OLLIE LLOYD CEO, Great British Chefs
AFFILIATE MARKETING
What are the most successful channels for driving traffic to your site? OL: We rely upon search as our primary source of traffic. Over 70 per cent of our traffic comes from people searching for recipe ideas, so that’s the major one, and then it’s social, and our community. I think there is some serious innovation going on in the world of food, and I think the world of food is particularly good at embracing social and new channels.
Do you find it’s difficult to retain customers on a recurring basis? OL: I certainly think we have a good amount of people who, having found a recipe on our site through search, sign up for our newsletter or follow us on social media. We work quite hard to ensure that people who find us through natural search end up becoming a part of our community.
Are there any campaign elements that are a staple for food brands? OL: Wherever you look at marketing in the world of food, people are using similar tactics in order to draw people in, whether that be an ice lolly company, a caterer, or a classic FMCG brand. They’re all trying to find ways to engage the consumer, and I think the way they’re doing that is by trying to tell interesting and differentiating food stories through a myriad of channels, that ultimately comes back to core brand values.
Is there a particular type of content that works best for food and drink? OL: What consumers want are things that are either cool, or they’re attainable – ideally they’re both. Clearly one of the thing is that differentiates the market place is the culinary ability of your audience. Our audience much more foodie, much more engaged and much more aware from a culinary perspective than anyone else and, therefore, our benchmark of what people are
prepared to take on is much more complicated than what others would. But that is down to the nature of our audience.
What’s your top tip for food brands? OL: From a brand perspective, if you’re clear about your brand personality, if you’re clear about your target consumer, if you’re clear about the kind of food, the game is to create actionable branded content that consumers want to engage with and share. If you get the ideas right in terms of the content you’re creating, it will then travel well in all media. And that’s what we’re starting to see more and more brands engage with, which is to create content that actually is both educational and inspirational for their target.
What can brands learn from your campaigns? OL: I think the key for brands is to be aspirational but attainable. There’s no point in showing pure food porn unless you can action it. I think the trick is for brands to find that space where they can inspire and educate a customer, and that means they have the chance to get them to engage with their brand’s story. And I think if the economic predictions are right, and we are heading in to a bit of a recession, then it’s doubly important that brands are engaging with their consumers and explaining why they have a point of difference and why consumers should invest in that brand rather than something else.
Why is it that brands choose to work with you? OL: Brands come to work with us because they know that consumers spend longer on our site, because we spend a lot of money ensuring our content is best in class, our technology is best in class, and we seamlessly integrate the advertising that we have in a really engaging way.
Over
70
%
of our traffic comes from people searching for recipe ideas
We are all about creating an environment that consumers want to engage with, rather than massive page blocking ads that disrupt the user journey.
Is traffic driven by user experience as much as excellent search results? OL: We all know that when we hit a website, if our first comment is ‘oh this is not for me, there are pop-ups everywhere, everything’s blocked’ we don’t stay on the site for very long. That’s what we’ve spent the last six years investing our time and energy in, creating an environment where we have some of the best images on the market, and when people hit our website they get overwhelmed by beautiful, high quality images that tell a good story.
Working in
partnership with Great British Chefs for this inagural event, Figaro Digital is bringing together the movers and shakers of the food world to inspire the industry with their insights and lessons learnt.
Join us on 6 September at
the Royal College of Physicians
Does food’s popularity saturate the library of content and make it difficult to stand out? OL: I think people come to us to help them navigate the space. If you look at the explosion in the music world, a few years ago we only had Glastonbury festival, now we have hundreds of mini festivals, and large festivals, and takeovers of the royal parks, etc. And I think, ultimately, people have acknowledged that music, like food, is a space where you can have a meaningful dialogue with your customers in a way that adds value to their life and journey. And that’s where many brands have been quite clever, in that they’ve understood that there is this space called food where you can have meaningful and engaging dialogue with consumers. Ultimately, people do make a lot of their decisions by what food they want, what restaurants they are going to. And that’s one of the things we try and do to help our clients, is place them in that dialogue in a meaningful way.
greatbritishchefs.com
39 issue 28 summer 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
