This week, Gravytrain’s CEO, Kevin Taylor, talked to POSTonline.co.uk about Gravytrain’s survey. The study, which involved 2200 consumers from the UK, reveals that customers who use price comparison websites are more likely to buy from brands they recognised and trusted, rather than from those companies just offering the cheapest quote.

The survey found that 35% of customers “always” chose to buy from respected insurance providers, while 20% chose to buy from the insurance company who offered the lowest quote.

43% of the 55 and over age group stated that they always buy insurance from brands they recognise, while 31% of those in the 18 to 24 range choose the insurer who provided the lowest quote.

Kevin says that it’s easy for insurance providers to think that having the best price on a comparison website is key, especially in today’s tough economic climate. Even though having a competitive price is important, the results show that brand recognition and trust is crucial for customers.

Kevin suggests that, “Insurers and brokers should look to broaden their marketing spend beyond the confines of price comparison sites to other media channels. This means implementing a multi-channel marketing campaign to successfully engage with consumers to build brand recognition and trust.”

If you are subscribed to POSTonline.co.uk you can read the full article here.

Like most people in SEO, I spend a fair amount of time reading industry blogs, to see what people are currently talking about in the world of online marketing and looking out for the next big thing in SEO, such as Google+.

A couple of months ago you couldn’t move for posts about Google+, with everyone talking about its rivalry with Facebook, its sudden influx of 20 million users and hundreds of debates about how it was going to completely change the game! But now when I look around SEOMoz, Econsultancy, Search Engine Land and the rest I see barely a few mentions of this ‘revolutionary’ new social network.

To be fair, I am no better than the rest, when Google+ first came out I was straight on it and published 2 or 3 posts about how it could topple Facebook, change the way we connect online and add a huge new element to SEO, but now I am paying about as much attention to it as I am to AOL.

The fact of the matter is, so far we have seen little to no impact on SEO by Google+, and although it has 20 million+ users I haven’t seen a fresh update from any of my circles in weeks! Meanwhile, Facebook continues to roll out new features, such as the subscribe button, and both Facebook and Twitter are still much better places to interact with friends, fans and customers.

So where do we go from here?

A couple of months ago everyone was discussing how Google was becoming much more social and how we need to adapt to that and move away from traditional SEO tactics. However, in the last month there has been very little impact from Google+ and Google have not renewed their deal with Twitter, effectively losing some of their social element, rather than increasing it.

So should we just forget about Google+ and social networks altogether? Well no, social is obviously still very important for online marketing, with Twitter and Facebook being excellent mediums for creating brand awareness, customer interaction and content distribution, but I do think it is fair to say that the initial hype over Google+ was a bit much and that, although a move into social is good, abandoning traditional SEO tactics in favour of a social only approach might be a bit too presumptuous.