Archive for September, 2009

Procurement officers must understand the ‘true’ value of digital services

September 30th, 2009

Procurement officers have grabbed a few headlines of late. The headline of an article in Media Week (Sep 22) suggested they are a misunderstood bunch, regarded as “hard-nosed characters”, but moving away from the notion all they care about is cheap by “seeking to derive more value from their relationship with media owners”. Surely – in procurement speak – that amounts to much the same thing: for “more value”, see ‘squeeze a few more drops out of the agency’.

Ok. Maybe I have misunderstood the purpose of the article, but it’s clear there remains an unhealthy level of opinion that all agencies are cutting deals using advertiser volumes. To say “if an agency sits in front of you and says it does not get rebates or discounts, you are working with the wrong agency” doesn’t say a lot for their relationship with the agency and attempts to tar all agencies with the same dirty brush, which is just a bit unfair.

I spent eight or so years running i-level’s finance team. They never enter into any long term or volume deals which ever resulted in discounts or backhanders from media owners and I doubt they were alone. They focused on getting clients to understand digital’s value and worked hard to deliver customers for clients – and lots of them.  Might not have been a view shared by other agencies at the time, but they were able to win business from traditional players who focused trading among the top ten sites and no more. Most of its clients got it and I’m happy to put forward a few names of some great procurement people who got it. Didn’t stop them from trying to chip away, but they appreciated what a great agency could do and played fair. Come to think of it, judging by the article their bosses might think they’re a soft touch, so I’ll keep their names to myself.

Anyway, until the point digital is perceived to be commoditised like traditional channels, there is room to do as most of the procurement officers say. Agencies have a great opportunity to build relationships with them, educate them on the agency’s stand out features to create a platform to support the value they put on their services.

Price audits on display buying are valuable, but don’t let that be the only means of measuring an agency. There is nothing to stop a big, multi media buying shop buying the inventory cheaper on the top sites, but it might deliver a fraction of the customers it could have done. Health checks on their effectiveness and ROI achieved go some way to giving procurement the markers the business really needs to look at.

Who knows? Maybe you can convince them to pay agencies well when you beat agreed targets, but accept it to swing the other way when results are a long way off. Maybe then we’ll stop both sides resisting the right of the other to be paid to do the job properly because you know that under that “hard-nosed” exterior is someone just like you and me.

Time for transparency of Search practices?

September 24th, 2009

At ad:tech in London this week there was the usual good representation from the Search agency community: DBD Media, Oban Multilingual, Jellyfish and Efficient Frontier, to name a few of the regular crowd; and Just Search, Optimize and High Position to name some newer kids on the block.

Each agency has its own USPs – whether this is an algorithm, a technology or planning tool. Some claim to be technology providers; others stick with the agency theme. Some have slicker marketing then others – glossy handouts and snazzy logos for tools; others have fast talking sales folk, who can counter any argument on the planet with “yes, but we’ve got a secret sauce”.

Poor, poor clients. Where do they start in evaluating what really sits behind the ‘smoke and mirrors’ sales rhetoric? How do clients know that they will get quality of service, efficiency of management, a best of breed piece of kit, and – perhaps most importantly – transparency of ROI?

Here’s the thing. What all of these Search agencies and technology providers are selling is a service. It’s a combination of people, process and technology. Technology is really important because it is the enabler, the heavy lifter, the lawn mower. But someone’s got to mow the grass.

Here’s the other thing. There is no perfect algorithm for delivering a service. Efficient Frontier call it an “intelligent learning algorithm”; we call it great minds, nimble fingers, Excel macros, spreadsheets and 50 people in India.

Oh, and clients, do ask about who’s doing the do. Is it in-house, or is it outsourced to a country where labour is cheaper? Many Search agencies nowadays are outsourcing. Because there is a lot of heavy lifting to do. If so, do they understand the nuances of your target language and how people search in that language. Are your business and marketing objectives being lost in the Chinese whispers translation from client to search agency to overseas outsourcing agency.

Search is already complex enough without suppliers masking the truth about delivery and adding extra layers for sales and marketing purposes. When will the mist clear so that clients know exactly what they’re buying? Isn’t it time that Search agencies started being transparent with clients about their practices, so that clients can make informed buying decisions?

