“Lowest Cost Per Impression of Anything We Do… By a Huge Margin! It’s Been Somewhat Amazing.” – California Olive Ranch On Business Blogging
By committing to consistently publish great EVOO content, minimum twice per week *per blog*, California Olive Ranch [COR] was able to generate average month over month *increases* in page views of 72%, in unique new visitors of 384% and in back links of 646% in six months time. Simultaneously, COR amassed over 1,400 direct blog subscribers.
In early April 2009 COR’s VP Sales & Marketing Claude Weiller launched several online marketing initiatives, including a comprehensive business blogging test. Our post ‘Building Community For Extra Virgin Olive Oil Lovers’ looked into what Weiller was looking to do at the time, including two blog channels, one targeting Chefs and one Consumers. Immediately he went about campaigning with COR databases in search of direct subscribers. He automated content, via RSS feed, into various social networks accounts like Facebook & Twitter, deploying a comprehensive package of social networking tools. He added lead capture capabilities and a series of additonal offsite search optimization tools as well. And then finally, in order to insure there was an understanding for what was & was not working and so that adjustments to further maximize benefits could be made quickly, he had us develop a series of monthly traffic & subscription data point analyses.
Let’s ask Claude himself for his impressions on his first 6 month’s of blogging:
Frerecks: “Claude, can you tell us what online advertising you committed to when you launched the recent COR campaign?”
Weiller: “Well, we basically tested three activities. Specifically, we did a keyword search campaign focusing on about 250 terms. We also did a banner ad’ campaign. Finally, we tested a membership sign-up campaign. These spanned a 3-month period and were separate and distinct from our blogging efforts.”
Frerecks: “At 6 months, what is COR’s impression of business blogging?” 
Weiller: “We are extremely pleased. The more appropriate answer is ‘we are thrilled by the results of our business blogging.’ We were also surprised by the month-over-month growth in readership along with the incredible number of back links that we have secured. I would not have predicted the levels we achieved prior to the initiative. It’s just been amazing!”
Frerecks: “Can you talk about how COR’s visibility online has changed?”
Weiller: “Absolutely… in several ways. For instance, our online subscriber rates have grown by 5 X in 6 months. The growth has been steep and continues to grow each month. We are also getting more and more questions from consumers and chefs asking for information about olive oil. For instance, one chef emailed us that he uses our blogs to teach/train his wait staff about olive oil. An instructor at a culinary school in the southeast uses our blogs (in part) as course material and mandatory reading for some of his culinary classes involving olive oil. We’re also getting readers to refer our blogs to other interested parties [chefs referring other chefs], which drives new customers. Probably most important has been our Google and Yahoo page ranking results. After 6 months we are now on page 1 for all targeted organic search terms, which we identified at the beginning of the campaign. And, when looking at the costs of any other advertising, it cost us next to nothing!”
Frerecks: “So, you have achieved community and/ or interaction with your target audience?”
Weiller: “It’s been somewhat amazing. We are now back-linked by literally thousands of blogs and websites. We’re getting dozens of email questions every day about olive oil-related topics that people want to learn more about. We’re getting meaningful traffic from Twitter and Facebook [which we feed into via RSS] and we never thought that would amount to anything. We’re also getting customers from around the country asking us about our product. It’s worth pointing out that our online readership is now in 5 continents and probably 25 countries around the globe!”
Frerecks: “Versus other forms of advertising, has business blogging been cost-effective?”
Weiller: “It’s the lowest cost per impression of anything we do… by a huge margin! It’s remarkably effective on a financial level. We probably spend 1/3 to 1/2 the levels we spend on other medium than we do on blogging to acquire a new customer. It’s just amazing! It’s also very cost-effective from the standpoint of driving new readership. Blogging allows us to maintain that relationship [via subscription] month over month. We found that blogging attracts very loyal readers, who are engaged with our brand. After 6 months, 97.3% of our subscribers remain subscribers. It eventually drives those readers to buy something on your site, giving us an opportunity to quantify who is reading more than others. Ultimately, we can reward our most loyal readers with things like free shipping or complementary product. That just makes every $1 spent on blogging remarkably cost-effective for us.”
When approached correctly, Business Blogging brings incredible benefits for a business. With their commitment, COR proves it. Sure, you need spider friendly blog solutions, a discipline for publishing quality content and there’s got to be a reaction to your content [links, bookmarks, subscriptions, SERP selections, time on site, etc.], but it’s all within a business’ grasp.
In 6 months COR has not only developed an incredibly active & loyal online community for their brand, but a reliable & cost-effective advertising tool that drives new business!
Contributed by Chris Frereckschris@kineticknowledge.com
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