Hickory Farms engaged NP Digital to define a content roadmap, which leveraged search data to increase visibility in online search results. It was through this lens that Hickory Farms was able to prioritize content and quickly propel their visibility for multiple ‘gift basket’ categories, including but not limited to wine, chocolate, Father’s Day.
Bringing people together through effortless gifting.
Established in 1951, Hickory Farms is a 69-year-old iconic brand best known for their classic meat and cheese gift baskets. In 2020, they embarked on an initiative to modernize their business model through a digital transformation, ultimately shifting from a predominately offline business (catalogs and kiosks) to focus on their eCommerce marketing channel.
THE CHALLENGE
Modernize and expand brand recognition.
The online gift basket category is highly competitive, especially around peak Holiday seasons such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as well as special occasions such as anniversaries and birthdays. To increase awareness for their diverse offering through search results, it was important for Hickory Farms to be present on page one results for this saturated and competitive category.
THE SOLUTION
Double-down on strengths, new audiences.
Through a series of research exercises, the solution to Hickory Farms’ challenges took a multi-faceted approach:
Enhance the website content
Ensure that search engines had the path of least resistance to index website content
Send signals to Google showing the website is worthy of ranking on page one
Essentially, Hickory Farms needed to refine their site content to better match a person’s intent when searching for gift basket products online. To do this, Hickory Farms focused on the following initiatives:
Create content around the needs-based searches performed by their new target audiences
Optimize meta titles, tags, and headings
Optimize information architecture, content structure, and format
Update current site copy to include additional keyword variations
Eliminate technical SEO roadblocks while improving website performance and improving page load speed
Syndicate content via digital PR, social, and paid channels to obtain links and social signals
150+ GIFT BASKET PAGES
SERVICES PROVIDED
SEO
CONTENT
CREATIVE
ANALYTICS
THE RESULTS
Improving the brand’s right to win for their core audience.
Within the first 8 weeks of launching the new SEO campaign, Hickory Farms quickly propelled to page one (1) search results for 2,826 total keywords.
283%
INCREASE IN ORGANIC SEARCH IMPRESSIONS
221%
INCREASE IN ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC
34
NEW POSITION 1-3 RANKINGS FOR HIGHLY-COVETED QUERIES
RECOGNITION
Finalist, 2021 Best Use of Search.
“Partnering with NP Digital was an instrumental component for SoFi to elevate and build authority within the investment sector, a critical area of expansion for us in 2021. The strategy and partnership we have built provided a success framework that we can use in other areas of the business for continued growth.”