Online marketing hints and tips videos

I've talked before about how much i enjoy my job. It's awesome.

Every once in a while I get the opportunity to do some properly awesome things on behalf of bigmouthmedia.

The most recent of these was getting to film 3 or 4 videos for YourBusinessChannel giving some high level online marketing advice for business'.

We recently popped all the bigmouth ones onto our bigmouthmedia channel on YouTube. Please feel free to have a look and ping back any comments or questions

As a wee taster, I've embedded one of the ones done by Finlay Clark, bigmouth's Senior Retail Strategist, below.

Watch this space for updates on when we produce and upload some more!

Chris

Finance SEO + black-hat in the news again

Over the last couple of days there has been plenty of talk across larger SEO blogs about a large UK comparison website being penalised for techniques deemed as unscrupulous by Google.

Two well thought of blogs, Econsultancy and Insiders-View, both confirmed the news yesterday.

So whats happened here? Essentially, it looks like the comparison site has been offering free content to website owners in return for a contextual link back to the comparison site's key product pages.

Google doesn't like this, but why? It's most likely not the offer of free content they dislike, but the method that was used at facilitating the request. Such a mass link request campaign could be seen as an attempt to directly game the PageRank algorithm. The email requests don't offer a link in return, so ultimately any webmaster that agrees to provide a link is taking the risk and losing out here by sharing their sites PageRank without really getting anything back.

A short while ago Forrester Research and Matt Cutts had a discussion about a technique used called "Sponsored Conversations". This is where a blogger is offered a (usually) tangible gift, or money, to talk about a product, highlight its benefits, include a link and try and create some buzz.

In fact, there are some companies that actively encourage bloggers to register with them and will then field requests from commercial companies on their behalf.

Matt Cutts is very clear on this issue;
1) "Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines."
2) "..paid posts should not pass PageRank." - i.e. out going links should be fully nofollowed.

Could it be Google are seeing the request for a link in return for 'quality content' falls in the realms of "Sponsored Conversation"?

It's all too common (and easy) for online marketers within a tough marketplace (which finance undoubtedly is) to take their budgets and try and 'buy' something more tangible like inbound links.

However, Google has been very very clear where the boundaries for this are. Here's a few quotes from the Google's Matt Cutts and former Googler Vanessa Fox.

Vanessa said, as far back as 2006;
"You want other sites to link to you. So, guidelines about links may seem confusing. You want genuine links: another site owner thinks your content is useful and relevant and links to your site. You don't want links that are intended only for Googlebot. For instance, you don't want to pay for a program that spams your link all over the Internet. You don't want to participate in link schemes that require you to link to a bunch of sites you know nothing about in exchange for links on those sites. Do you have hidden links on your site? These are links that visitors can't see and are almost always intended only for search engine web-crawling robots. Think about links in terms of visitors: are the links meant to help them find more good content or are they only meant to attract Googlebot?"

Matt Cutts then re-iterated this a year later by defining the difference of 'paid links' and 'paid links that pass PageRank';
"As someone working on quality and relevance at Google, my bottom-line concern is clean and relevant search results on Google. As such, I care about paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings. I’m not worried about links that are paid but don’t affect search engines. So when I say “paid links” it’s pretty safe to add in your head “paid links that flow PageRank and attempt to game Google’s rankings.” "

So, paid links bought to increase SEO benefit for the purchasing website, simply, contravene Google guidelines, and carry the high risk that such a strategy obviously carries with it. As you can see from the first quote i've listed, these links must be no-followed.

It's pretty clear really isn't it?

UK Interest rates

I can't believe its been a full month since i last posted. Things have been so busy around here that it truly seems like it was only yesterday since i last posted. Anyhoo, some fresh posts are on the horizon and i promise they won't be about Interest rates.

So - to keep this short - Are interest rates going to drop today?

Even though the majority of UK businesses, banks and general population don't want another cut. I'm going to say "YES" I think we'll see another rate cut.

Chris Cathcart's WongaWorld prediction: Rates will drop 0.5% to 1% today.

Chris out.

Another drop in UK interest rates?

This is a speedy blog post.

The BoE MPC are currently debating what they should do with UK interest rates. Last month we saw a drop to 2% - this is the lowest they've ever been.

This month, following some more drastic rate cuts in the US and Japan, I think we'll see another cut. If it happens, it'll be the lowest UK interest rates have been ever. Ever. In over 300 years, since The MPC's started!

So what are they going to drop too - hmmm, I'd think that we'll see another substantial drop. Not as much as a full point, which would take them to 1%. I'm going to go for half point drop, taking us to: Chris Cathcart Wonga World Prediction: to 1.5%.

I'll update this post in 15 minutes, post the announcement with the implications of the decision.

EDIT: Confirmed. Rates down to 1.5%, its certainly is interesting times!

