Earlier this month there was a fair amount of ‘buzz’ around some research which appeared to suggest that people who are Facebook ‘fans’/Twitter ‘followers’ of a brand are more likely to buy and recommend that brand, than they were before they were fans/followers.

Piqued your interest? Me too. Essentially CMB Consumer Pulse (the company who undertook the research project) asked the following questions:

To the Facebook ‘fans’:

Are you more likely to buy since becoming a fan?

Are you more likely to recommend to a friend since becoming a fan?

To the Twitter ‘followers’:

Are you more likely to buy since becoming a follower?

Are you more likely to recommend to a friend since becoming a follower?

The results were as follows:

Facebook ‘fans’:

51% of respondents said they would be more likely to buy from at least one brand since becoming a fan.

60% of respondents said they would be more likely to recommend at least one brand since becoming a fan.

Twitter ‘followers’:

67% of respondents said they would be more likely to buy from at least one brand since becoming a follower.

79% of respondents said they would be more likely to recommend at least one brand since becoming a follower.

On the face of it at least – Twitter followers look pretty engaged, no?

But the Facebook fans? Surely if 51% said they would be more like to buy; then 49% said either they didn’t know; or would be less likely to buy. Not exactly compelling. Oh, and it gets worse – 49% said that one of the reasons they became a Facebook fan in the first place was because they were already a customer. So we’ve an uplift… but only just…

This is getting messy now, right?

I’ve also got concerns with the research methodology used -  I think that the questions asked are a bit confusing/complex:

‘Are you more likely to buy since becoming a fan/follower?’

This question asks you to think about the likelihood of a future purchase – which is pretty woolly anyways, right? Then adds additional complexity by chucking in the ’since becoming a fan/follower’. Are you asking if becoming a fan/follower influences purchasing decisions? Is that a question that someone can really answer?

I’d be far more interested to see what people have *actually* done. Not what they think they might do, one day, perhaps, maybe, possibly – you get the point.

Now a question like this might be more interesting -

‘Have you purchased from <brand x> since you became a fan/follower?’

Likewise:

Have you recommended <brand x> to a friend since you became a fan/follower?’

One of the first things I was taught about market research was that what people have done is far more predictive of their future behaviour than what they ‘think’ they might do. I’d love to see the results of those questions (if they were asked). Sure, they might not make for such a compelling headline; but they would at least be genuinely useful.

However, the cynic in me suspects that this piece of research was really about linkbaiting – and we’ve (the search industry) all bitten, right? On that front, they’ve done really very well indeed…

Yesterday I was the recipient of an interesting piece of email marketing – the agency involved shall remain nameless (I’m not *that* mean… well, some days I am, but I’m being nice today!) – the email they sent is below:

Hi,

We spoke last year regarding data acquisition for your marketing campaigns and I have you listed for further contact during the 2^nd Quarter this year.  As you may be aware, <company name removed> has a great reputation for supplying the freshest most responsive  data and are used by approximately 1 in 4 UK agencies and numerous leading brands.  Our reputation has been founded on being ethical, professional, knowledgeable, helpful and pretty good at direct marketing!

<company name removed> are owners of business databases consisting of over 1.4 million business contacts and nearly 500,000 email addresses. With up-to-date records and our targeting consultancy, we will help you reach the  important contacts and make your campaign a success.  In conjunction with the launch of our new telephone-verified business file we are offering the following Spring promotions:

<Promotion details removed>

We can select the data according to industry, turnover, employee numbers, site type and many more selections.

We are also specialists in the consumer data arena and have access to the freshest, most accurate consumer data a file consisting of over 20 million records with approximately 2000 selections available. In addition,  <company name removed> offers the best available international business and consumer data. We pride ourselves on the professionalism of our solutions and always strive for service excellence.  We are ISO 9001 & 14001 accredited and members of the DMA and I believe we are well placed to assist you.

For further details or a free bespoke count, quote & analysis  please do not hesitate to contact me with your full criteria, we are here to help your business grow!

Kind regards

<Name Removed>

Business Development Executive
<company name removed>

<contact details removed>

Nothing particularly untoward, huh? Perhaps it’s a little bit boring?

Well, what you can’t see is that rather than using BCC to copy everyone in; the Business Development Exec had added us all in on the TO – line.

So we could all see each other’s details.

He also managed to forward us all the correspondence prior to the final version of the email; which included some debate over whether the subject line sounded spammy and various versions of the email which seemingly had bounced around various people in the company. The boy was having a nightmare.

Cue righteous indignation from one recipient (no it wasn’t me):

Hmmmm, let me think – do I really want to do business with you?

