Aptito

Goals: Increase in website traffic

As a rising start-up in a highly competitive niche, Aptito wanted to quickly raise awareness about the benefits of their products. The company faced the challenging task of competing against established industry leaders with significant market share and much more resources. However, when the marketing team came to me, they had already shaped a clear vision about the importance of content marketing and its potential to help them overcome the strong competition in their respective industry.

The client’s brief was clear and concise – they wanted to highlight the benefits of their products through the power of words. When I was introduced to the project, Eduardo, Aptito’s Marketing Manager, presented me with a clear content plan. He has spent the time needed for keyword research, competitive analysis and content strategy design. What he needed was an expert opinion on his efforts and someone who could transform Aptito’s vision into real results.

The best thing about this project was that we were both on the same page about the importance of content marketing. The client was well aware of the competitiveness of their industry and the fact that content marketing was the best possible way to overcome it. This helped us jump right on the next phase – content strategy execution.

Help the brand penetrate and establish itself in an already crowded industry with no prior expert knowledge about it.

The project itself was challenging due to the fact that the company specializes in complete business management solutions. The large scale of Aptito’s portfolio of products meant that we should find a way to successfully compete at several fronts simultaneously. Although Aptito’s plans were ambitious enough to overtake their competitors in the long-term, we needed to stand out right from the beginning. That is why we decided to take the project one step at a time by prioritizing the company’s leading and most valuable products first.

Another challenge, although not so significant one, was my lack of experience in the restaurant business solutions’ niche. Similar to the Bookingabus.com project, I had to make sure that I become familiar with the industry at a professional level in a very short time. I managed to overcome this challenge by spending much time in research – reading industry reports, oversight authorities’ official statements and analysis, competitors’ blogs, as well as direct guidance from Eduardo. This whole-scale approach allowed me to gain insight knowledge about the restaurant industry, get familiar with business owners’ needs and goals and learn more about the corporate values and long-term plans of Aptito.

Analyse competitors. Write better. Write a lot.

Usually, there are two ways to enter a crowded industry and build a name – either with large budgets or with lots of efforts. In this case, the budget was limited or at best – not aligned to the goals. As soon as I engaged on the project, I realized how hard it was to fulfill the goals within the planned budget. That is why I decided to go that extra mile and contribute additionally. If it was set in the content plan that the word limit for the next piece was 2k words, I went further and wrote 3k. If it was 3k, I delivered 4k. I did that voluntarily. Although I knew that I could have invested this time in high-end projects and get paid for that, I wanted to plan the seeds for my client’s future growth.

The time invested in industry research has helped me gradually ease my work process as I became familiar with the main trends, the goals of different market participants and target groups, as well as gained expert understanding of valuable niche-specific statistics and future projections. This made it easier to come up with a well-defined structure for each piece and allowed me to execute the whole content plan easier and in a more efficient way.

During the writing process, I always kept in mind that the target audience was mixed and consisted of large-scale businesses with lots of resources, starting entrepreneurs with fresh ideas, individuals that are still on the drawing board and focusing on the strategic part, small caffeterias with limited budgets, etc. This made me come up with a balanced strategy for each piece. All blog posts were designed with the idea to provide value for each group of the target audience, while at the same time reveal the benefits of Aptito’s products in solving the most popular issues market participants face.

30 000 words and 16 content pieces later

As I do with all my clients, I kept on monitoring Aptito’s progress and the results of my work a few months after the project was finished.

Although Eduardo ensured me that they have witnessed a notable increase in website traffic and a boost in their rankings and SEO performance, thanks to my articles, I wanted a quantified proof of the success. The results:

• 644% increase in website traffic
• 5 keywords in top 10 results
• Top keywords visibility of more than 80%

The overall performance of the content pieces helped the brand establish itself as a leader in its respective niche and compete successfully with the main companies in the field.