A look at the future of influencer marketing

In 2019 we witnessed some wobbles and uncertainty in the influencer world, so what can we expect in 2020 when it comes to influencer marketing?

Firstly let’s take a look at what happened in 2019……………….

 

 

Is the worry over?

At the beginning of the year there were a lot of questions around trust. Uncertainty was rife as to whether influencers were being genuine and how authentic partnerships really were, resulting in the enforcement of #ad. We know as marketers and retailers that good influencer marketing is a key gateway to create brand awareness, so how can we move forward?

As a marketing tactic it can be very cost effective especially for smaller brands and the return on investment can be significant. Building a foundation of trust is absolutely key to the success of influencer marketing & there are certainly a few tactics that can really help with creating authenticity….

Organic influencers

We all know that we would trust someone we know or could relate to over a celebrity or public figure, which suggests that real people equal real influence. Rethinking your influencer strategy to include your customers can have real leverage when it comes to actual impressions.

According to a recent Stackla study 79% of people say that user-generated content (UGC) highly impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 8% say influencer-created content would do the same.

So how can you utilise your customers in this way?

Brand advocates, that’s what you need, the real people that buy your products, love them & want to shout about them!
So what content can be generated and used as marketing material?

  • Guest blog posts – making your customers feel valued can be very beneficial
  • Instagram takeovers from top brand advocates – putting sole trust in the hands of your customer
  • Asking questions and doing polls to your social audiences and displaying the responses
  • Case studies – Just how much impact has this product had on your life?
  • Genuine customer reviews – remember that sometimes reviews can be faked!
  • Testimonials – video & written content
  • Regramming customer Instagram stories and organic posts (e.g top customer of the week)
  • Retweeting and replying to customer queries (and complaints!) – Great customer service is essential….
  • Using user-generated feedback to guide your brand’s future content strategy

In 2020 we predict that there will be a big shift in how UGC is used by brands and how these trustworthy connections can be utilised to make an impact in retail.

So we have user generated content but what other organic forms of influencer marketing can we expect to see in 2020?

Employee advocacy

An employee, a real person, can create passionate and thought provoking content and build brand awareness across social media.

By activating employees on social media you can unlock an authentic voice that’s hard for even the best marketer to conjure up. It obviously isn’t as simple as saying ‘go’, brands need to create a plan with rules and guidelines but trusting your employees with your brand can go a long way!

In 2015 CISCO reported that employees’ social posts generate 8X more engagement than posts from their employer. That was back in 2015 so we imagine the impact will be far greater in 2020.

A great example of a brand harnessing the power of their people is Lush. They build a sense of community and are encouraged to post about what excites them and makes them happy.

If you search for #lushemployee on Instagram there are over 8,000 posts including photos of employees working instore with their colleagues, product reviews and videos, product displays, pictures of employees with furry friends & even photos of Lushies attending climate change demonstrations across the world!

Lush employees social media

Lush employees social media

Lush employees social media

Make your employees passionate about your brand and then open up Pandora’s Box to spread to word!

So there’s two forms of influencer marketing that we should see make a big impact in 2020. If you’re itching to do something like this and you need some support with your strategy then get in contact, we would love to chat.

Here’s to a prosperous year for retail!

Do you have your Christmas 2018 Strategy in place?

As we sit in a baking hot office in the middle of another heat wave, we long for cold winter nights, wrapped up by the fire, sipping mulled wine and snuggling under a thick duvet. You might think it’s too soon to start thinking about Christmas 2018, but it’s not, especially if you’re in retail. If you haven’t already it’s time to get your festive hat on………. or maybe a nice cool straw hat for the time being.

 

So what can the marketing teams be planning now, here are some tips to start future proofing your success for A/W 18:

Get your trend on

Look at the fashion, interior and Christmas trends predicted for Autumn/Winter 2018. Start pre-categorising your A/W product range into these trends. Re-write product & page copy ready to upload to dedicated pages, when the time comes, to maximise on natural search results.

Experiment with some of your paid search spend – what trend related search terms could you appropriately target to pull further traffic into your product pages?

