Matthew Douglas SERVICES PR, PPC, SEO 47% increase in organic traffic in first 100 days 900% increase in keyword rankings between 1-20 within six months 304% increase in site impressions within six months 16k+ estimated reach through media coverage 88% increase in site users over previous six months Matthew Douglas is an independent financial adviser (IFA) business based in Suffolk and the Citywire New Model Adviser top IFA for the East of England for 2024. Matthew Douglas works closely with its clients throughout all the stages of working life, from entering the workforce to family career building, pre-retirement, entering retirement and later retirement. The firm approached us to help it boost its profile and reach more potential clients through a full digital marketing strategy. Working alongside its sales and marketing team, we devised a communications framework to identify and generate press opportunities, including thought leadership pieces to secure strong local media coverage. Our press releases and comments yielded seven positive press mentions in just one month, boosting the firm’s visibility and credibility throughout the geographical area and the much larger financial market. We helped Matthew Douglas launch a refreshed website. Far from a simple revamp, the comprehensive overhaul involved re-thinking the concept from the ground up to ensure clear and concise copy. We interviewed sector heads of each respective area to drill down into key messages and rewrote each page from scratch, working in tandem with the design team to craft a new website that is as effortlessly informative as it is aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. Within the first 100 days, we created 23 blogs for Matthew Douglas, delivering essential financial insights on impending regulatory changes as well as reactive content around topical industry trends. As well as more regular updates, we also redesigned the business’ monthly email newsletter. Opting for a visually arresting format that draws inspiration from the style of a news bulletin while utilising the specific colours from the company’s branding, we created an arresting and easy to populate newsletter template that succinctly summarises essential financial news from the past month. The new, more design-led format has led to a considerable increase in click-throughs to the website from the newsletter itself, improving 143% compared to its previous format – with click rates improving from 5.1% per campaign to an average of 13.1%. You can see our handiwork for yourself by visiting the Matthew Douglas website and read more about our PR copywriting services and PR strategy. We were also tasked with revitalising Matthew Douglas’s approach to paid search. Previous attempts to utilise Google Ads for new customer acquisition had suffered from high costs; upwards of £5 per click. We began by setting up full conversion tracking on the Matthew Douglas site, tagging valuable events such as contact form fills, emails and phone calls. We knew that feeding valuable data like this to Google, alongside smart bidding, would go a long way to bring down costs. In addition to this, we also placed focus on the structure of our campaigns. Opting for a more segmented approach, separating keywords by intent and then tailoring each ad towards their new more tight-knit grouping of keywords. This improved search term quality, ad relevance and contributed to a drop in CPC. This new, improved structure led to a considerable decrease in costs, with CPC dropping to an average of £2.20. We were also able to improve the quality of traffic; with an average conversion rate of 4.82%, we were able to bring the cost per conversion down to a profitable level. You can read more about our paid search services. Generating interest for an award-winning financial adviser
Results
The Brief
Our Approach
Copywriting for a new website
Demonstrating expertise through blogs and email marketingDriving quality traffic through Google Ads