Reasons for the answer NO:

• First rule of email marketing – do not disclose the recipients address!
  You have copied in everyone’s email address in to the TO: section rather than BCC us all in therefore disclosing client details to third parties, any of us can now use this list for our own marketing! Think there is also some kind of data protection issue there too.
• You have forwarded the email and forgotten to remove any previous content so, as much as it is lovely to read what your colleagues think about the email and to know that <name removed> is trying to push this out the door for  you, am not interested!
• NOT A VERY PROFESSIONAL JOB AT ALL!!!!!
• By copying everyone in, I can now respond to all and let them also know what an EPIC FAIL this was!

Please DO NOT send me any more correspondence about your company.

A few others chimed in a similar vein.

Bad times…

Later on in the afternoon we all received this:

An apology.

Earlier today one of our members of staff decided to take it upon their selves to broadcast an email campaign via Outlook.  This individual did so without any authorisation and with no practical knowledge of email marketing. This has resulted in confidential conversations and contacts being made available to the 86 recipients.  I understand this was felt to be the quickest and easiest method to contact a former employee’s contacts.

This is not a reflection of our standards or practices, merely that of an over keen sales executive. This individual will now face disciplinary action.

As per our email footer terms, we kindly ask you to delete the email as it contains confidential information.

All recipients will now be removed from our database.

If you would like to discuss this matter further, please feel free to contact me directly.

Your sincerely,

<Name removed>

Now, this was interesting.

From time to time these mistakes do happen, but it’s how you deal with it that counts (in my book at least). So, they get a thumbs up for sending out the apology, although for my money it should have gone out earlier – there was quite some lag between the original email being sent out; and this apology.

But the contents of the apology don’t quite stack up.

Remember we’d seen all the original correspondence – which would seem to indicate that several people in the company knew about the email. Which would infer at the very least that some sort of authorisation was given.

Hmmmm…

I’m also slightly worried about an ‘over keen’ sales exec selling email marketing solutions – when said individual has (and I quote) ‘no practical knowledge of email marketing’. It doesn’t say anything good about the company, does it?

I think in this instance, that the apology email has probably done more damage than the original mistake. Seemingly it highlights far larger flaws in terms of the processes and policies of this company. The lesson? Well, in the event that you have an epic email fail like the one above; give a little thought to your apology. Make sure you’re not making a bad situation worse.

Oh, and honesty really is the best policy

Image credit Hans Gerwitz

*Update: This position has now been filled*

Hot on the heels of our latest round of recruitment activity, we’re at it again and are seeking a Link Building Exec to join our rapidly growing Search Marketing Team based at our offices in Hampton Hill, TW12 1ND.

Gravytrain is an established online marketing agency servicing clients from a variety of sectors from insurance to charities. We are seeking an enthusiastic Link Building Executive to help us build excellent backlinks to our clients websites.

Duties & Responsibilities

1. Find and research websites relevant to our clients websites and niches.
2. Assist in the planning and implementation of our broader SEO strategy.
3. Identify and analyse key metrics and assess the performance of link building campaigns, providing clients with written monthly reports
4. Keep up with industry news and developments
5. Monitor tools and alerts to monitor and act on new link opportunities as they arise
6. Interacting with publishers/websites to understand their requirements for linking out to our clients
7. Negotiating with publishers to secure links and/or mentions on their websites

Person Specification

Personality

A self-starter you will be driven, positive and focused on delivering results. You will flexible, adaptable and willing to get stuck in to get the job done.

Skills / Experience:

Essential:

1. Excellent written and verbal communication skills
2. A genuine passion for the web, online marketing and blogging
3. Computer literate with an excellent understanding of the web

Desirable:

1. University graduate
2. Be active within the online marketing community
3. Knowledge of html
4. Experience in blogging
5. Previous experience of SEO, social media & link building

Working Hours

Monday – Friday 9am – 5.30pm.

Salary

To £21k per annum depending on experience

Benefits

Private health care and subsidised gym membership.

How to apply:

Applicants are invited to send their CV and covering letter via email directly to:

Hannah Smith – SEM Team Manager:    hannah@gravytrain.co.uk

No agencies.

The seven deadly sins have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers against vice. Today I’ll be using them to illustrate the potential pitfalls in paid search…

Whilst falling prey to these sins is unlikely to see you in one of Dante’s nine circles; chances are you will be adversely affecting your campaign; and so, without further ado – I give you the seven deadly sins of PPC…

Wrath

Also known as anger or rage; wrath encompasses both actions against others, and indeed self-denial. It also includes the desire to seek revenge, and generally wishing to do harm to others. In PPC such acts of wrath might include clicking on your competitors ads in order to run down their budget…

Don’t do it. Google in particular are pretty good at spotting click fraud so chances are your efforts are being wasted in any case. Your time and energy would be much better spent focusing on improving your own campaign.

