A good label can sell a product. A great label can echo into history. Just look at the Campbell’s Soup can. It’s in most grocery stores and art history textbooks.
Lightning Labels knows this. The company’s SMB clients, which sell everything from health and beauty products to craft beer, rely on Lightning Labels to quickly print their custom label designs and stickers. In fact, you’ve likely bought a product with one a Lightning Labels label on it.
But how is it that Lightning Labels’ labels ends up on a candle or your favorite microbrew?
Simple: Businesses with wares to sell search the web for a company that can quickly and affordably print their custom labels. And often, that search leads them to Lightning Labels.
That’s in no small part to the content marketing work Brafton has done over the past 10+ years.
Our work at a glance:
- Search Performance Briefs: Data-rich blueprints for how to rank for a specific keyword; writers use these when crafting blog posts and landing pages.
- Blog posts: 3 or more per month, on average.
- Press releases: We produce a few per month to announce new products, new personnel and other company news.
- Landing pages: We’re rewriting many of their sister company’s landing pages.
The challenge: Boost online branding and increase web traffic
Lightning Labels’ relationship with Brafton dates back to 2008. The goal then, as it is now, was to improve online presence and, specifically, increase website visibility in organic search results.
“We hired Brafton to do our blog posts and press release contents on various topics based on our vertical markets, as well as some broader-based topics, such as type of materials for labels, types of lamination, and more,” said AnneMarie Campbell, VP of Marketing, Lightning Labels.
While better brand awareness and stronger digital representation of the company were strategic objectives, the long-term mission was really to create more opportunities for revenue generation.
The solution: High-quality, branded content
“High-quality” is the key phrase here. Since 2008, content marketing and SEO have changed significantly. What Google considers to be of “high quality” today is worlds apart from when Lightning Labels first engaged us.
Consequently, we’ve continually evolved our blog-writing process to stay one step ahead of Google’s expectations. That means changing how we produce content for Lightning Labels, and always raising the bar to make sure the company continues its upward trajectory.
Consistent growth is the name of the game in content marketing.
To this end, Lightning Labels recently started using our proprietary Search Performance Brief. We’ve always used keyword research and content mapping in content development, but SPBs take this to a new level. These documents aggregate data from a variety of sources, including tools like MarketMuse that directly analyze specific topics and the key phrases used in the top-performing pages for a particular keyword.
Tony Basile, Lightning Labels’ dedicated writer, then synthesizes this information into a compelling story that is expertly tailored to the client’s target audience.
In 4 or 5 years, the SPB in its current form may be obsolete (in fact, we’ve already developed our SPB 2.0, which Lightning Labels is piloting).
But that’s the whole point of our solution, and the reason Lightning Labels is still with us 12 years on: Our products respond to the evolution of SEO and digital marketing to ensure consistent and continued results for our clients.
The outcome: That consistency we love so much
Cumulative wins:
- Consistent YoY increases in traffic.
- Increases in revenue from organic traffic.
- Increases in the total number of keyword rankings.
2020 wins (second half of the year):
- Organic search traffic up 18%.
- Unique pageviews on the blog up 14%.
- Organic pageviews on the blog up 16%.
- Organic sessions starting on the blog up 15%.
- Sessions including visit to the blog up 9%.
- Organic sessions including a visit to the blog up 14%
“We’ve seen a consistent increase in the number of visitors and time spent on our blogs year-over-year — we’ve definitely seen a lift that way,” AnneMarie said. “Organically, we’ve seen a rise in revenue, so we know that people are engaging with our blog posts and reading them.
She added:
“We’re also seeing a quote request on our blog pages, where someone can request pricing for an item.”
Product evolution is a key component of why we’ve been able to help Lightning Labels as long as we have, but so is the talent of our in-house content creators, and one in particular.
“They — especially Tony, our writer — understand our business and are able to communicate our value points.”
“They — especially Tony, our writer — understand our business and are able to communicate our value points and what Lightning Labels is,” AnneMarie said. “Tony is able to drive the right tone of voice and showcase our brand well. That, to me, has been the most impressive thing about working with Brafton.”
Consistency may be the name of the game in content marketing, but there’s no question about who plays that game best (great content marketers like Tony), or who the biggest winners are: clients like Lightning Labels. Just ask AnneMarie:
“I would definitely recommend Brafton,” she said. “I’ve recommended them internally to our sister brands and everyone that I’ve recommended Brafton to has been happy with their services.”