Is it too much for clients to expect a straight answer to the questions “how?” and “who?”

The power of pretty things and why the iphone is ridiculous

September 22nd, 2009

Everybody seems to want- or already have- an iphone these days. Some look after theirs in a little plastic case, lest it should become dirty or sweaty. Others, like myself, show no respect for the beast that is Apple’s baby and throw it nonchalantly into the dirty depths of a handbag to scratch against my keys.

Physical phone abuse aside though, that’s just the beginning with an iphone. Everyone has their different little ways and isn’t it great that there is bound to be ‘an app for that’. Ugh. It’s so pleased with itself- presenting all manner of nonsense that you can’t really manage without. I mean why does my colleague Amanda need that app that makes balloon animals?- but she paid $1.99 of her hard earned cash for it. Are we all going simple or are we still simply impressed by the power of this exciting medium which can make everything mobile?

Either I’m getting old or it’s gone too far. My very good friend commented that she would like an iphone at the weekend. “Why?” I asked her, with genuine interest. “To have everything in one place” was her comment. Clearly that is not why she wants it or she could have pretty much any phone on the market today.

She then went on to say that she “didn’t really need the internet on her phone” so I explained to her that her £40 a month would be somewhat wasted if she did not bother with the key selling feature on the iphone. “Anyway” she said “I really want to stay with Orange so it won’t be until next year”

Brilliant. It goes to show that Apple have done it again, at least for the time being. The iphone is sleek and shiny (and often covered in makeup in my case) and it can make everything all touchy feely and sexy instead of business like in a Blackberry way. That’s why so many people want one.

That’s that then. I’ll be sticking with it until something else comes along. Even though I’ve now got repetitive strain to my fingers from prodding the screen, and I’ve completely lost the ability to use a regular mobile phone. Even though I think that the wireless connection is much slower than a Nokia or a Blackberry. And even those irritating screen freezes it does- so similar to a Microsoft office product in nature- have now become a part of day to day life.  Just like the voicemail it sends to me from 1969. In fact, mine is so vain it even takes photos of itself…..

Real success in search isn’t about delivery, it’s about change.

September 14th, 2009

There seems to be an endless supply of blog posts and articles tipping us off on the “Six secrets to success in search” or the “Top 5 tips for tripling your PPC ROI”.

Now, you’ll never hear me doing down the importance of building PPC campaigns in line with search engine best practice or ensuring that your ad copy is compelling, your landing page highly relevant, and your keyword lists well managed. If you don’t do this you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle with PPC investment – and the engines will be more than happy to take your money while you make the mistakes.

What bothers me is that across the industry, search practitioners seem to focus so much on this stuff. Surely excellence in delivery should be taken as a given? Yes, there’s a lot of intricate knowledge that an experienced search practitioner can apply to save a client a lot of money. Sure, you have to do all the granular campaign structure with highly relevant ad copy stuff, but that’s not what creates success. That just stops you from being inefficient.

I think there’s only one key to success in search; understanding your market.

To do this, PPC has to be used as what it is: a true blue, two way marketing tool. Not just a way of reaching customers, but a way of listening to them. Without going too evangelical, nowhere else are we presented with such pure data. Nowhere else do our customers (or people who, sadly, don’t want to be our customers) type out exactly what they are looking for, and allow us to observe their response to our offerings through click through and conversion rates, or observe what the latest popular search terms are.

But search practitioners sit somewhere between clients and their customers, so understanding our market also means understanding our clients’ businesses. There’s little point to all of our knowledge about the ins and outs of what effects Quality Score or knowing the Ad Rank formula, or even observing the latest market trends if we can’t make this usable for our clients’ business and relate it to their business strategy. Too long have we existed in a silo, reporting on the same old metrics. You see it in agencies, consultancies and in-house departments; all the specialist knowledge that we have access to just doesn’t get utilised because it doesn’t get properly connected with business strategy.

Forget about achieving a great CPA for a few seconds, surely a business is going to care more about the latest rising search that could open up a new product line, or the product sector that they thought just wouldn’t drive any sales that’s outperforming their best channel in terms of search query volume. Search is capable of driving consumer led change in the way a business behaves. The potential effect this could have on a business is much greater than achieving a low CPA in September.

