Digital marketing insights by David Clayton, Taxback.com

By @SimonCocking

Digital marketing insights with David Clayton @davidclayton, digital Marketing Manager at  Taxback.com.

The 1 min pitch, what do you do?

I’m the Digital Marketing Manager at Taxback.com. I am responsible for reaching out to people online, all over the world, who are eligible for tax refunds. Once we have reached them, we use our website, landing pages and apps to start the customer journey.

How was last 12 months, what worked well?

The big winners for us have been organic traffic (as a result of our new SEO team and content writer, our organic visitors are up 30% – July 2015 vs. July 2014), and our results from Facebook (up 100%).

Anything you’d do differently?

I really should have gone to our Sydney office and spent 6 months surfing, but I’m not sure the boss would be happy with that 🙂

Plans for the future?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky – Set Goals > Create Strategy > Create Materials > Implement > Measure > Adapt > Implement > Measure > Strategy > ….

What future trends are you excited about?

Identity Based Targeting. A huge amount of ad spend is wasted every day on showing ads to people that have no interest in your product/service. We get a great return on investment is through the use of custom audiences in Facebook, as it ensures the ad is relevant for that person. This area is predicted to grow by offering targeting through not only email addresses, but also mobile phone numbers.

I liked your Squirrels LinkedIn post title, and it worked it, I read it – though I’d be concerned it might be a one time success because next time I’ll remember that last time you promised me squirrels, and then admitted it was just clickbait. What’s your take on clickbait, a short term hit, but not building repeat readers?

Sensational headlines are completely fine if the content (article, video, infographic, etc.) you are driving visitors to can back up the expectation you are generating.  Where it backfires is when the content doesn’t meet expectations, which damages both your brand’s credibility and your chances to attract them in ever again. There’s not many businesses that can survive on short term hits!

You are not active personally on twitter, though Taxback are, but you very much so on LinkedIn, what is your approach to social media?

For my personal profiles, I draw very definite lines in the sand. Facebook for personal, and LinkedIn for professional. Some people can be really funny about how they use LinkedIn – I wrote an article about it actually – Newsflash: LinkedIn is not Facebook. Keep calm and be open. You don’t store your embarrassing family photos on your LinkedIn profile, so why all the paranoia about connecting? Facebook is a much more private network, and should be treated as such.

As for Twitter, we do use it for Taxback.com, where the main benefits are responding to customer feedback, but as a revenue generator, it doesn’t perform as well as other online marketing channels for us. I never gelled with it for personal use, and it’s hard to see them sustaining growth based on the current functionality. Great for some brands, but not for us, and doesn’t fit my personal needs either.

Has it helped helped you to grow you business?

I’ve used LinkedIn for lead generation for both B2B and B2C in my current and past roles. It still seems to allude many marketers, but offers unique targeting opportunities not available on any other platform. It’s has helped reach potential customers, find new employees, build my own professional profile and opened new opportunities that I could not have foreseen.

Online / offline, work / life balance, what are your strategies for managing this, now that we can be connected so much of the time?

It’s simple really. Get the train to work. Missing the train is a pain when they don’t run regularly. It’s a great motivator to get out of work on time, and  you to work efficiently and quickly. Staying that extra hour in work never yields great results, and you could easily fit that work in if you plan your day! The train also give a great opportunity to get all of that personal browsing out of the way and check in the Taxback.com social media pages, so when I get to the office I hit the ground running.

I’m sure that the baby on the way (a matter of weeks now!) will focus my efforts even more to get the regular train home!