Perfect Circle PR

Justin Basini, ALLOW

ALLOW – driving sign-ups

ALLOW is a consumer personal data company, which helps people regain control over their online privacy.  Perfect Circle was brought in right at the beginning of ALLOW’s inception to deliver a communications strategy. The brief to Perfect Circle was to launch and grow a new consumer brand, to drive membership of the website, to educate consumers on the value of their personal information and to support the commercial function to generate partnerships with providers of consumer goods.

The delivery included a market audit, defining the brand messages, blogging, media relations, online copywriting, social media, creating online content such as video and infographics, plus public affairs.

Business results:

• 12,000 new members (against a target of 10,000)

• Cost to acquire a new member reduced through the campaign to achieve under £5

• Site traffic of over 80,000 unique users with conversion of 15%

• Huge impact and interest from the marketing community

• 22 leads for commercial and affiliate partnerships; helped attract VC funding

Simon Conn – increasing visibility in a crowded market

Simon Conn is an expert in the overseas property and mortgage market, with over 35 years’ experience. Having set up a new consultancy, he brought in Perfect Circle to raise awareness of his new company and help drive new business. The main challenge was to get Simon’s site at the top of the search engine rankings. Working in conjunction with a web design company, Perfect Circle rolled out an SEO programme which included keyword copywriting for the website, regular blogging and social media activity, particularly twitter.

The result was that Simon Conn’s site went from ‘nowhere’ to page one of Google for very competitive search terms within two months and his twitter following increased by a factor of ten. The online activity now generates new business enquiries and partnership opportunities.

Quakle – launching a new online company

Quakle is a new entrant in the peer-to-peer lending industry and appointed Perfect Circle PR to handle its launch PR and drive membership. PR was the main way that Quakle decided to spread the word about its entry in to the financial services market.

Perfect Circle PR ran a messaging workshop with the founders of the business to define the key messages for the campaign and prepare the spokespeople for media briefings. Perfect Circle PR also prepared all of the written materials such as backgrounders on the company and the founders, as well as the main news release.

The campaign generated widespread coverage including the Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday, Independent, Which?, lovemoney.com, ThisIsMoney and Yahoo.

William Grenier Godard, one of the two founders of Quakle said: “The return on investment for the PR campaign that Perfect Circle PR ran for us was excellent and far better than expected.”

Quakle experienced a significant jump in membership numbers and funded loan requests a result of the PR coverage it gained, plus a higher ranking in search engines, which is vital for an online business.

• ALLOW story about how fraudsters use social media in the Daily Mail (and again!)

• New client Physical Gold in the Mail on Sunday within a week of Perfect Circle PR being appointed

• InvestSmart on front page of Daily Telegraph Money discussing financial adviser commission, plus in The Times

• Bluerock Consulting featured in the FT and Daily Telegraph

• ALLOW featured in The Times on online privacy and data mining

• ALLOW story on the value of data for the Sunday Times

• ALLOW story including case study made the front page of Wall St Journal US and Asia, and a double-page spread in Europe

• Story on junk mail created for the Daily Mail on behalf of ALLOW, and another Daily Mail on customer data

• One-page article in the Independent on ‘shopping 2.0′ – story idea for ALLOW

• CMC Markets featured in three articles in Financial Times on female traders, betting on the housing market and capital gains tax

• Quakle featured in Independent on Sunday; The Times; Sunday Times; Daily Telegraph; Daily Express; Which?