Yippie-ki-yay Norwich Union!

In a glut of global marketing and centralisation, Aviva group, owners of UK based Norwich Union and Eire based Hibernian insurance companies annouced earlier in 2008 that they were ditching said brands in favour of the Aviva brand name.

This isn't so surprising, the insurace group is known under the Aviva brand in over 20 other countries already. In fact they have a current  group marketing campaign with the simple tag line of "Building a global brand" This is clearly important to them.

Today, news has filtered out that they will be using a number of A-list celebrities to make Aviva a house hold name. Bruce Willis, Ringo Starr and Elle McPherson top the list of celbs that we'll see in the Aviva ads, airing in teh UK from Boxing day onwards. We'll also see them appearing online and offline. Supporting Bruce, Ringo and Elle are Dame Edna and everyones favourite Shock Rocker, Alice Cooper. 

There's no denying that, with such a line up and the budget that must be supporting this, that the consumer recall rate (a metric often used to guage success of cross channel ad campaigns) is likely to be very high.

I'm looking forward to seeing the adverts on TV. Perhaps they'll each have to play a down beat insurance salesman, who's had just one to many doors shut in his face. Cue, uplifting music the appearance of a dirty vest (this would be especially good in Elles ad) and a lot of explosions. It would then culminate in the Aviva brand logo, rising from the flames with the Hollywood-esque voice over man saying:

"AVIVA - Building a global brand!"

Ok, ok - perhaps i'm getting carried away....but i bet people would remember their brand! Hah!

Time for Quantitative Easing?

Just days after the minutes of the UK's MPC were released, showing that they had considered a more aggressive Interest Rate cut, there's now renewed speculation that rates may be heading towards 0% in the coming months.

I predicted in my last interest rates post that we'd see a droop to 2.5% by end of January - My prediction was exceed last month (I'll take that as a correct prediction :-D ) and also that we'd be sub 1% before the end of 2009.

Chris Cathcart's Wonga World Prediction Alert: I honestly think that it will happen before the end of February now!

The US has recently taken such a move, and speculation is high that Japan will follow suit. With sterling's fall continuing against the euro and the dollar, its quite likely the UK will seriously consider this move in there next MPC meeting.

This strategy is often seen as a pre-cursor to "Quantitative Easing". The Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan have both used this a method of saving their economy in the past. It's simple when a countries central bank takes the decision to start printing new money. This increases circulation and supply of money to banks.

'Quantitative' means the amount of money in supply; 'Easing' just means providing more.

This, of course has the knock on effect of making the banks feel a tad more flush than they are now, and makes them more comfortable in lending money, lending criteria is relaxed, and Joe Bloggs has a better chance of having his loan approved.

This has the further knock on effect of making Joe Bloggs feel a tad more flushed, starts to spend more money. Therefore, helping increase the overall circulation of cash and restore some confidence in the countries economy.

Its a drastic measure, but is often very successful at helping to kick start an economies healing process.

There you go - a five minute blog post on Quantitative Easing.

FSA: Egg plc's P.P.I. (Payment Protection Insurance) Failings

A wee while ago the UK Financial Ombudsman raised an issue with the F.S.A. around the sale of P.P.I. (payment protection insurance) by mainstream lenders.

The issue was simply that the P.P.I. was being mis-sold by lenders, and that consumers were either a) being unfairly coerced in buying it and b) were not being given enough information about what it was and the limitations their P.P.I. policy would have.

P.P.I. was often sold, not as an add-on to the product the customer was applying, but almost as a prerequisite to it, and depending on the policy, P.P.I. can be quite expensive.

When the F.S.A. got involved initially, one of there first suggestions was they may impose a requirement for lenders to provide a simple table of benefits of P.P.I., they felt this would make it very easy for consumers to decide if they wanted the product, and it would also highlight the product as an add-on.

However, a few years ago, the F.S.A. implemented a similar "summery box" for lenders, which consumer feedback has shown, really doesn't give much further insight into the intricacies of the lending product they might be interested in.

Following some time of evaluation, the usual threat of name, shame and fine. Today we hear that they have indeed moved on this threat and picked a big F.S. name to do so.


Egg plc (owned by Citibank) have been fined a substantial £721,000 for "breaches of Principles 3 and 6 of the F.S.A.’s Principles for Businesses". You can read the full F.S.A. Final Notice to Egg here.

Principle 3 = "A firm must organise and control its affairs effectively."
Principle 6 = "A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly."

In Egg's case these are two hefty charges. Of course these are the headline principles. The detail is in the F.S.A. Principles of Business if you're interested in reading it.

In short, the press release breaks it down nicely:

"Egg sold P.P.I. either when receiving a customer services call, or when making a sales call to a new customer. When Egg customers said they did not want P.P.I. on their credit cards, the firm directed its sales staff to use techniques to persuade the customer to take the insurance - called 'objection handling'.

