen engine stalls?

Recently, we had to reckon with exactly that question. One of our clients, POS Nation, a top-notch point-of-sale system and software provider, started experiencing lags in traffic and organic leads. We were churning out content and using all our top plays, so the results left us scratching our heads. 

Until we took a closer look. Let’s dive into what we did to turn the ship around. 

The Problem 

We dug deep into our work for POS Nation during a process we call a Proactive Review, and did our best to poke as many holes as possible in our efforts. Why? We like to be our own toughest critics and identify issues and sticking points in our campaigns to make them better. And with POS Nation, we found a big one:

Our content wasn’t performing. 

We’re experts in inbound marketing. Producing winning content that moves the needle for our clients is normally one of our best plays. But the charts don’t lie — the content we produced for POS Nation over the past few quarters wasn’t performing as well as we wanted it to. 

The good news? We’re not strangers to iteration, optimization, and continuous improvement. Now that we had identified the root of our issues, we were ready to make some changes. 

Our Solution 

We knew our regular plays weren’t paying the dividends we wanted. What we didn’t know was why. 

What about our content wasn’t working? 

The important thing to understand about growth marketing is that innovation and creativity always involve a level of risk. Something might not pay off the way you hope it will. In other words, you don’t always get things right on the first play! 

However, when you dig into the data, the numbers will start to reveal a roadmap from where you are to where you want to be. This starting point gives you the critical information you need to make sure the next play gets you a win. 

As we dug into POS Nation’s content and data, we noticed some key opportunities for improvement and took four major steps to adjust our approach, resulting in better performance. 

1. Content Driving to Key Conversion Pages 

Even though our content wasn’t performing as well as we wanted it to, we couldn’t just stop creating new content altogether. New content keeps your site relevant to both your audience and search engines. 

With the digital landscape constantly evolving, it is crucial for businesses to stay relevant and engaging. Consistently creating new content helps keep your site fresh and up-to-date, attracting new visitors and retaining existing ones since you’re always offering something new.

For POS Nation, in particular, struggling to generate new leads in the midst of a pandemic, we knew we needed fresh, relevant content designed to drive traffic to key conversion pages. We singled out a few key conversion pages with decent numbers, knowing we wanted to drive more traffic to already-performing spots. These best-performing pages were the POS Nation interactive build-and-price page and a demo. (We also added a new offer of a buyer's guide, but we’ll talk more about that later.)

By directing readers to an appropriate conversion page for their stage in the buyer journey, site visitors in all phases could learn more about the brand and see if it was a good fit for their business before moving forward in their journey toward making a purchase. 

2. Adjusted CTAs 

The next course of action was to take a look at the CTAs on POS Nation’s site and see what we could do to optimize their performance. First, we used A/B tests to see which types of CTAs were performing best on the client’s site.

We compared the performances of the following versions:

• Form CTAs vs. straight offer CTAs
• Sidebar vs. footer 
• Static vs. dynamic

Conducting these tests gave us valuable insights into what type of CTA resonated best with POS Nation’s target audience. The result? Static footer CTAs on blog posts performed better than the other types of CTAs we tested. So, we added a footer CTA to all of POS Nation’s blog posts.  

Adding a CTA at the bottom of their blog posts encouraged readers who engaged with the full post to take the next step in the buyer's journey. This approach helped the client guide potential customers toward key conversion pages, where they could learn more about the product and, ultimately, take action. 

3. Buyers Guide Offer

We briefly mentioned the buyer's guide offer earlier in this post — now, let’s really dig in. We had offers that allowed site visitors to build and price out their own custom solutions and an offer to give potential buyers the chance to see POS Nation’s software in action.

But what about site visitors who didn’t know what they wanted yet? We crafted a new offer–the Buyers Guide–for those potential customers a bit earlier on in their journey.

This guide provided readers with information about key considerations and questions a business owner must ask when selecting a POS solution. The guide covers cloud-based software, essential hardware, and everything in between. 

By building an offer that hit customers earlier on in their buying process, we captured more leads early on, allowing us to nurture them toward their eventual purchase. 

4. Blog Content Refreshes 

The last–and largest–play we employed was to take a look at the existing blog content. We already knew many of the posts we wrote and published in 2020 and 2021 were not performing well. Now, we needed to know why. 

At Lean Labs, we often discuss the importance of building a content city, not a content graveyard. Publication of a blog post isn’t the end — often, it’s only the beginning! If your posts aren’t hitting the numbers you want them to, there’s good news: you can change those posts, make improvements, and republish them.

And so, that’s exactly what we did with much of POS Nation’s existing content. 

During our audit, we identified a few key issues:

• Some of the posts had outdated information or statistics
• Some posts were a bit too thin and needed more information to truly provide value
• Some of the posts were strong, but the keywords we targeted had a dropping volume

So we set to work, put our noses to the grindstone, and made the necessary changes to all those old posts, ensuring that every piece of content on POS Nation’s website was valuable, well-targeted, and optimized. 

Results 

Lessons Learned 

Our work to get to the bottom of POS Nation’s traffic troubles demonstrates the importance of iteration, optimization, and content refreshes.  By taking a data-driven approach to content optimization, we identified and addressed issues with existing content, developed effective CTAs, and improved keyword targeting, ultimately providing a 50% increase in organic leads. 

We also learned that finding an offer that works (in this case, the Buyers Guide) and pushing potentially interested visitors toward it is a highly effective strategy for generating leads and driving revenue.

Moving forward, we will continue monitoring content performance and making iterative optimizations as needed to ensure that the client's content remains valuable and relevant to their audience. 

By regularly refreshing content, monitoring traffic and lead data, and experimenting with new CTAs and offers, we can continue to drive high-quality traffic to the client's site and generate leads and revenue consistently in the future. 

Mallory is a Growth Marketer at Lean Labs, working with brands to ignite their growth engine through conceptualizing, implementing, and optimizing growth marketing strategies.

7 Min Read

Client Results

Aug 30, 2023