age co

Age Co is a subsidiary of Age UK, the UK’s largest charity dedicated to people in later life.

They offer a wide range of services targeted at people over 50 — from car and home insurance to legal services, funeral planning and independent living solutions — donating their profits back to Age UK.

Key takeaways

• Age Co provides a range of products and services to people aged 50+, donating their profits back to their parent company, Age UK

• While previous marketing efforts were centred around paid advertising, we’ve helped Age Co grow, digitally and sustainably, through full-funnel performance marketing

• Key results (so far) include a 13.2m reach through digital PR, a 223% increase in sales through organic search, and a 200% increase in quotes across car & home insurance, generated through paid search*

• Thanks to our efforts, Age Co are appearing in more searches, engaging with more people, and selling more insurance products online

*(August ‘22 vs August ‘23)

The Brief

We’ve had the pleasure of working with both Age Co and Age UK for a number of years now, overcoming challenges, exploring new opportunities and sharing many successes together. Through regular strategic immersion and discovery sessions, plus the many projects we’ve delivered since, we’ve learnt all about both businesses; their objectives, audiences, competitors and marketplaces. 

This solid strategic understanding, coupled with our laser-focus on continuous improvement, has helped us produce some exceptional results for Age Co since we partnered up. And we were especially thrilled to agree to a brand new retainer with them earlier this year, which will see the scope of our work — and our ambitious growth plans for their business — reach new heights.

Our work

While our initial work for Age Co was heavily geared towards driving quotes and sales across their insurance portfolio through paid channels — a digital deep dive, delivered as part of our discovery process, alongside wider Age Co research, highlighted a lack of consumer awareness around the Age Co brand. This was a big barrier for their business, limiting the volume of leads we were able to generate, for several reasons:

• Non-brand cost-per-clicks were increasing and becoming ultra-competitive
• Conversion rates for non-branded terms were plateauing meaning the volume of leads would naturally decline
• The non-brand organic space was also becoming more competitive meaning above the fold rankings were harder to secure

Additionally, we knew that Age Co had ambitions to grow their share of voice in a highly competitive marketplace. To help realise this, it was clear we needed to introduce more top-of-funnel brand awareness activity, to complement Age Co’s more conversion-centred marketing approach. 

This would bring a number of benefits:

• It would help position Age Co as ‘top of mind’ for consumers looking for insurance brands and services
• It would build brand awareness and consideration, which in turn, would create a wider, more engaged audience to target through conversion-centred activity
• It would offer a more sustainable approach; meaning Age Co could deliver an integrated approach, without relying on quick win tactics, making them more competitive in the organic space in the longer-term

With our new strategy defined, our challenge was clear; strike the perfect balance between brand and acquisition, maximising results across Age Co’s digital channels.

Putting Age Co in the digital spotlight

Digital PR is an effective channel for brands looking to build their online visibility, positively shape brand perceptions and stand out from the competition. So we recommended our Digital PR Services to Age Co - and our PR team quickly got to work.

We created a campaign using unique, primary data, allowing us to craft a relevant and topical story that we were confident the press would pick up.

The Highway Code update was a newsworthy item which provided us with the ideal hook - could the country’s most experienced drivers pass the theory test if they were to take it now? We conducted a survey of over 50s in the UK to find out the extent of their knowledge of the revised Highway Code. We also aggregated data from secondary sources to reveal some surprising statistics about the proficiencies of older drivers.

The results

This digital PR campaign was a huge success, resulting in:

• 28 pieces of coverage (in high authority publications)
• 13.2m audience reach
• 16% increase in voice share vs competitors
• A feature in PR Moments ‘Good and Bad PR round-up’ (we’ll let you take a guess as to which category it fell under)

Helping Age Co grow with SEO

As our digital PR campaign was grabbing all the headlines - our SEO experts audited the Age Co website and optimised it from a technical, on-page and backlink perspective.

The PR campaign delivered some high-quality backlinks, and we built on that by trawling through Age Co’s existing backlink profile and disavowing any which wouldn’t benefit their search performance. 

