In the marketing industry, false hopes are a problem - marketing agencies often over promise, which leads to customers becoming disappointed and even disillusioned with marketing as a whole.
At JDR, we try to paint a realistic picture and also to avoid making specific forecasts - but we can share examples of other clients' results. We do this through our marketing case studies, but in this article we can share the average results that our customers get - and even track these results over a three year period.
One of the services we offer is a formal website and marketing audit, together with a full report, called an inbound marketing strategy blueprint report.
Over the years we have audited and reviewed a high number of websites for small and medium sized businesses over a wide range of different industries. Some businesses will then hire us to improve their marketing, some won't and will just do the report alone.
What kick-started the following research was an internal question about people who had hired us to evaluate and assess their marketing and NOT gone ahead with us.
Had their websites improved since we did the report?
In reviewing this, we then asked 'how does that compare with the people that DID go ahead and work with us?'
We looked at the stats from 41 marketing reports which we had commissioned - all of which were at least 12 months or more ago. 19 of these businesses did not go ahead and work with us beyond this initial report, 22 did.
There were four main figures:
From the list of 41 businesses we had done the initial analysis for, we looked at the businesses who had chosen to work with JDR beyond the initial marketing report - and these were the average improvements since the report (this was from reports done 12 months ago, so these results were between 1-3 years since the original report):
The average starting point was 16 leads/enquiries per month (15.9 to be precise) - this had increased to an average of 100 leads/enquiries per month (again, the exact figure was 100.2).
There are some remarkable success stories within these averages, including:
You can take a look at some specific marketing case studies here to read these individual stories.
The average starting point of the websites we reviewed was 1,369 visits per month. The 22 businesses that did go ahead and work with JDR had shown a significant increase, to 4,487.5 visits per month.
This is a 2.5x, or 150% increase, and more than double the original starting point.
On reviewing their Google Analytics, traffic to the 19 businesses that did not go ahead actually dropped - to an average of 881 visits per month. This is a 31% drop in website visitors. Here's how the two groups compare, in graph form:
The average starting domain authority for the businesses that worked with JDR went from 15.2 to 20.2 - a 33% increase.
The businesses that didn't saw a reduction in domain authority, from 15.8 to 13.2.
The average starting website score for the businesses that worked with JDR went from 57.6 to 74.7 (out of 100).
The businesses that didn't, however, also saw a small increase in this metric to 58.1 (from 52.2). This appears to have been driven by a number of businesses from this group updating/revamping their websites - so their website score improved, even if their website traffic and rankings have not.
These results show that when you apply systematic marketing over a period of time there is clear, measurable progress - and it seems that many of the businesses that didn't work with us not only chose not to do any marketing with JDR, but in most cases not to do any further digital marketing at all, leading to a decline in results.
Looking again at the businesses that did go ahead, however, we wanted to look beyond the average improvements and see what the trajectory was over time. Were these gains and improvements made in a few months and then results plateaued after that, or was there consistent growth?
We took a look at the average results of 9 businesses where: they had accurate leads/enquiry data from the start, and where they have worked with JDR for 3+years. Here's what this looks like in graph format - below is the average growth in website traffic (monthly website visitors) over a 3 year period:
Here is the growth in monthly website leads/enquiries:
Here is the raw data in table form:
| START | Yr 1 | Yr 2 | Yr 3 | |
| Website Traffic (Monthly Website Visitors) | 539 | 1,292 | 1,638 | 1,814 |
| Monthly Leads/Enquiries | 6 | 17 | 25 | 31 |
| Conversion Rate % | 1.1% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 1.7% |
This shows that by working with JDR Group as your marketing agency, you will see significant progress in the first 12 months (see our average results in the first 12 months in another article here), but also that the results will continue to get better and better over time. This is consistent with our own experience with inbound marketing (as in the marketing that JDR do for ourselves) as well as with our experience with clients.
Again, you can see specific examples of this in our case studies section.
Over the past 15 years we have developed a marketing system designed to help you get more leads, build and market to a database and, ultimately, get more sales. To find out how we can help become your digital marketing department go to www.jdrgroup.co.uk.
To start the ball rolling, you can request a free audit of your current marketing here: FREE MARKETING AUDIT.