The Project
On Stride Financial was a new brand in the UK financial services market. Part of Enova International, a prominent global lender, On Stride would bring loans of up to £5,000 over a period of up to three years to consumers who were outside mainstream lending criteria.
Not only is the search market for subprime loans and financial products incredibly competitive, it is also extremely heavily scrutinised by Google and has historically been subjected to numerous and specifically targeted algorithm updates.
To succeed as a new entrant in this market, Stickyeyes would have to deploy a completely natural EO strategy, using content marketing to achieve high quality backlinks and brand exposure, whilst deploying a paid search campaign that would drive sales at low cost in this extremely competitive sector.
Our Solution
Because of the levels of scrutiny on some lenders in this market our digital marketing strategy was based around a purely content-led approach.
In order to achieve the desired levels of coverage, we focused on the human element of money and finance, creating engaging stories that would peak the interests of our target audiences.
Using the three key distribution channels (owned, earned and paid media), we would deploy a highly influential and targeted message to the target audience.
By targeting the deployment of this content at influential publishers and media, including national press, local media networks and influential blogs, who wouldn’t historically feature brands like On Stride, we hoped to secure high value mentions, quality backlinks and expose a relatively new brand in the UK financial sector to a wide audience.
What we achieved
Our approach yielded excellent results for On Stride, delivering outstanding levels of coverage for a brand that was new to the UK, with no digital presence. Our earned media activity delivered more than 50 individual items of live coverage, with an average domain authority (DA) of 56.
Coverage was earned in a number of high profile publications, including The Metro, The Independent, The Times, Huffington Post, and The Mirror, as well as a number of high profile blogs. A 15 minute television slot was also earned on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
The levels of coverage achieved significantly aided performance in organic search rankings and traffic.
Having started the campaign in April without an active website, we were able to deliver four position one rankings and 48 page one rankings in just ten months.
These rankings resulted in a 523.65% growth in traffic and a 490% growth in leads over the course of six months, vindicating our decision to adopt a content-led approach.
523%
increase in traffic from organic search490%
increase in leads from organic search
