Case Study: Taking a Brand New Unknown Business to Number One with Full Service Digital Marketing

Starting a new business from scratch is something that takes a huge amount of preparation, and often cannot be done alone.

Jacobs & Dalton, a British sheepskin products retailer based in North Yorkshire, wanted an online direct to consumer online store presence for their luxury sheepskin homeware, slippers, boots and baby products that their parent company produced. They had the quality products but not the platform in the UK to sell them back in 2019.

Internally they had the team and resources to fulfill the demand, but they needed people with experience in everything from the technical aspects of creating and designing a website to those with the marketing skills to build them a presence and a reputation for their brand. This is where we came in.

Bronco is a full service digital agency, which means that our highly skilled team is made up of web designers, SEOs, and digital marketing experts across paid ads, social media marketing and digital PR. When the client came to us, there wasn’t anyone within Bronco who wasn’t involved in some way with this project!

The initial brief was to create a website for the company to sell their products, create social media accounts on platforms for brand awareness, PR prior to launch and post-launch, direct traffic via PPC before and after launch and search engine optimisation on the new site to boost organic search rankings and visibility.

Today, nearly 5 years later, Jacobs & Dalton are still a loyal Bronco client thanks to the years of successful business after their launch – results that just keep getting better and better!

In this case study, we’re breaking down all the services we manage for this client with some insights into their ever-growing results.

SEO: From 0 to +500% increase in organic traffic and outranking competitor brands with an organic search marketing campaign

Developing a user-friendly e-commerce Website

The first step was to create an eCommerce website that effectively showcased Jacobs & Dalton’s wide range of sheepskin products and attracted nationwide visitors.

Content-Driven SEO

Once the website was in place, the strategy shifted towards an organic SEO and digital PR-led approach. This involved enriching the site’s content to enhance its organic search potential.

Key actions included:

• Creating Keyword-Rich Content: This content was developed for key landing pages to improve search engine rankings.
• Launching a “Tips & Ideas” Blog: The blog aimed to attract potential customers and generate backlinks through informative and engaging content.
• User-friendly and Search engine optimised product pages.

RESULTS

The results of this SEO strategy were impressive :

Period	Source	Result
First 12 months	Organic Traffic	500%
First 12 months	Organic Revenue	350%
Total Visitors (2023-2024 12 month period)	Organic Search	104,000
Main user acquisition channel	Organic Search	55%
Click Through Rate	Organic Traffic	45%

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Highlights

Through a strategic focus on content-driven SEO and digital PR, Jacobs & Dalton successfully transformed their online presence, achieving a substantial increase in organic traffic and outperforming competitor brands in search engine rankings

Digital PR: Boosting Brand Recognition, E-E-A-T and Increasing Demand

Digital PR and SEO sit hand in hand in our experience. We use the tools we have on hand with digital PR promotion to:

• Build links to drive equity into the site.
• Boost brand recognition among the interior, fashion and parenting community.
• Increase demand for the brand’s products by linking them to trending topics in the media.
• Boost the brand’s standing through Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines by positioning them as an expert on relevant topics.

The goal is to gain a range of authoritative and relevant brand links and mentions in suitable publications, focusing on quality over quantity.

Over time, we have run a huge variety of digital PR campaigns for Jacobs & Dalton which have varied in success. From expert commentary on interior trends and interviews with influencers to data based campaigns and even AI graphics, we have gained coverage for them in niche, national and even international publications.

We also create reactive PR pieces for the brand which may be an entire piece newsjacking a trending topic, or may be an expert quote responding to a journalist request or to support a piece of content they’re already writing.

This is all supported by a content marketing strategy that falls under the SEO umbrella. The Jacobs & Dalton blog is used as a content hub for a variety of useful and inspiring content around their topic clusters.

Influencer Marketing: Driving Word of Mouth Marketing and Selling Out Stock!

Influencer marketing is something we were doing on a relatively small scale for Jacobs & Dalton for a while, with items sent out for reviews on blogs or social media to help support our SEO efforts. We now offer influencer marketing as a full service for the brand.

Influencer marketing is an excellent way of bringing authenticity, relatability and new perspectives to your brand, as well as humanising the company and, of course, bringing in new customers and conversions. What’s not to love?

Our strategy combines careful manual vetting and outreach of influencers, plus some work on TikTok’s Creator Marketplace – a resource that worked out fantastically for this brand! Don’t believe it? Check out the results we saw:

• The product we were promoting TOTALLY sold out in the most popular sizes within 2 days of being restocked.
• Their monthly revenue increased by 42%.
• The campaign had over 95,000 views across 4 creators on TikTok.
• Their following on Instagram increased by 31%.
• The campaign had over 800,000 views on Instagram.

As with all our services, influencer marketing is highly integrated with everything else we do. We use the opportunity of working with influencers to create user generated content (UGC) which we can market across their paid social ads and organic social media. This has resulted in some absolutely stunning content that shows off their products in ways that we might not ever achieve ourselves.

