“I’ve finally found an SEO company I can rely on. They are responsive to my communications and are constantly coming to me with ideas of how we can improve the websites. Amazing job on SEO and PPC, doubling sales through those channels.”
Success Stories
Direct Fireplaces is a leading UK retailer of gas and electric fires, fireplace surrounds, and hearths. We Influence supported them across Paid Search, SEO, affiliate marketing, content marketing, and paid social channels.
When Direct Fireplaces came to Velstar for SEO work, they had little visibility for the main terms they wanted to rank for.
We identified several key areas for improvement across content and SEO. This included the prevention of indexing of filter pages, improvements to the site’s architecture, and improved structured data across the site. We also removed various pieces of low value content, improved several blog articles and consolidate them into one central content hub.
Traffic and revenue has grown hugely for Direct Stoves, with the site now consistently ranking in the top 3 for high value terms such as ‘fireplaces’, ‘gas fires’, and ‘electric fires’.
By targeting users at multiple touch points in their purchasing journey; we maximised revenue by utilising three major networks in Google Ads and Bing Ads.
Search played a pivotal role in both driving top of the funnel traffic and converting branded/product themed search terms. With our expertly crafted Search campaigns, we saw an increase of 212% in revenue from Search alone.
Alongside this, we applied our advanced Shopping campaign strategy which allows us to bid separately on generic terms and branded terms. This enabled us to hit users in both the research and purchase stages. Using this strategy, we saw a revenue increase of 134% from Shopping.
To complete the picture, we created both Display remarketing campaigns and new audience Display campaigns, to ensure the brand message was heard all over the web.
112% More revenue from organic traffic (YoY)
107% Increase in revenue from paid traffic
48% Increase in ROAS
We adjusted the commission structure to better reflect the value of the affiliates on the program – based around the conversion funnel and where affiliates appear within that funnel. This replaced the client’s previous ‘one size fits all’ model. This meant that when we grew the Direct Fireplaces program by 143% year on year, the commission paid out increased by just 66%. Thus, reducing the overall cost per sale by 28% while still achieving record growth.
As part of our commission re-structure, we wanted to re-incentivise voucher code affiliates to bring more to the table. This led to us working more closely with sites like MyVoucherCodes with exclusive promos and commission increases, to bring more exposure to the brand and ultimately increase sales in this space by almost 100%.
While we improved voucher code performance, another objective of ours was to decrease the affiliate channel’s relience on the voucher code and cashback affiliates. We did this through working with more price comparison sites and, in particular, Google CSS partners. Two of which are now among our top 5 affiliates on both of the programs, meaning that we now have over 35% of our revenue coming through this type of new audience driving affiliate.
143%Revenue growth (YoY)
-28%Cost of sale (YoY)
“I’ve finally found an SEO company I can rely on. They are responsive to my communications and are constantly coming to me with ideas of how we can improve the websites. Amazing job on SEO and PPC, doubling sales through those channels.”
ADAM LEAH – MANAGING DIRECTOR,
FIREPLACE DIRECT FIREPLACES