Ensure your social team are incorporating relevant trend hashtags into their posts about your products, you could inspire engagement from a new audience if you’re visible.

Include nods to the trends that sit best with your products with any seasonal photography, to ensure your imagery stays fresh and ahead of the curve

Try product placement or developing a relationship with key influencers within each trend niche – featuring in their marketing and media not only positions you well within a trend, but is worth PR riches.

The top fashion trends as cited at Paris Fashion Week in March are:

1. Head to toe animal print
2. Leather dresses
3. Cape crusaders
4. Silver, holographic and Sci-Fi
5. Tweed
6. The 70’s – think shearling & crochet
7. Pleats
8. Silk
9. Obvious logo/brand placement
10. Layering coats

Interior design colour trends are:

Colour trends

1. Navy Blue
2. Autumn Maple
3. Neutral Gray
4. Toast
5. Scarlet Red
6. Tawny Port
7. Golden Lime
8. Shaded Spruce
9. Light Blue

Christmas 2018 trends as shown at Christmas World are:

Vivid heritage
A mixture of traditional handicraft skills from different cultures combined with strong colours similar to Golden Lime, Scarlet Red and Shaded Spruce. Think embroidered patterns inspired by folklore and ethnic tradition.

Eclectic Gathering
This trend includes reflective, shiny and sparkling materials such as crystal, foil, mirrored glass and mother of pearl incorporated with lively details, over the top shapes and patterns. Colour palette combines pink, lemon, mandarin, azure, rosé, black and gold.

Balanced Sobriety
A mixture of matt brass, light coloured wood and shiny black surfaces with a Japanese influence. Colours range from pure white to rose gold, a shiny but cool grey, a deep red and black.

Splendid History
Think historical treasures. Lace, feathers, semi-precious stones, pearls and marble combined with dark, saturated colours with accents of aquamarine and gold.

Plan ahead for big shopping days

Don’t get stung by Black Friday or Cyber Monday but embrace them and create a plan that works with your business. Also look back at last year’s data and see what your best shopping days were and use them as additional opportunities.

You don’t have to discount all your products to keep your head above the water but create exciting deals for your existing customer base, that could also entice new customers. This could include exclusive offers and enhanced loyalty offers.

Think cleverly around your content strategy on all your platforms. Create a content plan specifically for the run up to and including big shopping days which includes engaging content in partnership with key influencers.

For smaller brands, Black Friday or Cyber Monday can actually be an opportunity to catch the eyes of new customers. Yes they’re hunting for the best deal but remember they are also looking for a great experience so make sure that you have all your ducks in a row and the experience from pre purchase through to post purchase is seamless. A great returns policy goes a long way!

Not forgetting the importance of resource. Ensure you have enough staff clued up and your website and team can handle the high volume of customers and sales. Your customer service team need to be super charged and understand all the many things that could go wrong so they are fully prepared to diffuse any situation that might arise.

Connect with your customer

Get the customer involved by sending out a small survey to see what they want around Christmas, exclusive offers? Exclusive content? Tips and how to guides etc. This sort of priceless insight can help to shape your content plan as well as boosting your customer engagement by making an emotional connection.

Christmas can be a joyful experience for most but also very stressful for those that have big families entertaining large groups or those that just dislike Christmas! Think about how you can alleviate some of that stress for your customers. Try and tap into your customers’ needs and help solve their stressful shopping problems. This sort of insight can be gained by using the survey. Content can then be created around the specific pain points and drip fed across all your channels in the run up to Christmas.

If you have a physical presence, connect online with offline by offering unique services instore to gain footfall like a free gift wrapping service, instore product demonstrations or personal shopping services. Try and make the shopping experience as enjoyable as possible as it can become quite the chore.

Listen to your customer

Did you get any bad reviews, feedback or complaints last year? Take a look back at what issues your customers voiced and make sure everything is fixed for 2018. This could be delivery problems, product information, site speed, checkout issues, the list can go on but ensure you have all of them ironed out and content updated so that your customers don’t face any of the same issues.