These techniques included over-emphasising the positive features of the P.P.I., or telling the customer they could take the P.P.I. for a free period and cancel it later if they did not want it. In some cases, even when the customer did not consent, P.P.I. was applied to their credit card anyway.

In addition, in a significant number of cases Egg failed to obtain clear consent from customers to receive only limited information about the P.P.I. during the telephone sale."

I was happy to hear that P.P.I. was being investigated, its been a cash-cow for lenders for far too long, at the consumers expense. As a product, there is a place for it in today's marketplace, there's no doubt about that however the way it was sold and marketed was, in most cases, simply unfair.

I've heard on the grape vine that there is potential for the next F.S.A. move would be to instruct lenders to extract P.P.I. as an option from within application form, where it is found almost 100% of the time, and start selling it as a simple stand a lone product.

Not only with this make it easier for consumers to see that its an add-on product, it will also level the playing field some-what. There's actually a lot of small insurance firms out there that sell P.P.I. at hugely competitive rates and with better terms.

F.S.A. well done.

(F.S.A. Egg plc PR is here)

Yahoo! A year of Search: The Undertaker and Britney trounce Obama

Yahoo! today launched their annual Year of Search Review. The major search engines each do this these days, and I'm constantly suprised by the results. As a zeigeist on the world, it can be a little worrying sometimes (or is it just me?).

Yahoo!'s top 10 search topics look like this:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Barak Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. RuneScape
6. Jessica Alba
7. Naruto
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol

First off, i'm suprised the Obama came in at 3rd, behind the WWE and Britney. After all, Obama had over 2 years of campaigning and his online marketing spend has been reported at being in excess of $8M! A very substantial amount.

Do you think this list shows a younger demographic of users for Yahoo!?

I'm looking forward to comparing this with Google's Zeitgeist for 2008. Will there be any noticable difference?

Mark fishers Lloyds TSB move

Last year I blogged about Mark fisher being made CEO of ABN Amro. At the time i said I thought it was great move, I still think that, though his hands were relatively tied while he was there so we there hasn't been many positive news worthy moments to come out of his time there.

Of course, that whole acquisition has been marred publicly by high profile critics. A lot.

At the beginning of November it was announced that Mark would be moving from the trouble stricken RBS to Lloyds TSB to oversee the HBOS integration. This is a brilliant move by Lloyds, and in my mind they couldn't have chosen a better, more skilled man for the job.

Mark worked for Natwest when RBS started their David and Goliath hostile take over. He was tasked with leading the team to counter the RBS offer. As we all know, RBS succeeded in their take over bid and Natwest became a part of the RBS Group.

Mark so impressed Fred Goodwin, that Fred approached Mark to join the RBS team and lead the Natwest integration.

I was at RBS at the time of this integration and it was nothing short of massive, and sometimes, painful. However the integration, that lasted a good 2 year, went well and was a complete success.

I would expect nothing less of the integration of HBOS with Lloyds. They have one of the few people around who can make this a full success at the helm.

In the words of Eric Daniels, "I am delighted Mark is joining us; he has a deep expertise in banking and his proven track record in dealing with highly complex integration activity will be a great asset to the new Lloyds Banking Group."

I couldn't agree more.

Interest rates? Lead Zepplins!

One of the major pieces of finance news that happened while i was on my hiatus was the Bank of England dropping UK Interest rates by an unprecedented 1.5%, down to 3%.

Those who were remaining stubborn, and denied the UK was entering an actual recession (as opposed to a defined recession), surely agree that that's exactly where we are. The MPC simply don't drop rates 1.5% on a whim!

The minutes from the last MPC have been released today, and we can now see that all nine MPC members agreed unanimously that the drop was the right thing. In fact, it appears that there was some further debate around whether 1.5% was a big enough drop. With the committee being minuted as actually looking as big a drop of 2%! I guess they wanted the defibrillator at 3/4's rather than full.

Thats big news, and a lot can be read in to it - my thoughts are that the MPC felt that it would be much of a shock for the UK economy for the drop to happen.

Chris Cathcart's Wonga World Prediction 1: Ok, this is a safe one (I think) - We'll see another rate drop to 2.5% before the end of January.

It was only 6 months ago that Deloittes (and Capital Economics) Roger Bootle suggested that rates would drop to 2% by the end of 2009. It now looks like this is going to be even more aggressive. in fact Capital Economics have today predicted an interest rate drop to 1% by end of 2009.

Chris Cathcart's Wonga World Prediction 2: Going out on a limb here - I'd expect the rates to drop to sub 1% by the end of 2009, in order to combat the currently out of control CPI inflation.

Actually, I hope I'm wrong on my 2nd prediction. I'd much rather see the economy healing quicker, so we didn't need to drop interest rates so low.