Impression

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Stanhope is a leading provider of niche and specialist insurance to the UK home insurance market. We have a clear mission and clear values and we focus on providing solutions that fit outside the standard UK home insurance norms. This could be an expensive item of jewellery, a property that is thatched or a home that is undergoing renovation works.

If you can’t find the solution through standard insurance platforms you will most likely come to us as your next port of call. I am the co-starter and Director of Stanhope Insurance - a subsidiary of Stanhope Cooper. I am passionate about leading Stanhope to become the UK's most trusted non-standard insurance brokerage.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Impression, and what were your goals?

We enlisted Impression for PPC and SEO services. To drive relevant, high-quality leads to our website, increase brand awareness and rank well across core service areas.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The commencement of this strategy in 2019 represented a big shift for our business, so it was important that we got it right and that we found the right partner. We had a shortlist, ran the pitch process and Impression stood out as the agency to take things forward for us.

They had taken time to understand our business, had the short term plan to get us started but also had the scope in their services and thinking to keep us growing through 2020 and beyond, hence why they are still our digital performance agency in 2022.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

To drive quality leads to our website, Impression attracted relevant clients through a solid content strategy. We work with Impression’s SEO team who have developed a comprehensive content strategy with the goal of increasing our brand awareness, improving the visibility of the site, and driving more leads through organic search.

Whilst we have often relied heavily on paid traffic in the past, Impression identified that there was a huge opportunity to improve our organic position. Previously we had not ranked for a lot of relevant keywords, and there was lots of room to improve our keyword positions. Impression is helping us to improve our organic performance and the foundations of our website. They conducted audits to identify and fix prominent issues, set out a clear roadmap, and continue to produce quality content.

As a business, PPC leads are incredibly important to us; it’s our highest investment activity and it’s therefore imperative that our agency partner can drive quality leads at an efficient price. Impression continually looks at areas of opportunity to reduce CPAs across campaigns, products and the business and they have been able to maximise our number of conversions whilst maintaining a high quality of leads.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We have direct contact with a dedicated Client Success Manager in addition to the senior paid specialist and senior SEO specialist who are responsible for the delivery work. We are also in contact with some of the wider Impression team who also support on the account, helping the senior paid and SEO specialists. We’re pleased that our account team has expanded in line with our own growth.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Impression has been able to drive Year on Year growth of +66% (2021 vs 2020) and +71% (2022 vs 2021) in leads whilst maintaining a sustainable CPA. This growth has helped us to increase our number of staff and also branch out into new product areas for the business, offering services we would not have been able to otherwise, without external investments.

This stable and consistent flow of high quality leads has ensured that as a business, we’ve not only been able to weather the turbulence of the past few years but we’ve also been able to grow and become a stronger business as a result.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We have weekly calls with the team where we regularly review performance and outside of that, all communications are responded to quickly and efficiently. The team is agile and available to implement reactive changes promptly.

More recently we’ve started to work with content trackers so that we can see everything in one place, this also prevents things being lost across emails. The Impression team upload research, ideas, and changes to copy into the tracker so that we have visibility on what’s going on and how it aligns with our strategy.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They really care about the work they do and they understand what makes us tick. The team is very reactive to budget changes to align with our business’ needs and always find alternative solutions when needed. They offer the perfect balance between reactiveness and proactiveness.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Right now, we’re very happy with the way the account is progressing!