The Manchester-based digital marketing agency Embryo Digital has released its ground-breaking, first-of-its-kind ‘Embryo Index’ today. The index aims to show businesses and professionals in Manchester and Greater Manchester how they are performing in terms of offline and online marketing metrics in comparison to their competitors, highlighting areas for improvement.
Currently featuring over 300 companies split into 5 major sectors (legal, finance, property, recruitment and technology), each company has been ranked and compared across 30 metrics.
Across the 5 main sectors that the Index currently looks at, finance and recruitment companies come out worst overall for marketing visibility with an average Index score of 205.24 and 280.06 respectively, whilst the legal sector scores best with an average score of 472.25.
The types of metrics used in creating the Index include:
- Press score: How often a business appears in the press, including mentions in local publications and their own press releases.
- Review score: Determining reputation, this metric takes data from customer review websites such as Trustpilot, Feefo, eKomi and Google Reviews.
- Web authority score: Takes online-only factors such as the number and quality of links pointing to a site, content quality, content per page, site speed and on-page SEO quality into account.
- On the street score: Looks at ‘real world’ activity in the city, such as networking, events, charity work, thought leadership, advertising and sponsorship, determining impact and influence.
- Web traffic score: Represents the estimated number of visitors to a website based on a combination of third-party metrics.
Each individual metric is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, with different weights given to each metric. For example, a ’56’ for ‘press score’ (how much a company is mentioned in Greater Manchester news publications), is worth more than a ’56’ for ‘Twitter followers’. Combined, the ‘Embryo Index’ calculates ‘marketing visibility’, based on offline and online factors, for each business listed, allowing comparison with every other business in the sector, and against all Manchester businesses too.
More businesses are being added to the Index every day and companies can request to be included on the Embryo Index website www.embryodigital.co.uk/manchester
“It is more important than ever for marketeers to track return and to look at metrics of strength and those that may need adjustment in order to stay ahead. This report by Embryo has given clear insight regarding online and offline metrics both in the context of the legal sector and wider, helping marketing professionals to benchmark and have a deeper understanding,” commented Sarah Boustouller, Head of Marketing and Partner, Stephensons Solicitors LLP.
‘’What makes company X so popular?’’ ‘’How do I outperform company Y?’’ These are the questions that have always come up in every sales meeting I’ve ever been to. This made me realise that there was a real opportunity to show businesses just what they need to do to successfully compete in their market, based on data that has merit,” explains Ross Green, Managing Director at Embryo Digital.
“The Embryo Index allows companies in Manchester to see just what their competitors are doing and provides them with guidance on how to outdo them. With easy to use functionality and information that is regularly updated, there’s no reason why businesses who put our suggestions in place can’t see a real ROI,” Sam Thomas, Head of SEO at Embryo Digital continued.
