How We Scaled Ninja Van From 0 to 8,913 Organic Sessions/Mo in a Highly Competitive Industry

At the end of 2020, to combat the effects of the pandemic, Ninja Van launched two services directed at online sellers looking to boost their business operations.

However, given strong competition and low-to-mid consideration from shippers, Ninja Van needed to work harder to distinguish its services from those of its rivals in the rapidly evolving logistics industry.

The challenge

Regional e-commerce has been on a roll in the years since the pandemic abated – with the Philippines leading the charge.

Online shopping activity in the Philippines continues to grow unabated, even in the face of reopening brick-and-mortar stores all over the archipelago. The Philippine e-commerce market is projected to grow by about 15% in 2023; domestic e-commerce Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is expected to skyrocket from a commendable $3 billion in 2019 to an eye-popping $16 billion in 2023.

In this competitive environment, Ninja Van faced strong competition and low-to-mid consideration from shippers. The logistics company sought to break through the clutter with a campaign that would reposition them, not just as another faceless cog in the e-commerce machine, but as a collaborative business partner.

Tapping on Ninja Van’s blog

Ninja Van’s existing blog was a previously untapped resource with the potential to address this two-fold challenge.

By tailoring content to resonate with their “shipper” audience – a demographic that was young, trendy, and only just dipping their toes in the tumultuous logistics industry – they could achieve the growth they had in mind.

The company recognised that these young entrepreneurs were grappling with a few common, deeply held concerns:

• the need to grow their customer base;
• the dilemma of scaling and expanding their businesses;
• and an elusive blueprint for a sustainable business.

These readers also tended to avoid reading translated versions of articles written for a broad regional audience. Instead, they were keen readers of truly localised content that addressed Filipino-specific concerns.

Our solution

With Content stepped in with a campaign that targeted local small business owners that didn’t have a website yet.

Our approach would educate our target readers and give them concrete motivation (e.g. examples and use cases) to build their own e-commerce channels.

Through keyword and industry research, we came up with relevant topics to populate our chosen strategy of pillar + cluster content.

We envisioned the copy to be informative and helpful – tailored to local audiences’ problems and preferred style (think listicles written in a friendly, playful, and visual manner).

Intimate knowledge of localised concerns

Speaking the language of the target audience was essential if we wanted to break through the clutter. The copy needed to be intimately familiar with the hesitations and challenges local small business owners faced, and address them with tailored topics, such as:

• listicles relevant to local shopping seasons;
• profiles of local entrepreneurs;
• and opinion pieces on Filipino beauty e-commerce.

The articles also needed to demonstrate how particular goals could be achieved by Filipino small business owners with limited resources. To encourage follow-through, the articles contained concrete actions and tips that addressed these limitations.

Posting in a “budol” group on Facebook? Sincerity will earn you genuine follow-up from interested buyers.

Trying to grow your audience? Start a “refer-a-friend” programme.

By publishing and promoting these articles, the campaign distinguished Ninja Van as a “thought leader” who intimately understood shippers’ unique pain points and needs.

Regular pulse checks

As the campaign progressed, With Content also supplemented our initial strategy with suggested topic ideas based on informal social listening techniques.

We looked into “trendjacking”, riding new trends in the market; or featuring e-commerce influencers, providing an incentive for the interviewees to share the article with their respective audiences.

At certain intervals, we would also do “temperature checks” to gauge reader enjoyment, displaying the results on the respective pages as social proof:

The results

Within the 23-month contract, Ninja Van saw serious dividends emerging from the campaign.

For starters, monthly organic traffic to the blog skyrocketed from 13 to 8,913 sessions:

Ninja Van’s organic keywords in the top 1-10 positions also saw considerable growth, jumping from 3 to 420:

In the months following, Ninja Van’s blog would continue to trend upward and rank for an increasing number of keywords in the top 20 positions.

Conclusion

As our campaign for Ninja Van demonstrates, tight competition shouldn’t be an obstacle to growth, and achieving headway in a competitive market doesn’t necessarily call for expensive solutions.

By creating content that addressed the needs of shippers – and expressing those solutions in the shippers’ own generational language – Ninja Van managed to cut through the clutter and achieve measurable gains in brand awareness.

Not an easy thing to achieve, given the Philippines’ cluttered, competitive logistics market.

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