Spotlight: Nicola Snell, managing director, zero2one

Launched in 2003, zero2one is a PR and digital marketing agency, specialising in interiors, gifts, baby and food sectors. With clients such as Red Candy, UPPAbaby and Kikkerland, zero2one has established a reputation for helping its clients to secure the kind of coverage that builds brand awareness, increases site traffic, and SEO ranking. In this Spotlight Nicola Snell, managing director at zero2one chats to us about the challenges of keeping on top of the best measurement tools, print versus online content, why Google Panda have driven the need for better content, and why our weekly Media Updates is so useful.

What’s life like being the managing director of zero2one? And what are the challenges? I run zero2one PR whilst also being a mum of two little girls so life is certainly packed  Apart from lack of time, I would say my biggest work challenge at the moment is keeping on top of the best measurement tools. Clients use tools from Moz to Alexa, Similar Web to Google Analytics, so we need to make sure we align our measurement reports. We are currently developing a new system to pull in data from a variety of sources so we can deliver fuller reports according to what the client needs.

What’s new at Zero2one? The proportion of print vs online content is dramatically shifting with both the increase in bloggers, as well as the increase in print titles having an online presence. Driving this shift is the mighty Google and their algorithm updates, which now place greater value on quality content & backlinks rather than keyword stuffing. This means clients now want digital campaigns to improve their SEO ranking rather than print focused campaigns for brand building. Another change is that, as well as being Home and Gift PR specialists,  we have branched out and now represent a range of Baby clients like UPPAbaby and Halo.

What do you most like about working at Zero2one? That’s easy – the team.  They are lovely, knowledgeable and keep our wonderful clients very happy.

How important is digital media in your communications and PR strategy? Over the past ten years it has been an interesting ride as a PR agency – with people putting more money into SEO and PPC and less into PR. However, the Google Penguin and Panda changes starting in 2011, and ongoing updates since then have driven the need for better content for successful SEO. This inevitably means that budgets are shifting back to PR. Now even the newest company owner is aware that quality backlinks are vital for good keyword positions so this means that PR is back in the limelight, but with much more sophisticated underlying measurement tools.    

What changes are you looking to make to your communication and PR strategy this year? We are offering more comprehensive reporting bringing in Moz scores and other digital metrics to allow clients to better measure the results we are securing. ROI has always been a tricky one for print so online PR is very appealing in that way. However, interestingly we are now also measuring the impact of print PR by looking at direct site visits and brand searches driving customers to company websites.

What has been your most successful campaign and why? We don’t do defined ‘campaigns’ as such as we handle PR across all products for clients on a monthly basis rather than one off launches. This month has been a corker for redcandy.co.uk and we secured 114 pieces of coverage for them. They are a dream client with beautiful products, lovely imagery and happy to work with bloggers; all in all, a delight to work with!

What trends do you think we will see this year in PR? We are going to see an increasing integration with Google Analytics and digital measurement.  SEO PR is a fascinating topic and something clients are growing to expect.  We are enjoying the process of developing reports and systems to meet these expectations.

What future plans do you have for Zero2one? We are shortly partnering with an SEO & PPC agency to expand our offering to our clients and we are interviewing prospective agencies at the moment.  This is where Digital PR can sing – when you align the keyword goals across all channels you can secure fantastic results for clients, so we are looking forward to launching that later this year.