The key thing to remember is that a retailer’s main focus around Christmas is to inspire customers and take the stress out of the largest shopping event of the year which will lead to more revenue. Try and make it fun and interesting but most of all be prepared!

If you want any help or advice in putting together your 2018 Christmas marketing strategy give us a shout on [email protected].

How retailers SHOULD mention the C word (Christmas) right now!

If you’re a regular to our blog you’ll know we preach Christmas planning every year! However with the growing popularity of Black Friday, and savvy shoppers starting their Christmas buying earlier every year planning your Christmas and pre-Christmas strategy now is essential to success.

Building on our recommendations from previous posts:

Tis the season to start planning for Christmas

Christmas in July what you should be doing now

We have even more top tips for you!

What do your customers want?

All good strategies should start with customer insight, ask your customers about their planned shopping behaviour for this year. A simple Survey using a tool like survey monkey can help you unlock data for planning your Christmas marketing strategy.

Will your customers be looking out for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals? If so what deals most appeal to them?

Use this to test popularity of your Christmas Gifting products by asking your customers which ones they would be most interested in. Who they might be gifting for and how much they might be looking to spend.

Check in with them on what channels they use when researching there Christmas gifts, are they reading blogs? How important are reviews? What social channels do they focus on?

In a crowded space understanding what is most important to your customers will help you plan your budget and tactics effectively.

Social media

We talked lot in our previous post about getting you content right on social, making sure your potential customers have an exceptional experience with you is also not to be forgotten. With increased traffic, customers and sales making sure your customer service through all channels is impeccable is essential to creating happy customers.

With social media taking an ever more present seat in customer service, and those comments and conversation being available in the public arena up weighting your customer service staff is a must. Whilst that’s not rocket science ensuring you have enough time to train them and get them up to speed with your brand and social media guidelines, get them fluent in all the new product inventory and offers will only make for better customer service and improved sales.

So make sure staff and training is included in your budget.

Mobile first

Again not an unfamiliar message from us on optimising for mobile, with Google planned Mobile First index roll out if it’s not on your list to be looked at it should.

Google assures us it’s some months away but that shouldn’t stop you from getting started now. Here’s a couple of great articles on what mobile first mean and some tips on how to prepare from our friends are search engine land.

 

90 days may seem like a long time but it’ll be here before you know it. For support planning your Christmas strategy do not hesitate to get in touch

Black Friday & Cyber Monday – How to use them strategically to make a positive difference to your business

Christmas 2016 was a bit of a mixed bag for retailers, with the ‘new normal’ trading peaks of Black Friday and Cyber Monday now firmly entrenched in consumer’s minds.  We remember a little last minute panic as retailers hadn’t hit targets early in the Christmas trading season, but overall the on-and offline high street had done well by the time the alka selzer had stopped fizzing and the New Year’s hangover had receded.

The retail industry has been gearing up for this year’s festive season since July, but after a tough year for some, how do you ensure that Christmas 2017 becomes your game changing season?

The biggest question in retailer’s minds at the moment, is Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Now an established feature of the trading calendar, it’s an event in itself – but how should you approach it and is it right for you?

We’ve rounded up the key ways for you to identify the value of this retail event to your business to help you approach and plan for Christmas differently this year.

SCRUTINISE YOUR DATA

We know, you’ve heard this before, but central to your decision to stay on or jump off the Black Friday / Cyber Monday band wagon is a cold hard look at how it affected your overall Q4, and 2017 sales figures.

Did you genuinely make more because of your early discounting, or did you make the same across the period, just at different points?

The customers that you won over this period, have they gone on to become loyal repeat customers, or did they buy at a discount to be never seen again? You have 3 Qs worth of transactional data to crunch to enable you to make a strategic decision to invest time, energy and product to Black Friday / Cyber Monday.

We’ve spoken to many retailers who are going to resist the temptation of black Friday this year, but behind that decision is a very clear understanding of how potentially damaging (or indeed, rewarding) the effort to take part and get the cut through you want, is.

CAN YOU USE BLACK FRIDAY TO IDENTIFY AND TARGET THE GROWTH OF YOUR DATABASE?

