EU Search Awards 2014 winning case study. Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

1. Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media
Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online
http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Chapter12 - Analytics
Case Study Chapter 12: Salford Business
School,The Universityof Salford
Passport to Trade 2.0, a project led by Salford Business School to generate free online training
materials for SMEs and students

2. Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media
Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online
http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Overview
Passport to Trade 2.0 was a European partnership, led by Salford Business School, University of
Salfordinthe UK, and includedfiveEuropeanuniversities and three SMEs. The partnership brought
together a multidisciplinary team of organisations from eight European countries.
The aim of the Passportto Trade 2.0 (#P2T2) projectwas to developfreeonline trainingmaterials to
help SMEs and students seeking work and placements in 31 European countries.
P2T2 was a European Commission, fixed term co-funded project from October 2011 to September
2013, and presented a challenge of sustaining the project results beyond the funded period.
Organic SEO was chosen as the main strategy to maintain visitors’ flow to the website beyond the
funded period, in order to:
1. Increase the numberof organic search visitors to the main website from about 50 visits per
month in 2012 to 3,000 visits per month, post project launch.
2. Improve organicrankingson Google for important keyword terms, to achieve at least 1,000
visitors per month for first page organic search traffic.
The aim was to create great content, such as text, animation and video, and an inbound link
ecosystem, to drive traffic to the main website.
Through the creation of a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), which relied heavily upon
crowdsourced content from industry experts and academics, the project was able to attract over
306,000 organic search visitors in a year. The project achieved first page ranking position within
Google forthe competitive key-phrases‘businessculture’and ‘international business culture’. High
visibility in search engine results pages succeeded in driving around 10% of site traffic.
Implementation
The developmentandintegrationof a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) and a video animation
allowed Salford Business School to demonstrate creativity and innovation over the usual business
culture guides.
Identifying a particular interest in how social media can be used for business development, the
MOOC enabledlocal digital marketing agencies and academics to share their advice on the subject
for free via15 minute-longvideos.All participantswere encouraged to engage with the #SSMMUoS
hashtag on Twitter.
Using the popular ‘did you know’ theme, a short video animation for 31 countries was produced.
These videos were optimised on YouTube as well as being integrated into the main website.

3. Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media
Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online
http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With limited financial resources to develop content, the project crowdsourced material from
industry guest speakers as well as a wide international advisory board. In addition to the English
audiences,eightotherlanguage micrositeswere created and translated by in-country specialists to
maximise the reach and accessibility of content.
Results
Over a five month period (September 2013 – January 2014), organic SEO brought 38,472 visitors to
site, compared to 365 visitors in the same time period over the previous year.
From 2015 onwards the website averaged over 100k visitors per month although the main project
activities have now stopped. See image below of the Google Analytics Audience Overview from
March 2013 to December 2016:
While the target had been to attract 3,000 organic search visitors to the site per month, the actual
number of visitors achieved was an average of 8,549 visits per month.
Primarykeywordtermsshowedpositive searchengine rankingresultswithintwomonths of the site
going live. The site is currently ranking on the first page of Google for targeted English based
keywords,whichare the mostcompetitive of the languages targeted. Attaining ranking position on
the first page for the primary key-phrases ‘business culture’ as well as ‘international business
culture’ continues to drive an average of 10% of organic traffic to site. In total, 4,316 visitors per
month are arriving at the site via first page organic search traffic.

4. Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media
Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online
http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Between September 2013 and September 2014 a total of 576,533 pages have been viewed by
280,099 users.
Further Information
● http://businessculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-
16.20.52.png
● http://businessculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-
16.29.11.png
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpUZhgrWdU0
● YouTube infographic video http://goo.gl/b0Pz9X
● MOOC - http://goo.gl/z72eWI
● Twitter - https://twitter.com/Passport2Trade
● Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/passporttotrade2
Discussion Questions
1. Which traffic source was the most successful contributor to the campaign?
2. What digital marketing channels contributed to the positive increase in site traffic?
3. Looking at the Google Analytics data, what pattern of visitor behaviour can be observed in
termsof seasonality?Howcanthisinformationbe usedto generate maximum engagement
on the website?
Class Activities
Explore the historic performance of the website since it was created in 2012. Looking at the
following key factors:
1. How long did it take for the website to gain momentum in Search Engine traffic?
2. What is the seasonality of the website traffic?

5. Source: Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T., & Cruz, A. (Eds.). (2017). Digital and Social Media
Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach. Routledge. Accessible online
http://mastersindigitalmarketing.org/book/ #passion4digital This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
a. Trends for days of the week
b. Trends for Months of the year
3. Make a comparison on website traffic to the previous year, over same period - what is the
trend?
4. ViewReal Time dataandidentifythe locationwhere the websitevisitorsare currentlybased.
5. Explore the web pages that have the highest bounce rate - what can you see from the
Google Analyticsdataandthe contentof the pagesthat mightsuggestthe highbounce rate?
Share your answer with others on Twitter using #passion4digital #Ch12
Use your own details and if you don’t have access to Google AdWords you could try using the
following username and password:
Username: passion4digital@gmail.com
Password: p25510n4digital
Login to Google Analytics - https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/