UX plays a key role in search visibility. So, working collaboratively with the Age Co team, we took several measures to ensure their website was technically robust and user-friendly, such as improving the overall site-speed — providing a positive experience for users while making it easier for search engines to crawl.

From an on-page perspective, we gave the Age Co website a complete content overhaul. This involved fine-tuning content across product pages to increase its quality and relevance; adhering to Google’s Helpful content updates and E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) parameters. 

At the same time, we removed any irrelevant or outdated content, and introduced a fresh content plan that focused on long-form, authoritative pieces covering a wide-spectrum of insurance related topics — the objective being to make Age Co and it’s insurance products more visible online, while providing users with all the information they need to request a quote.   

SEO results

While SEO isn’t always associated with immediate results, Age Co are already reaping the search benefits. So far, we’ve delivered:

• 151% increase in non-brand traffic to car insurance pages and 76% for brand*
• 223% increase in car insurance sales
• 67% increase in brand impressions for car insurance
• 33% A increase in brand clicks to home insurance and 45% increase in brand impressions

(August '23 vs August '22)

Bringing in the business with paid media

Through a combination of Digital PR and SEO, Age Co was becoming increasingly visible online — and it was great to see our brand and product awareness building efforts paying off. But now wasn’t the time to rest on our laurels — we needed to capitalise on this growing audience, and that’s where paid media came into the mix.

We staggered our approach, using a strategic channel mix across the awareness, consideration and conversion journey, to help us maximise campaign performance.

We launched social ads — across Meta and Youtube — targeting different audience profiles identified in the discovery process, with a mix of video and static ad formats and variants. These were supported by remarketing ads, capturing audiences who had previously engaged with the ads without completing an action. 

And we didn’t stop there. We also delivered paid search activity with bursts of programmatic advertising, positioning Age Co front and centre across search engine results, and third-party websites, while also ramping up conversions through the Age Co website. 

This considered combination of paid activity allowed us to target audiences at various points throughout the user journey. From shining the spotlight on Age Co with paid search and programmatic ads to recapturing existing demand through remarketing — we had it all covered.

Paid Search Results

Underpinned by our test, monitor, refine and optimise approach, we’re proud to have achieved some incredible results through our paid activity:

• 200% increase in insurance quotes across car & home insurance through paid search*
• 79.59% improvement in cost-per-acquisition
• 37.5% reduction in cost per click through search engine marketing

*(May '23 - December '23)

Paid Social Results

• 18 million impressions through Meta and Youtube*
• 60,000 click-throughs to the Age Co. website

*(May '23 - December '23)

What’s next?

Through a full-funnel mix of performance marketing activity, underpinned by data-driven insight (as always), we’ve helped Age Co generate millions of digital impressions and thousands of clicks and conversions through to their website — supporting them in their mission to help older people make the most of later life.

What’s more? We’ve helped Age Co grow more sustainably through digital. And thanks to some brilliant brand-awareness activity, they’re now engaging with greater audiences than ever before…and the best thing? We’re only just getting started!

"Myself and the Age Co marketing team have been working with Enjoy for a number of years now and over that time have expanded and grown our digital remit through strong performance and the continued optimisation of digital channels.  They have helped us build a whole new website, launch new products, journey into increasing our brand awareness, test new channels, and all while making sure our performance delivery is the best it can be. As a small growing subsidiary of Age UK we rely on strong partners and they fit perfectly in this space.  We have great processes in place that mean we work as one team to ensure we’re all working to agreed objectives and targets so they can take ownership and deliver projects big and small."

Sally Palmer, Senior Marketing Manager

Let’s get growing!

Enjoy is a digital experience and performance marketing agency. And our mission is to transform and grow brands digitally, ethically and sustainably, and to forever challenge expectations about what digital can deliver.

Since we started out in 2008, we’ve delivered performance marketing campaigns for over 275 brands, and yours could be next.

Find out more about our performance marketing services, and get in touch today!