It is possible to use Black Friday / Cyber Monday strategically of course.  If from scrutinising your data, you won some customers that did make a positive difference to your business, can you win more look-a-like customers from offering a similar offer than you did last year?

DO YOU HAVE THE TIME AND RESOURCE TO GENUINELY CONNECT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS WELL BEFORE BLACK FRIDAY?

We know you have an email marketing strategy and you probably have a solid content strategy – but can you, hand on heart, expect your customer’s loyalty this Christmas, or do you risk their heads being turned by a different and exciting brand in the melee of Black Friday / Cyber Monday?

Along with the scrutiny of your transactional data – make sure you know how to really engage with your customers to keep them with you during the festive period.  It’s disappointing how many bland marketing messages are seen at Christmas and if you choose to not do Black Friday, then you need a laser focus on your customers and an effective plan to engage, upsell and retain them.

Alternatively, why not just target your existing customers with a Black Friday message?  Focus on rewarding them just before Christmas with an added value message to encourage further loyalty.

Retailers don’t have to be beholden to Black Friday & Cyber Monday to win this festive season, but by taking a step back, identifying its bigger picture value to your business and planning to make the most of it, you can make Black Friday work strategically for you, if indeed, you discover it’s right for you and your business at all.

Tips to help retailers win in 2017

With today’s warnings from high street bell-weather, Next, on the challenging year ahead, there’s no denying that the perfect storm of economic climate, tighter spending belts from cannier consumers and shifts in the sale seasons we’ve seen as the UK embraces Black Friday, has had a knock on effect on Christmas shopping patterns and a detrimental impact on retail revenue this season.

It’s now more important than ever to have a solid January to make up any shortfall from Christmas and put good foundations in place for a successful 2017.

We’ve put together some tips for retailers to get 2017 trading off to a good start:

Do you really know who your customers are?

The key to successful retailing, is of course, acquiring and retaining the right type of customer for your business. This is, in turn, reliant on being able to identify who they are and how to attract them.

When was the last time you had a look at your transactional data to explore who your best customers actually were, what they buy from you, how often and what they actually want from your product range and marketing?

If you don’t know that now, with 2017 set to be another fierce year competing for consumer £££s, you must spend January digging into your data and learning everything you can about your customer.

Don’t market to your customers – give them a great experience!

The luxury retail trend of providing customers with a fabulous in-store experience has finally filtered onto the high street, with TopShop and John Lewis both launching in-store facilities that brought the shopping experience to life in 2016. Creating a shopping ‘environment’ isn’t a trend that is going to go away, it’s how clever retailers now ensure retention of happy customers and it’s not confined to bricks and mortar.

When you know what your customer wants from you, emulate that experience online. Is excellent customer service more important to them than price? If so, invest in live-chat, or a better presence on social channels to answer customer queries. Do your customers ask friends and family for advice before committing to a big purchase? If so, make sure your reviews are showing up in your internet search results or work with key industry influencers to give you that editorial cache.

Most importantly, do you have the right team to deliver?

Does your existing team have the skill set to cope with the shifts in consumer expectations and the cannier digital execution needed to retain them?
Digital disciplines established in silos for years; SEO, social media, affiliates and PR are seeing a convergence like never before and you may find that a team that was previously structured beautifully now has glaring gaps from those experts who can see the bigger picture of what a customer wants and have the ability to develop quick solutions to provide it.

Use January as a time to take an objective look at the team you currently have in the business and identify where you may need to skill up.

With these foundations in place, you can look forward to 2017 and coping with all the retailing challenges it throws at you.

Insight Edit: How did consumers really engage with Black Friday?

Here at Leapfrogg, we have a panel of over 1000 retail consumers that we engage with on a regular basis to help us understand customer needs and expectations from the brands and retailers they buy from.

Every month, we question them on a range of areas from buying behaviours and brand opinion, to emotional purchase triggers and their recent shopping experiences.

The Insight Edit is our weekly bite size edit of the insight we gain from our panel in our search to truly understand the mind of the premium customer.

