How Protectivity Grew New Business 172% with Aira
The Challenge
Improving SERP rankings and increasing revenue
In an intensely competitive financial services sector, Protectivity looks for every advantage to eclipse the competition.
Back in 2017, the company’s big objective was to bolster its organic presence online. While they’d already gained a good foothold in organic search, with more visibility and better search rankings they could rapidly scale their sales and revenue.
“Until 2017, we’d relied mainly on our in-house expertise with regards to SEO," explains Sean. "We had a fairly strong handle on on-page SEO and, to a certain extent, technical. But there were a couple of areas that we wanted to improve on.”
Protectivity wanted to move the SEO needle in a few different ways. Top priority was improving their SERP rankings across the board. More specifically, they wanted to improve the search performance of underperforming products—and lay strong SEO foundations for new products they believed had huge sales potential.
They knew that building more inbound links from high-quality sources would be key in getting Google—and ultimately more customers—to notice them.
But turning this vision for organic dominance into reality wasn’t going to be easy. Sean’s busy team was already juggling multiple priorities. They lacked both the bandwidth and granular knowledge on the very latest SEO tactics to step up their digital game as quickly as they needed.
It was a pivotal moment for Protectivity.
“We wanted to find an agency partner with a proven track record for improving clients’ organic presence, and who could help us drive more direct sales through organic search,” says Sean.
If the business made the right choice, they could accelerate opportunities to grow traffic and revenue.
'We had a fairly strong handle on on-page SEO and, to a certain extent, technical. But there were a couple of areas that we wanted to improve on.'
The Solution
An SEO partner focused on growing customers, not just traffic
Protectivity selected Aira as their agency partner, based on the company’s strong SEO reputation and team of ego-free specialists.
“Aira has won numerous SEO awards, plus their CEO Paddy Moogan has worked with Moz (one of the world’s most trusted SEO companies), which carries some kudos. Aira delivered a really strong pitch and we felt they’d be great to work with because they were a super-friendly and approachable team,” says Sean.
Unlike some agencies that rush into making recommendations, Aira took time to understand Protectivity’s goals, research their industry and establish a concrete plan to maximise opportunities.
At the outset, they carried out a variety of SEO consultancy and technical audits. Using SEO competitor analysis, they figured out who Protectivity’s competitors were, what they were doing well and less well, and helped them spot the best strategies to invest in for the best ROI.
A technical SEO audit ensured Protectivity’s website was healthy, secure and working as it should. Meanwhile, link audits and ranking investigations all delivered deep insights to inform campaign work moving forward.
Off the back of Aira’s research, Protectivity made changes to its website to improve design and usability. They also optimised on-page content for search engines and users to improve rankings and achieve more traffic.
Sean explains, “Aira helped us with on-page and technical-related SEO matters. And they carried it out at a level we probably wouldn’t have been able to do on our own.”
Because Aira has multi-channel digital acumen, they provided consultancy on broader activities, including paid campaigns. This helped Protectivity generate more traffic, increase the number of audiences they reached, and improve return on ad spend.
The team at Aira added further value in the difficult and time-consuming area of link building. It was critical that Protectivity got this right, because links are one of the major ranking factors of search engines.
Aira focused on building the right kind of high quality backlinks that Protectivity needed. They compiled a consumer trends analysis to uncover what was being covered in the press across each niche, so they could ensure their content was relevant. They also ideated around niche products to ensure campaigns covered a variety of topics.
Sean says, “Aira were excellent at bringing different ideas to the table that we had not thought about before. They drilled into our topic areas and developed content with a wider subject matter than just insurance, which improves our organic presence in key spaces.”
Aira’s approach to link building helped Protectivity get coverage in globally recognised daily media and relevant niche publications. This brought them links that boosted their organic rankings on SERPs and drove high-quality traffic to their website. In total, Aira generated over 1,400 pieces of coverage!
Sean says, “Aira enabled us to have our brand mentioned in globally recognized tabloids that have a huge domain authority. These are achievements that we wouldn't have been able to achieve in-house if Aira wasn’t doing it for us.”
'Aira drilled into our topic areas and developed content with a wider subject matter than just insurance, which improves our organic presence in key spaces.'
The Results
172% increase in new business revenue and five years of trusted partnership
With Aira, Protectivity has succeeded in making its brand and products more visible online, driving more organic traffic and scaling its revenue.
Since 2017, when the partnership began, they’ve increased revenue from new online sales by 172%. In 2022 alone, revenue from new online business grew a massive 47% on the previous Covid-influenced year.
Sean attributes much of this success to the hard work of Aira.
He says, “Our growth has been significantly aided by Aira’s SEO activity. First and foremost, they’ve delivered upon their KPIs year after year—and in most years exceeded them.”
In a world where average client-agency relationships last just 3 years, Aira’s trusted partnership with Protectivity has already exceeded 5!
“We view Aira as being one of the experts within the SEO agency market. So why would we choose to go elsewhere?” says Sean.
As well as supporting Protectivity’s financial growth, Aira saves the business time—and injects high levels of creativity and expertise.
“Aira saves us a lot of time, particularly on the link-building side of things. If we’d employed people to do that internally, it would’ve taken us two or three times longer than Aira, because they’ve got a whole team of PR pros working on it,” he says.
Sean recommends Aira to anyone looking to acquire more customers and grow revenue through a stronger organic presence.
He says, “With Aira, you get an extremely professional outfit that knows SEO like the back of their hand. Whatever your KPIs—achieving organic traffic, revenue or lead growth—I would say with confidence that Aira would be able to deliver upon the challenges you face as a business.”
'Our growth has been significantly aided by Aira’s SEO activity. First and foremost, they’ve delivered upon their KPIs year after year—and in most years exceeded them.'