Avarice

More commonly quoted as greed, avarice is an excessive pursuit of wealth – perhaps at the cost of everything else. Now in PPC terms this perhaps isn’t quite so sinful; unless of course it’s misguided. Are you so busy ensuring you’ve covered every conceivable keyword that you’ve forgotten to optimise your campaign and focus on what actually works? If you’re in e-commerce are your prices competitive? Alternatively it may be that you’ve swung the other way entirely – in your quest for a perfectly optimised campaign you’ve created a narrowly targeted campaign which works brilliantly from a cost per acquisition/sale point of view; but fails to deliver the volume you really need.

Envy

Envy can cause poor PPC management decisions. You see your competitor consistently appearing for a set of keywords (often head terms) which despite rounds and rounds of testing you’ve never managed to make work for you. You think, how are they making that work? Why is it that they can make it work and I can’t? Focus on your own campaign and your own objectives. Many companies run ‘loss leaders’ within otherwise successful PPC campaigns. Maybe those keywords are just that – loss leaders. Are they something you can afford? If not, pause them. Similarly, some go to great lengths to copy their competitors landing pages, just because they assume they will convert better; rather than checking their assumptions by split testing first.

Sloth

Sloth is the most common of PPC sins. If you want your campaign to deliver, you’ll need to work at it. You’ll need to consistently improve and refine your campaign – you can’t just set it up and let it run…

Pride

Pride is described as an excessive love of self. In PPC those who are overly proud probably think that there’s nothing left for them to learn. They believe that their PPC campaign is so well optimised that it really couldn’t be improved. I’d suggest that’s unlikely. No matter how well your campaign’s performing there’s always something which could stand to be improved, so continually test and learn.

Gluttony

This sin refers to the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In PPC terms this might be likened to those who regardless of the cost *want* to appear in the top spot. Appearing first isn’t always the most cost-effective place to be in terms of conversions. Sure in some instances there may be some excellent reasons for wanting to appear in the top spot; but to optimise a whole campaign with this goal in mind is wasteful in the extreme.

Lust

Ordinarily thought of as sexual in nature, I’m going to be use a little artistic license here and use Aristotle’s definition – ‘an excessive love of others’. Some believe that other people’s PPC ads are so good that all they really need to do is copy them. This is a little short-sighted – it may work in the short term, but without developing your own key selling points / benefits / points of difference etc you’re likely to fail in the long term.

Image credit Lori Greig

Google have today announced a new link spam detection algorithm, alongside a new form to report competitors with.  While both link spam detection and reporting of link spam have both been possible for many years, today’s announcement could cause the practise of reporting competitors to become more popular.

Whether this proves to be significant will depend largely on whether Google takes the reports submitted seriously. If there is a strong indication that submitting such a report leads to your competitors rankings suffering, it’ll become too tempting for many SEO’s to ignore.

As it becomes increasingly easier to analyse your competitor’s backlinks, it also gets increasingly harder to hide what you are doing.

Such a scenario create a tricky dilemma – are the benefits of reporting your competitors more significant than the drawbacks? While the benefits might seem obvious (your competitor could drop in the SERPS, possibly below you), the drawbacks are probably more complex than you might first think.

Firstly , the new form isn’t anonymous, meaning that you need to submit from an actual Google account , and whilst I’ve no doubt that most would-be-reporters will use a fake/spare Google account for this purpose, it doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be traced back to your website. If there is any way of Google knowing who’s behind the report, then you better be sure your website would stand up to similar scrutiny.

Then there’s the problem of shared links – even if you have used a disconnected account to report your competitors from, you might still lose out if you have shared links with your competitor. Should the algorithm be used to apply penalties to sellers (and it likely will be), you might find that Google discounts all links from websites linking to both of you. Imagine you gained a natural editorial link from a website – it wouldn’t be unforeseeable in competitive industries for your competitors to have approached the publisher and ended up paying for a link; in this scenario it’s quite possible that both the editorial and paid links were invalidated.

The ultimate question in both of the above cases would be your view of the playing field – given most websites will likely have some questionable backlinks (even if you haven’t bought links or spammed blogs, there’s previous SEO agencies to think about, ex-employees, competitors, or just being unlucky enough to have attracted links from websites that are usually spammy), your strategic call would depend on where you see your websites links compared with those of your competitors. If you are low in the SERPS but have a much cleaner link profile than your competitors, then you are probably well placed to submit reports.

Even if you do judge yourself of having more to gain though – it doesn’t mean you will actually want to do this. I’ve never personally reported a competitor, and I know many others who would say the same – it just feels wrong. Even if you do feel it’s the right thing to do, do you really have time? It’s kind of like playing a game of Darts – you can try and put off your opponent, but may just prefer to focus on your own game.

All things considered, savvier SEO’s may come to another conclusion altogether – whether or not you choose to report your competitors, future proofing your own links has to be the way forward.

Image credit Drew_