How did our panel shop on Black Friday?

Back in November, we asked our The Premium Panel their thoughts on Black Friday. Much to our surprise, 80% of our panel stated that they were not planning on letting Black Friday influence their shopping habits over the Christmas period. This was a view which conflicted heavily with the industry press who predicted that 2015 would be the biggest Black Friday yet.

Now Black Friday has been and gone, we asked our Premium Panel whether their attitudes towards Black Friday shifted when the day actually arrived.
Black Friday John Lewis

68.2% of our panel did not make a purchase on Black Friday

This means the vast proportion of those we asked before Black Friday stuck to their views that they were not going to get involved this year.

Only 3% of respondents purchased sale items in a store on Black Friday, whilst 27% bought items online.

These findings back up reports that stated that a majority of Black Friday purchases were made online rather than in-store after the mayhem of previous years.

We then asked those who did not to make a purchase on Black Friday, why they chose not too.

44% of consumers said they did not buy an item on Black Friday because they did not see anything they liked.

Perhaps many items that retailers had chosen to discount this year were not the popular products that consumers desired.

23% of those who didn’t purchase said they didn’t buy anything because they don’t agree with Black Friday and what it stands for. We will be interested to see how this view changes over the next couple of years as Black Friday becomes more widely known.

79% of those who did make a Black Friday purchase were buying for their friends and family as you would expect near Christmas. However, 45% of our panel members also bought items for themselves.

Summary

In light of our findings, one possible explanation could be that Black Friday, despite having grown rapidly in recent years, could be moving into decline as a concept and many are choosing to avoid the hype. Perhaps retailers were more cautious with their discounting and, therefore, consumers were less likely to find the products they wanted to purchase, or perhaps they were simply overwhelmed by the discounting. This underlines our belief that the best way to make the most of the Christmas period, whilst providing the best experience, is to offer great products at consistently good prices.

Transactional analysis & customer segmentation for retailers

In today’s customer focused world analysing your transactional data is fundamental. If you do not know who your most profitable customers are, which are low value and which have the most future potential – how can you deliver a suitable online experience to help you acquire and retain the RIGHT ones to deliver success?

Many boutique and niche retailers know they need this data but don’t know where to start, or perceive getting the analysis done to be highly expensive and complicated.

We have therefore conducted an interview with Ben Collier at our partner Abacus to give a clearer picture of the types of data and analysis available to smaller businesses without extensive customer databases or insight budgets.

In a nut shell what does Abacus do?

“Abacus works with over 500 multi-channel retailers and publishers of all sizes to support their customer recruitment and retention campaigns and wider marketing strategy by providing data and customer insight based on market-wide consumer buying behaviours.”

Why is customer transactional data so important to niche and boutique retailers?

“For any size brand, it’s crucial to capture details of the transactions your customers make with you, their delivery and contact details and their marketing preferences. This allows you to understand the buying behaviours and attitudes of the different segments within your customer database and to communicate with those segments in a way that they like and will respond to. Working with partners like Abacus can then help you unlock the spend potential of those existing customer segments and find profitable new customers.”

What benefit can analysis bring a smaller brand?

“Even a smaller brand with a limited database can share their transactional data with Abacus with many positive outcomes.
Understanding when, how frequently and how much your customers spend with other retailers and publishers in the market allows you to:

Profitably grow your customer database by sending your direct marketing messages to the most responsive individuals. Marrying what you know about your customers with what Abacus can tell you about their multiple market-wide purchases allows you to find prospective customers who share the same profile.

Effectively retain existing and reactive lapsed customers by understanding what, when and how frequently they buy elsewhere in the market.

Grow your share of wallet by comparing your customers’ spend with you vs your competitors and sending the most relevant offers to different customer segments.

Validate your wider marketing strategy by understanding what other types of brand your customers buy from and when they buy, what their lifestyle and demographic attributes are and when your competitors send their campaigns.

