Case Study - FIRST Components

I write website SEO content and a bi-weekly newsletter for FIRST Components.

Content Writing as Direct Response

A direct response copywriter

  • chooses words and images then
  • carefully arranges them in the right order to
  • motivate prospective customers and customers

to try products and services.

Here’s an example of how this works by deploying direct response principles within a content approach.

Website Revamp

FIRST Components revamped their website and required web page copy plus ongoing content publishing in the form of a company blog.

Early growth chart of a website

After I installed Google Analytics they launched the new site.

“1” indicates the point at which GA was consistently registering page views with around 800 monthly users.

Site traffic grew slowly after it had stabilized and several weeks later the company gave the go-ahead for me to write one long-form keyword-optimized piece every month.

Traffic, indicated at “2”, gradually began to rise after three months.

Chart of the gradual increase in visibility of the website (pages)

Two and half years later the traffic passed through 26,000 monthly users.

Visitor usage data for pages on the website

The massive increase in online visibility increased customer LTV.

Former customers were motivated to re-engage with the company because of the brand’s increased prominence in search results.

And this volume of targeted traffic also opened the way for a new approach . . .

Move to D2C

A strictly B2B manufacturing firm until now, the massive increase in visibility enabled the company to start a D2C program to sell several unique products through the website.

For example, I set up a simple funnel leading from a top ranking article on the general topic, “eccentric bottom bracket”.

Easy to read copy

The article was designed to be easy to read and motivate maximum engagement from readers by providing unique information.

My writing style is No-BSNo fluff.

I get right to the issue directly, unlike most content writers who can’t write to save their lives . . . even when they DO know what they’re talking about.

You’ll find hordes of them hanging out on Upwork.

Call to action under the image

I placed calls to action in several places down the page.

Clicking the links opens the product order page.

Product order page example

Results? — the product is selling very well indeed.

Email Newsletter

I began writing the company newsletter in mid 2019, producing two issues per month.

The content is very narrowly focused and designed to appeal to this particular audience.

The goal was to raise customer LTV through providing useful content to the list every fortnight.

Prior to this initiative there was zero outreach to current and former customers.

Customer LTV increased in the first few months.

Graph of rate of email subscriptions

After a year of slow subscriber growth the average subscription rate picked up to around three new subscribers per day with a very low rate of unsubscribes.

Your mail out is always interesting and far ahead of the usual press release style content.

The unique nature of the content and the writing style is the driver of subscription growth.

Here’s another bicycle industry case study.

Here are two case studies — one B2B, one B2C — from the electronics industry.

If you’ve got a project you’d like to discuss, get in touch with me here.

To YOUR massive direct response marketing success,

Glenn Reeves
Copywriter

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