With offices in Wakefield and Berkhamsted, Propel (formally known as Pace IT) are expert problem solvers working collaboratively to identify problems with internal systems and software, help map customer journeys, find technical solutions and provide expertise for businesses to move forward.
From bespoke software development and digital transformation to cloud consultancy and system integration, business improvement is at the heart of Propel.
153%
increase in overall traffic to website
132%
increase in percentage of keyword positioning in the top ten
107%
increase in social media referrals
60
pieces of industry coverage
The Brief
Wild PR was appointed by Propel in June 2022 to implement a six-month PR and marketing strategy to raise the profile of the new brand and improve lead generation and recruitment.
Following a re-brand, Propel had a new website built, which had very little online presence. Wild PR’s remit was to manage the social media channels, secure high authority linking coverage from industry media through strategic PR campaigns, and create onsite content to support keyword positioning and the overall SEO profile.
The Results
PR and On-site content
By maintaining a continuous stream of linking coverage in target business and industry publications, as well as developing evergreen onsite content that targets long-tail keywords, we have seen overall traffic to the website increase by 153%.
In particular, users via referrals have improved by 184%, and sessions via organic traffic have improved by 12%. Page views have also increased dramatically, with overall blog views increasing by 73%. Campaign-related blog content, such as The top ten tech challenges every business faces daily, generated 86 entrances in total with an average session duration of 3 minutes and 21 seconds and an exit rate of 57%.
Following a range of digital PR campaigns and reactive press monitoring, we achieved 60 pieces of coverage in total across regional, industry and business publications, supporting increases across a range of metrics, including the number of keyword rankings from 2.8K to 5.9K (104%), number of backlinks (+114%), organic traffic cost (+97%) and domain authority rising from two to 14.
The percentage of keyword positioning in the top ten increased by 132%, with Propel now ranking on the first page of Google for search terms, including “bespoke software development” at 4, “software testing services” at 1, “system integration services” at 2, “software consultancy” at 9 and “bespoke software development company” at 4.
Campaign highlights include Top 10 Tech Challenges, Cloud Computing Benefits and Promoting Sustainability Using Technology.
Social media
Alongside PR and on-site content development, Wild PR also provided social media creation and management services.
Monthly activity included drafting advice-led and service-focused content, daily community engagement, sharing ad-hoc industry and PR updates and thought-leadership content.
In order to inform and engage with relevant target audiences, our social media strategy focused on two social media platforms: Linkedin and Twitter, to build overall awareness of the brand and strengthen relationships with customers, publications, employees and sponsors/partnerships.
Linkedin results include a 202% increase in engaged followers, a 1624% increase in engagement and a 183% increase in reach. These improvements have led to a 67% increase in social media referrals, with an engagement rate of 44.4% in January 2023.
Similarly, Twitter has also seen fantastic improvements in reach (+573%) and engagement (+237%), as well as referrals to the website (+100%). Overall, social media referrals improved by 107%.
“After launching our new brand, we engaged Wild PR to help us create a buzz in our marketplace. From day one, the team brought a fantastic energy and lots of suggestions to help promote our business. The results speak for themselves, and we couldn’t have picked a more suitable agency for our launch.”