Identify the health of your customer database by understanding the customer and sales trends in recent years segmented by new, loyal, reactivated and lapsed customers.
The best bit? Understanding your customers and targeting the right individuals at the right time and in the right way is so easy to do… so long as you capture your customers’ data!“

How easy is it to get started and gain access to this insight?

“Sending data to Abacus is easy. Whether or not it’s in a single customer view, we can give you a deduplicated snapshot of your customer data which you can then use to help you make decisions on customer targeting and direct marketing campaigns. There are no development costs and the data we receive and send back to you is only ever via secure, encrypted .sftp”

To find out more about free membership of the Abacus Alliance, please contact Ben Collier on 020 8943 8011 or [email protected].

To find out more about how Leapfrogg can use your transactional data as part of a wider customer led marketing strategy please contact Ben Potter on 01273 322830 or [email protected]

The Weekly Shop (16th – 20th June)

Welcome to a new edition of The Weekly Shop. This week we take a look at how you can reduce online returns, beacon technology in London’s Regent Street, Instagram adverts and how digital has changed the buyers journey.

How fashion ecommerce retailers can reduce online returns

Returns are inevitable when you run an online business, especially in the fashion sector, and finding ways to help your consumers find the right size product can really help to reduce your return rate. Our first article this week looks at fashion etailers who are reducing the amount of returns they receive using various on-site tactics.

12 excellent ways to present ecommerce shipping information

Its been well documented that the number one cause of checkout abandonment is unacceptable delivery costs. Therefore, it’s important to ensure shipping costs and options are made completely transparent as early as possible in the customer journey to prevent delivery surprises and abandoned carts. Our next article presents 12 excellent ways that ecommerce stores are successfully presenting their shipping information.

14 inspiring mobile ecommerce websites

The importance of responsive or adaptive design for any site has long passed the point where the value of it can be argued, especially now Google are ranking mobile friendly sites higher than those that aren’t. If you’re looking for some inspiration for your mobile website, then check out this article from Econsultancy which features examples of ecommerce sites who are providing exceptional mobile experiences.

Regent Street rolls out beacon technology to build shopper profiles

Earlier in the week, The Crown Estate who own London’s Regent Street announced that they were rolling out beacon technology and an app to shoppers. The app provides shoppers with information about new products, upcoming events and exclusive offers and will build a profile for each shopper so the content can be tailored to them. The technology is aimed at improving dwell times on the street, and allow shoppers to further explore what the street has to offer, plan their visits and find new brands.

Instagram announces adverts are coming to the UK

Instagram have announced that it will start running adverts in the feeds of British users later this year following a successful trial in the US. The platform is initially limiting who can advertise within their platform, and has strict rules about the imagery brands can use, including no text, no products and filters to ensure that the adverts feel natural in people’s feeds. Advertisers have already reported success from their US campaigns, with Taco Bell reporting a 45% increase in followers during its month long campaign.

Five new realities of the buyer’s journey

This last article from Econsultancy looks at how the buyers journey has changed and evolved due to transformational nature of the digital world. In order to reach today’s buyer, marketers must understand the new realities of this journey which are outlined in this article and align their digital and content strategies accordingly.

Leapfrogg shortlisted for five Online Retail Awards

Finishing off with a bit of Leapfrogg news – we were delighted to discover this week that we had been shortlisted for five Online Retail Awards including Digital Agency of the Year!

Thanks for reading.

10 Google Chrome Extensions guaranteed to improve your life

In the last few years Google’s Chrome browser has become the browser of choice for majority of web users. Simplicity, speed and security have been key to Chrome’s domination.

Firefox paved the way with browser extensions (small programs that add new features to your browser and personalise your browsing experience) however Chrome’s speed, ease of use and sheer number and variety of great extensions has left the slow and cumbersome Firefox somewhat redundant.

Chrome extensions can be a fantastic time saver, whether at work, shopping or at home. Here is some of my favourite time saving, productivity, even life improving extensions that will help to optimise to only your home life but your work life too!

Pocket

I’ll often come across an article or video that I don’t have time to read or watch there and then. That’s where pocket comes in. Using this extension, simply click and add to your ‘pocket’. It automatically syncs to your phone, tablet or computer, so you can view it at any time, even without an internet connection.

