Australian Stock Report Lead Acquisition

The client

As an investment insights subscription business, Australian Stock Report relies on a reliable stream of qualified leads to continue to grow the business.

After years of marketing using primarily in-house resources, Australian Stock Report’s lead pipeline had plateaued. Realising that outside inspiration and expertise were required, ASR engaged Yell to reposition and rebrand the business, while simultaneously delivering regular campaigns and increasing the number of leads generated.

Maximising existing assets

Australian Stock Report had some excellent assets, including access to a large database of qualified leads and a market-leading research and insights team, a team that consistently delivered stock market recommendations that out-performed the ASX/200 – the stuff that content dreams are made of.

All of the ingredients were present to deliver an effective sales funnel. However, they weren’t being leveraged effectively. Poor copywriting and design, multiple offers in single campaigns and a sales-focused approach meant that customer needs had been forgotten in the ongoing search for leads.

The result was a high cost per click (CPC) from the primary source of traffic (Google SEM), a high cost per acquisition for leads, low EDM and on-site conversion rates and ultimately decreasing sales.

The solution

Yell began the engagement by applying best practice copywriting and landing page design to existing campaign plans, which saw instant results.

Within two months, the new approach had delivered Australian Stock Report’s best performing campaign ever – delivering 12% of the leads that had been received in the entire previous year from just one series of EDMs.

Next we developed unique landing pages with messaging tailored to the user. Each page was aligned with key search terms and targeted to their demographic through Google’s display network user profiling. We ensured that each prospect viewed a message that would resonate with them, ensuring that they were much more likely to convert.

Testing showed us that leads were much more responsive to content-led offers, rather than the existing free trial offer, which had previously been the primary call to action. Armed with this knowledge, we moved the focus from demand generation landing pages to offering time-sensitive recommendations from Australian Stock Report’s Analysts, encouraging prospects to opt-in to receive them.

Within two months, Yell had reduced the cost per acquisition (CPA) for SEM leads by 35% and doubled landing page opt-in performance.

To ensure that there was a steady supply of leads, we developed a structured campaign calendar, mixing in content offers with sales promotions and competitions, activating the existing database and converting fresh leads.

As well as delivering a higher number of qualified leads to the sales team, we also ensured that they had the tools they needed to close their sales. We created a clear outline of the services and the benefits they provided, which ensured that the offer was clear to prospects and also gave the sales team an opportunity for an educated follow-up call.

The new approach has seen a large increase in both fresh leads and leads from the existing database, as well as a substantial reduction in the cost per lead.

• Total leads (new leads and leads from existing database) increased 68%.
• Fresh leads increased 78%.
• Cost per acquisition for Google SEM leads decreased 35%.

As the new Australian Stock Report website rolls out, we expect to see a greatly increased number of leads generated from organic traffic also, which will further decrease the cost per acquisition.