Paid Media: Driving Purchases on Targeted Google Searches and Social Media

The Google Ads account historically ran separate search and shopping campaigns. During the early onset of performance max campaigns they were moved over to these cross network campaign types. A year on we can look back and compare the two. Over all the account has seen a 160% increase in purchases, 20% increase on purchase value and 600% ROAS.

The brand search campaign has seen a 100% increase in search volume over the past 12 months showing that all avenues of marketing are growing brand awareness.

We also have an ongoing paid social media ads campaign running for Jacobs & Dalton. This has several goals, but as an ecommerce website, the main one is sales. The results are consistently good here, with some purchase campaigns averaging more than 20 times return on ad spend during sales or discounts, and more ongoing campaigns averaging around 7.5 times return on ad spend.

Organic Social Media: Delivering Social Proof and Supporting Multi-Platform Promotion

Organic social media is often seen as a “fluffy” marketing channel. Unless you get what’s considered a lucky break and go viral, the results can be tricky to pinpoint. We beg to differ though!

For Jacobs & Dalton, we actively use their organic social media platforms to create a selection of thoughtful content that provides useful, inspirational and platform appropriate content. Their Facebook page is targeted towards an older subset of their audience and products promoted here are those that they are more likely to be seeking such as slippers. Their TikTok channel meanwhile is mainly used to promote on trend items such as their Super Short Boots to a younger, more dynamic audience. The content here is flashier, faster paced and uses trending sounds.

The goals of their social channels are many and varied, but are mainly:

• To show the more relatable, human side of the brand.
• To deliver social proof.
• To answer questions.
• To support their overall campaigns, such as influencer marketing and paid social ads which go hand in hand.

Of course, the ultimate goal is always going to be driving more traffic that converts through to their website, and we’re happy to say that it does a fantastic job of that too!

Email Marketing: Driving 41% More Purchases During Sales

Email marketing was initially not included as part of the marketing campaign for Jacobs & Dalton, but after doing some small scale tests, it is now another service we provide for them. And an extremely valuable one at that!

Their email campaigns are usually used to promote seasonal sales or discounts. Sometimes we use email marketing alongside paid social ads, where we gather waiting lists for new or restocked products then give them exclusive early access or a larger discount code.

When promoting a sale, we have noticed a huge uplift in traffic and sales when it is also marketing directly into the mailboxes of people who have opted in. This can be anywhere from 26% more purchases to 41% more than when it is promoted without email marketing. There are no downsides to email marketing for Jacobs & Dalton!

Online Reputation Management: A 581% Increase in Positive Reviews

In order to strengthen Jacobs & Dalton’s profile in Google, we have recently undertaken an online reputation management campaign to gather reviews from their customers. We used their mailing list and social platforms to ask customers to leave a Google review of the brand, incentivising the initial customer list who may have bought in the past with a new very limited time discount code (which led to me more orders – win-win situation!) and setting up an auto-generated email in the weeks after a customer had purchased for future emails (with no incentive at this point).

As a result of this campaign, we saw a huge 581% increase in positive reviews for the brand in under 6 months, and their star rating in Google increased by 0.2 points from 4.7 to 4.9. They now also have a number of photos of products shared by customers in their Google profile too, adding to the social proof of the brand as well as helping their visibility in Google.

Ongoing Development

A key part of continually growing a brand like this is to never stand still. Over time, we have added new elements to the website as well as their digital marketing campaign. The paid social ads, influencer marketing campaigns, email marketing and TikTok promotion were not part of Jacobs & Dalton’s initial launch marketing, but are key parts of the overall digital marketing campaign today that we have added in as and where needed over time.

Our most recent updates to the campaign have been to add new content and imagery to the About page to highlight the team behind Jacobs & Dalton, to feature an “In the Press” and reviews section on the homepage, and to update the blog for a more user friendly experience. These may seem like small tweaks but they ensure that at every step of the process, the user is being considered. These little nudges also help the brand’s visibility in Google’s eyes by adhering to the E-E-A-T guidelines as well as giving customers proof of their trustworthiness.

“What really sets Bronco apart is how responsive they are, keeping us in the loop at every stage of the process and providing regular updates on campaign performance. It’s clear that they truly care about our brand’s success and are always willing to go above and beyond to help us achieve our goals.”

James Waylett, Sales Manager at Colomer Munmany Europe Company Ltd and Jacobs & Dalton

Conclusion: A Comprehensive All Round Digital Marketing Campaign

Jacobs & Dalton is the perfect example of every digital marketing service aligning perfectly to create winning results for a brand! While an SEO or digital PR campaign alone may take time to show results, a paid ads campaign or email marketing strategy can bring more immediate results, all while being supported with a carefully considered organic social media presence and user friendly website experience. The benefits of having this all under one roof with a single agency who have a team who are experienced in all these services is what makes it a winner! We have the ability to collaborate on campaigns then take it to the next level.

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