InvisibleHand

Shopping extensions are generally limited to voucher and discount plugins. InvisibleHand, however, is a great price comparison tool that ‘discreetly’ notifies you if the product you’re shopping for is available more cheaply from another retailer or travel site. It currently supports over 600 retailers in US, UK and Germany.

Similar Pages

Bored of the same old websites? Need some more inspiration? Discover webpages similar to the page you’re currently browsing with one click of this button.

Google Quick Scroll

Another nice Google extension to Chrome, Quick Scroll, is an extension that helps you find what you are searching for faster. After you click on a Google search result, Quick Scroll may appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing you were on the page you’ve landed is the text relevant to your search. Click on it and you’ll jump to that part of the page.

Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote is hugely popular and for good reason. A great place to help remember ideas and organise, projects across all your devices and share with other people. The extension is simply the easiest way to save, mark up and share anything you see online.

AutoScroll 2.3.0

Wrist aching? Hate infinite scrolls on website? Then AutoScroll is for you. Infinite scrolls are becoming more frequent on websites as web designers try and create functionality aimed at the ever increasing mobile and table top devices. This isn’t however always the best for desktop users. That’s where AutoScroll can help, simply select the desired speed on the widget then sit back and watch as 100’s of products scroll before your eyes.

Google Dictionary 

Google’s dictionary extension is simple; it allows you to view definitions of words easily as you browse the web. Just double-click any word on a web page and its definition will appear in a small pop-up bubble. You can also click the speaker icon to hear how to pronounce the word. Better still, you can store a history of the words you’ve looked up, so you can practice them later on your friends and impress your boss too.

IE Tab

Say goodbye to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Amazingly, some websites still only work in IE, so use this extension to open IE in a new tab and access those sites that still require you to be using Internet Explorer.

LastPass: Free Password Manager

Few websites have taken advantage of Facebook’s OpenGraph and Google’s Open ID that allows simple login with one account across a multitude of websites and as a result the majority of us have a huge number of passwords to remember. That’s where LastPass, comes in, you’ll only have one password to forget! LastPass saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device.

Any.do Extension

Key to improving productivity is not forgetting what to do! There are a lot of reminder services out there and I find Any.do to be the simplest and most effective without being too irritating. Already popular on smartphones, the full Any.do functionalities now exist within Chrome and you can turn your Gmail emails into actions. Good day. Every day.

Google chrome now has huge number of fantastic available extensions; these are just a few of our favourites, what are yours?

Ben Adam on Google+

Leapfrogg wins at the European Search Awards!

Earlier this year we wrote about our excitement at being shortlisted at the prestigious European Search Awards. After attending a rather swanky awards ceremony in Reykjavik last Friday, we are delighted to announce that we took home the title of ‘Best use of PR in a search campaign’ for our work with Wedding Rings Direct.

Our commercial director, Ben, and senior social media and content consultant, Alice, both jetted off to Iceland for the awards ceremony, which was in itself a brilliant night. It was great to see how many other UK campaigns were up for awards, including fellow Brighton search agency Propellernet who also took home the award for Best Use of Search in Travel and Leisure.

Leapfrogg wins at The European Search AwardsLeapfrogg wins at The European Search Awards

The competition was fierce, with five agencies and seven campaigns shortlisted in the best use of PR category. The judging panel consisted of search specialists from companies including Experian, Expedia, Search Engine Watch and TravelSuperMarket, so it’s a tremendous achievement to win this award and testament to our brilliant team and the work they carry out for our clients.

We were already very proud of ‘The Bride of The Year’ campaign as it represented tremendous success for our client Wedding Rings Direct, and this award further demonstrates outstanding  public relations integration into a search campaign. You can read more about the award-winning ‘Bride of The Year’ and the results here.

Leapfrogg's European Search Awards Trophy

A massive thank to Don’t Panic Events for a fantastic and fun ceremony, and huge congratulations to all of this year’s winners and nominees. We are already working towards continuing this success at next year’s European Search Awards!