So here’s the one secret to success in paid search: know the market. Listen to what your customers are saying, let your PPC strategy mirror your or your client’s business values and strategy but be willing to use search data to challenge and improve that strategy. Sure, you need to do the rest right too, but don’t get bogged down in it. The real opportunity is elsewhere.

Search Beyond The Atlantic

September 7th, 2009

Let’s start things off with a simple statement, I like to travel. Lots of people do, many of whom are quite the seasoned traveller, more so than myself (as much as I’d like to catch up). Somewhat fewer people like search. This is mainly because less people care about search (yes, it’s true), but there are actually plenty of similarities.

Search, speech, dialogue and interaction, are all integrated to some extent in ways that parallel the cultures across society and around our world. These are things that help us progress forward, they help nurture ideas. Google tries to market their product with this concept in mind, but let’s be honest – they’re in it for the money!

And rightfully so (from a business standpoint of course), as a recent look at Google’s sales figures shows that while U.S. market growth has tapered off in 2009, and in the U.K., actually slowed somewhat – the rest of the world is still giving Google it’s “glory days” where quarterly growth in 2009 stayed positive (although this has slowed down a bit too when compared to 2008). There’s more info on that at http://www.searchcowboys.com/research/936 – but let’s get to the real issue at hand and get on with the travels.

How well do you know the PPC and SEO markets in countries outside the U.K. and U.S.? Apologies for offending the few who might, but judging by a look at the overall scene, most people do not. Let’s go a step further and say “Search Marketing in Non-English speaking countries.” Search marketers and agencies from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa, please be seated – although there seems to be a lot of untapped resource there too.

Everyone knows the basics…. Right? Host your site in the target market, use their local domain, their language. That’s a start. Build link strength to their site via other sites in that country and sites about that country, perhaps even sites in their language. Research their market, find out what converts via PPC. Analyse their user journeys when the site goes live – refine your strategy further. You’ll soon find out though, that they often travel different than we do.

For instance in Asia, you’ll find that your “Google led strategy” has no effect in markets like China, Japan and Korea, where engines like Naver and Baidu lead the way. Portal sites and social networking have a much bigger influence on where the user goes for information. So SEO is a completely different channel there. Or on the PPC side, how about Latin America, where past studies show that three quarters of users don’t even know that there’s a difference between paid and natural search. Of course, with PPC relatively untapped (read: very cheap), you can really get a lot of information gathered and testing done in these markets. Even financial terms that might go for over a pound in the U.K. can have their translated counterpart go for under 20p in countries that have a good internet user base, such as Argentina, Mexico and Chile. Contrary to studies in the U.S. and Europe, we often see that a term that ranks well in PPC and SEO getting a majority of visitors via the PPC route!

The good news for those looking to expand search campaigns into Latin America though, is unlike Asia – Google dominates here. In fact, check out the search engine market share for various countries around the world at – http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/googles-market-share-in-your-country.html

In Asia, one of the biggest mistakes international businesses make when trying to target countries like Japan (3rd biggest web market in the world according to – http://searchengineland.com/getting-to-know-international-ppc-markets-14955) is the actual website set up. Unlike in the western world, a majority of internet users in Japan visit websites via their mobile phone. So now, you have to look beyond the keywords and bidding, but the set up of your web pages also.

Back home though, we realise that many companies want to target foreign users – but may not have the expertise to re-launch their site in every language. We can help build your English language strategy also. Users in countries around the world will often query in English, whether they are ex-pats, business people, or merely educated in English – which is often taught as a second language in many countries. Many sites overlook the opportunity to tap into some of these countries via PPC, where they can generate qualified traffic and at the cost per click that is a fraction of what they pay normally. Of course, your site has to be somewhat relevant. If you’re selling products that only ship in the U.K. it’s probably not worth it. But for some sites, expanding your search marketing strategy across the world just might be the next step you are looking for. After all, wasn’t that the whole purpose of the web?

Moral of the story…. Travel more. Or ask Reform to advise you on an international search marketing strategy.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform