What is ‘winners of the month’?
It’s where I glorify high performing digital marketing teams and make them feel AMAZING about their accomplishments.
Like a cheap gigolo, I’ll make you feel good for ten minutes, only in the hope that you pay at the end.
The Salience team has analysed four different sectors in October 2020 (charities, books stores, cycling & car manufacturers)
Highlights from October 2020:
- Can users trust charities? Only 36% of charities show clearly where your donation goes.
- Who has a good Trustpilot strategy? 2/5ths of the fastest growing online bookstores are Amazon companies.
- Who has the best digital brand impact? Since 2005 Mercedes has been the most searched car manufacturer. They’ll also ruin your birthday; because it’s funny.
- Cycling sees boom through lockdown; everyone rides bikes now.
It’s winners of the month #2 – October 2020
Wait, #2?
If you’re not one of the 21 people who saw #1 then you’ll have no idea what this is.
If you’re part of the 13% (2.73 people) that didn’t immediately lose interest, you’ll be excited for my interpretation of 4 weeks intense search engine analysis by the Salience team.
The good news:
It would be arduous for this series to perform so awful twice, so today you get the pleasure of reading my interpretation when my ego is at its lowest…
Anyway, its time for me to tell everyone who’s good at their jobs.
If you’re a winner, feel free to tell your mum, she’ll be proud.
Cycling sees boom through lockdown
Congrats to the cycling sector. Searches for cycling products have sored +114% YOY.
March through June saw +3,697,630 more searches for cycling products compared to 2019.
Cycling stores were not the only ones blessed by a global shift in human behaviour. Bike rentals are also on the up.
I hooked up with Doug Stoddart, Founder & CEO of Bike Rental Manager, he told me:
“Our own company experience is that rental revenues globally have already recovered to 89% of 2019 figures, that is despite an almost unilateral hit on rentals during April, May and June.”
“Renting is more popular than ever, even if it is has been forced to morph a little. (domestic and covid-friendly)”
Cycling brands cannot break the cycle (lol)
Taking search metrics visibility as a benchmark for organic effectiveness, you’ll find the top crust of cycling brands essentially haven’t grown in search engines since 2015.
Furthermore, they all sit under the iron rule of Halfords:
Some people have come at me claiming Halfords has nothing to do with the cycling space.
My response:
- Give it a rest.
- You’re not looking at search results.
See below my detailed checklist for selecting competitors in search:
Now run a search on any general cycling keyword: ‘bikes’, ‘mountain bikes’ etc.
Does Halfords tick the box?
Who has a good Trustpilot strategy?
Trustpilot is very important, it tells users & search engines alike that you’re trustworthy.
We trawled through 101 Trust pilot profiles in September. That figure should be closer to 150. Why isn’t it?
Across the board, car manufacturers don’t maintain official trust pilot profiles.
It’s completely understandable why.
Who would go to trust pilot and review a car manufacturer? Pissed-off customers.
I don’t blame manufacturers for adopting this strategy. Most happy car customers won’t naturally find go find a manufacturers trust pilot and leave a review.
So, to car manufacturers, congrats on not trying, I guess.
What do we know about the sectors that do use Trust Pilot?
Of the profiles we looked at (Cycling & Booksellers) we found:
- 18/101 had no trust pilot profile at all.
- 25/101 were rated as ‘poor’ (1 & 2.9 stars)
- 16/101 were average ( 3 – 3.9 stars)
- 42/101 were good/ excellent (4 – 5 Stars)
Who has the best Trustpilot profile?
Our bookstore’s report found 2/5ths of the fastest growing online bookstores are Amazon companies.
AbeBooks & Book Depositary.
What commonalities do they share?
Crazy selection & access to Amazons hyper-efficient fulfilment network (free postage💸)
Something they don’t share is delighted customers
I noticed Abe books ranked in pos.27 in our review league table. 55% of reviews showed as poor.
This seemed a far cry from Amazons ‘customer obsession’ mindset.
I eagerly got on LinkedIn, rearing to blast histories most commercially successful business. (like I’m smarter than them or something)
The IT Director at World of Books Group, Benjamin Edwards politely shut me down in the comments.
“Remember AbeBooks are a marketplace platform, reviews may be reflective of the third party seller in question rather than the company/platform itself.”
“Whereas Book Depository have full end to end control, quality, price, service and so forth.”
Thanks, Benjamin, once again my ego has been quelled.
Benjamin also smugly took note that his company, World of Books was a clear winner.
Well, Benjamin, prepare to be double smug.
World of Books is Octobers ‘winner of the month’ for Trust pilot reviews.
Your business doesn’t enrage your customers into a Karen-like frenzy. In fact, your service and experience delight them. It’s a simple ingredient in doing good business, but few get it right!
Congrats, winner.
Who has the best digital brand impact?
Measuring brand impact online can be tricky. We look at total social followers and monthly brand searches in our reports. Here are the brands with the highest follower counts for four different sectors:
- porsche.com – 36,073,474 Followers – Car Manufacturers
- peta.org – followers 9,350,417 – Charities
- bookboon.com – 2,986,050 Followers – Booksellers
- giant-bicycles.com – 2,580,531 Followers – Cycling
(Follow count includes Twitter, Facebook & Instagram)
The most googled brand’s across the four sectors?
- waterstones.com -550,000 monthly searches – Book Sellers
- tesla.com – 450,000/mo – Car Manufacturers
- halfords.com – 2740,000/mo – Cycling
- nationaltrust.org.uk – 319,000/mo – Charities
My real winner though? Mercedes.
Why?
For the best part of the last 15 years, they’ve been the most googled car manufacturer. It was only last month that they were overtaken by Tesla.
Also;
In 2006, when the opportunity to turn in the punch bowl at Audi’s 100th birthday party presented itself, they dropped their lederhosen and let rip:
Rumour has it they even invited Audi engineers to their automobile museum in Stuttgart to see the first 30 years of auto engineering in the flesh.
Congrats Mercedes, you’re European, sexy & cool.
Can users trust charities?
Only 36% of charities show clearly where your donation goes.
We investigated the top 100 UK charities. Transparency in this space is crucial. But we found that 76 of the 100 biggest charities didn’t clearly display where a donation goes. I’m not suggesting these charities have malicious intent behind not showing this info, however; this highlights something a lot of charities are not considering: transparency.
A winner in the charity space? nspcc.org.uk
NSPCC has gained +82% organic visibility in the last 12 months, despite the market shrinking (-14%) with 7/10 brands losing visibility.
Some fundamental things NSPCC have right that most brands just don’t:
- A clear call to action
- CTA above the fold (do you see it straight away?)
- Extended copy – explaining what the donation funds
- A singular donation page
Congrats NSPCC, you ARE special.
I’ll be watching…