Social Media Portal

Michael Foote of insurance comparison site Quote Goat using maximising marketing spend with social media

Social Media Portal (SMP): What is your name and what do you do there for Quote Goat?

Michael Foote (MF): I?m Michael Foote founder and managing director of Quote Goat. I?m responsible for the day to day running of the business as well as the marketing and growth strategy.

SMP: Briefly, tell us about Quote Goat.           

MF: Quote Goat is one of the newer comparison sites on the scene, catering for both private and business customers.

SMP: When was the company founded, how many people work there and how is it funded?

MF: I launched the company two years ago, having been involved in the comparison industry for over 10 years. The team consists of myself and two others. The company has a focus on staying as lean as possible and outsourcing services where necessary.

SMP: How did you create the name for the company Quote Goat?

MF: I am also involved in a social project for young people called Career Camel and the name partly came from the decision to follow on with the animal theme. In such a competitive sector it?s important to stand out and I felt the name would stick in the minds of our visitors.

SMP: Who are your target audience and why?

MF: We have had a focus on insurance comparison for young drivers since launching. This has led to the site being created with a younger audience in mind. We chose to target young drivers as it is well-known that insurance premiums for young people are particularly high and I wanted to see if we can help reduce these premiums.

SMP: How did you initially attract users to site, social channels et al and how do you do it now?

Our main traffic generation strategy has been search engine optimisation and in recent months we have significantly increased our PPC spend. We have also adopted a Facebook ads and content approach which is yielding a positive return on investment.



SMP: What are the challenges that you?ve encountered and how are you overcoming them in what you have been doing so far at Quote Goat?

The biggest challenge for a small company likes ours in an extremely competitive industry is working with a fraction of the budget available to our competitors. It?s imperative that we make sure every pound spent delivers returns, which means we simply cannot compete in a number of advertising channels and when we can it requires constant monitoring and refining of our marketing spend. That said, I am confident that we have achieved this so far.

SMP: What are the high moments of what you have been doing so far?

MF: The highest moment so far has been recently discovering a solution to develop our own car insurance comparison product as opposed to how we currently work with various suppliers, enabling us to develop our own customer base.

SMP: What are the main social channels you are using, why and which are the most effective for Quote Goat?

MF: We have found Facebook to far outweigh our other social properties in terms of return on spend. We will be utilising Facebook for the foreseeable future

Our next focus will be Instagram as I have seen first-hand how successful campaigns can be when delivering the right content to the correct audience.



SMP: What sort of activity / engagement are you receiving across the social channels that you use and how do you create / sustain this?

MF: Facebook for every £100 we spend on advertising we generate 300 visitors to the site with a return on spend of 1.5 times. Facebook accounts for 94% of our social media traffic with Instagram and Twitter generating 2% between them.

SMP: How are you integrating SEO into digital and social media marketing?

MF: SEO is at the forefront of our marketing strategy. We have spent a significant amount of time ensuring our site meets and surpasses SEO guidelines as to the best of our ability. We are now working hard on the PR front to bring attention to our brand through mainstream media. Social media is of course a strong brand signal and so we focus our efforts on regularly communicating new content to our social channels.

SMP: What do you see as your biggest challenges and opportunities for your sector and the competition that you have?

MF: The sector is prime for the adoption of innovative technology use and I believe the comparison industry will change significantly over the coming years. The challenge will be to keep up with the adoption of new technology as and when it becomes available. We are however a small dynamic team and look forward to the challenge!

SMP: What is the most challenging part of building upon your brand presence in digital environments (including social media)?

MF: I believe people have become slightly immune to the multitude of promises out there from companies claiming to save money for their visitors. It?s become a real buzzword and therefore it?s hard for a genuinely beneficial solution to stand out from the crowd. I launched Quote Goat as I?m passionate about making a difference to people?s lives and hope as we grow that we will stand out from the crowd with sound advice

SMP: What do you think is going to be the most interesting aspect regarding social media, social networks and/or technology for the next 12 to 18-months and why?

MF: With a large family including significantly younger siblings I get to regularly see how different people interact with social media across a whole range of ages, from 12 to 60. The younger audience are perhaps as you would expect the early adopters and the older generation are sometimes one, maybe two phases behind. An older person may only recently have created a Facebook account whereas the younger generation have been on Facebook, come off, used Instagram for a while and are now primarily using Snapchat. This adoption of new channels and regular change in usage habits is the most interesting aspect to social media and something I believe we all need to stay on top of.

SMP: What are your top five predictions for social media for the next 12 to 18-months and why?

MF replies with:

• Social media will act a bigger ranking signal for search engines.
• The launch of one or two new social media platforms that expand rapidly in popularity.
• A focus on removing hate speech from social media channels with the responsibility on the social channels themselves.
• There will be a focus on user?s data and the way in which it is handled. Primarily allowing for users to be in control of the content they have shared which is increasingly important as we see the younger generations having spent their whole lives on social media.
• A clamp down on fake news and the distribution of it through social media channels

SMP: What are your top overall social media tips and why?

MF replies with:

• Always add value, do not simply re-hash old news. The more effort you put into your social media, the more you get out of it
• Be personal; social media is all about connecting with your audience so do just that. Share more than promotional posts, bring your brand to life by including your non-work related activities in your feed.
• Track and monitor; make sure you take the time to implement the ability to track which social media channels are working for you. A greater depth of analysis, allows for a more efficient and therefore effective marketing spend.
• Keep track of your time input and make sure you are generating a positive return for that time investment. It?s easy to spend too much time promoting your business on channels that simply do not provide a positive return.

SMP: Best way to contact you and Quote Goat?

MF: To get in contact please email contact@quotegoat.com and visit our website at  https://www.quotegoat.com.


SMP: What did you have for lunch?

MF: I?ve just returned from France so I had some cheese and cold meat that we bought back with us.

SMP: What?s the last good thing that you did for someone?

MF: I built a website for a family friend who has recently launched a business, obviously at no charge.

SMP: If you weren?t working at Quote Goat what would you be doing?

MF: I would be continuing my career in finance in London

SMP: When / where did you go on your last holiday and why?

MF: We sailed to France over the weekend and spent the day near Cherbourg for a quick break after a busy few weeks.


SMP: What?s the first thing you do when you get into the office of a morning?

MF: Prior to getting to the office I always go for a run and when I arrive the first thing I do is catch up on industry news

SMP: If you had a superpower what would it be and why?

MF: Time-travel, I?d jump to back to 2010 and purchase a lot of Bitcoin!

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