Strategic rebrand and redesign leads to 18x growth in revenue for our own brand, Key Medium


Read how Key Medium utilized it's own service offerings to achieve well over 14,800% YoY growth in organic search visibility in the first year as well as an 18x growth in revenue two years later while giving back $68K from 2017 to year-end 2019 (both in-kind services and cash donations) to fight food insecurity, poverty, and strengthen the local community through Coding for Causes.

  1. Key Medium founded

    Created with the idea of leveraging modern technology to help government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and businesses better connect with their constituents, donors, and clientele.

  2. Research & Discovery

  3. Project Definition / Blueprint

  4. Copyediting & Design Strategy

  5. Digital Development

  6. Key Medium rebrand launch

    Key Medium: keystone logo icon

    Messaging, mission, vission, and values refreshed along with brand identiy to better represents us. The origin of the name Key Medium derives the initial slogan that ‘the internet is the key medium of communication globally’ and has grown to be synonymous with both ‘digital’ and ‘message’. The keystone (a nod to the Keystone State!) combined with a keyway, and a futuristic typeface to read Key Medium makes up our logo and signals that we are a leading purpose-driven marketing and technology company.

  7. Coding For Causes program formalized

    Coding For Causes logo

    Program formalized with atleast 20% of profits committed–enabling capacity-building by increasing access to modern technology and digital solutions to nonprofit organizations.

  8. Continuous Improvement

    Growth and success towards lasting impact is what drives us. We measure our performance in terms of impact on people, planet, and then–profit–as a triple bottom line (TBL) firm.


See It In Action

From the very beginning, Key Medium was a smashing success. We generated amazing results for ourselves and grew year upon year. Err! Wait a minute!

That’s how every company’s success story would like to go, in a simple linear success process where there are no downs and only ups. But that’s not how it happened for us and definitely not how it happened for most people. Many of the best stories start with things not looking so great. In films, we often root for the underdog. We want to see them succeed and excel. 

Just like you, we got there the hard way, through lots of trial and error. (More error than we’d like to admit sometimes.) 

Eventually, we used our own service offerings to achieve well over 14,800% YoY growth in organic search visibility in the first year as well as an 18x growth in revenue two years later while giving back $68k from 2017 to year-end 2019 (both in-kind services and cash donations) to fight food insecurity, poverty, and strengthen the local community through Coding For Causes. But that’s cutting to the chase. Here’s the story.

ALI, THE FOUNDER OF KEY MEDIUM

Ali Jaffar

For over a decade, Ali has been building dazzling, award-winning websites with user experience at the forefront of his designs. With a cashed-out 401k (following his 2+ year role as a management consultant for a State Government) and minimum funding and a determination to be a success, he took his hard-earned talents and his cutting-edge knowledge and innovations in web development to create show-stopping style and seamless functionality.

Ali notes that his first few years, at Key Medium weren’t ideal (or even profitable) but he learned and adapted quickly, taking on contract roles (at a national nonprofit, the #2 fundraising software company, and two strategic branding agencies) to pay the bills while refining his vision, process, toolkit, and network. With the right partnerships and determination, he has transformed Key Medium into Philadelphia’s leading digital impact agency with over 37 awards under his belt.

THE PROBLEM

All websites stagnate over time and it’s even more difficult to stay fresh when you build amazing websites for other people all the time! (You know because we are busy with your website and not ours!)

In the beginning, our website needed a makeover and we struggled with organic growth. We become operational in February 2014 and we weren’t growing as intended via our video marketing solutions and digital service offerings. 

From our custom video marketing solution to our web development services and digital strategy, our brand experience was disjointed and unmemorable. We took a step back and thought about the elements of a trusted brand–one that reflects quality, consistency, and innovation. Then we decided that a brand refresh was the right move for our continued growth and success.

In addition to branding and design from a visual perspective, our messaging lacked the vision and values clients need to see when evaluating our company. We needed a content management system that allowed us to constantly evolve the way we communicate.

OUR SOLUTION

The solution to our flat non-brand became a core offering of Key Medium’s services. 

This lesson learned resulted in what has become our complete custom website redesign and brand refresh solution.

We realize the importance of consistent branding, which is why we write about it! And that’s why we ensure that, when you get a custom-designed website, you have a fully-integrated brand as well as a website that showcases what you do, coupled with an integrated performance analytics dashboard and headache-free maintenance.

How did we develop this total Custom Website Package?

Our brand refresh includes a robust content strategy with benefit-led messaging.

By adding a content strategist to our portfolio of talent, we developed a unified brand strategy that intertwined content with design. We created new marketing collateral to convey a memorable, meaningful message that aligned with our new brand, and most importantly, with the goals and aspirations of our clients.

We take a laser focus on search engine optimization.

Ali has become an expert in Google’s best practices and the latest innovation and our results speak to that success. We fixed 100% of errors in Search Console and set up redirects to new pages to retain page authority. Keeping tabs on Google’s ever-changing algorithms is crucial to building upon and retaining our substantial digital footprint. 

Keymedium.com is now a WordPress site.

In order to grow and grow quickly, we invested in the best. That’s why we created an exclusive WordPress theme with the latest in mobile-first technology. And beyond top-notch tech, looks matter. With our relaunch, we set out to build a delightful theme designed for maximum performance. We created a trend-forward design with a nod to Google’s material design principles.

Our brand refresh inspired a new brand identity design and development.

We designed a whole new, integrated brand identity, complete with a striking color palette and modern, minimalist aesthetic. We designed our website to be beautiful, searchable, and easy-to-navigate. By utilizing a rapid, creative development methodology, we were able to move our focus to create new content, improve site structure, and rethinking the breadth of our digital services and our brand’s positioning.

Key Medium before and after in 2015-16 vs 2017
The 2016 Key Medium vs. the 2017 Key Medium brand website

OUR RESULTS

From brand identity development to website design and search engine optimization, our new website immediately began paying off, generating an unprecedented amount of targeted traffic and engagement.

  • Unique traffic increased by 628% YoY in 2018 vs 2017
  • Clicks from Search increased 1,200% YoY in 2018 vs 2017
  • Search visibility increased by 14,800% YoY in 2018 vs 2017
  • Revenue increased by more than 18x in 2019 vs. 2017 [updated February 2020]
Search visibility has seen EXPLOSIVE growth.

It takes time to see an ROI and a jump in rankings in Google, but the wait was well worth it. With a lot of hard work, we saw a 4,679% increase in impressions in just 3 months and an impressive 14,800% year-over-year (YoY).

Search traffic is up 12x.

Our complete brand refresh and custom website increased search traffic. Today, our search rankings are increasing regularly as we continuously develop useful, quality content to help our clients and prospects grow their networks online- while we also develop innovative solutions like RunningSEO, LegalNear.Me, Net Qualified, and Key.Video- all with our new integrated brand approach in mind.

Does your organization need a website, brand, or design refresh?

We have been in the place you’re in. We have experienced growing pains (or lack of growth, that is!) and we understand (the hard way) how you can grow and thrive in a digital environment. Let us share our expertise with you so you only reach the highs (and not the lows). 

You can achieve the same success with your website when you hire Key Medium to build your custom website, refresh your brand, and create a compelling modern design that reflects your desired customer.

Contact us here and we’ll be in touch to learn about how Key Medium can help your business grow and succeed online.

This was last updated March 7, 2020, to provide the freshest insight into how our success impacted the significant growth of our own business through the integrated brand approach and services from Key Medium. It goes to show that we also practice what we preach.