Archive for the ‘About Reform’ Category

The winds of change…

May 14th, 2010

Have you found it strange that so many commentators have been aghast as the new UK government formation has emerged over the last few days? Only a week ago we were off casting our votes at school halls up and down the country – did we realize what momentous change we were about to make at the time? Our vote appears to have delivered a completely new and surprising shape and flavour of government; only time will tell if it will pass the collective taste test.

‘Sense-making’ and ‘sense-guiding’ are how we join up the dots of change, giving meaning to ourselves and others when situations need order. It’s a rather retrospective endeavour, and I’ll give you odds now that future explanations of how our coalition government came to exist will have Gordon’s ‘bigot’ comment woven in somewhere central to the story. We all use it, and as participants in a knowledge-based economy, probably more frequently than most. Our digital world thrives on innovative thinking, surprises, and what can appear like chaos eventually emerging as opportunity. However, the temporal nature of this world throws up anomalies and uncertainties; what is robust and proven today can lost by the wayside tomorrow.

Change is everywhere, and it is no surprise that we seek out some certainties. We need to be able to make informed decisions that can guarantee us at least medium-term stability… don’t we? Whether we are aware of it or not, transformational changes such as our new government are not simply the result of our vote on the day, but a combination of small emergent changes effecting and affecting our environment, social and cultural world views, the economy and even technologies. These changes impact our perception, our ‘sense-making’, of how the shape shifts, with occasionally surprising outcomes.

Reform is in the business of making sense in real time of those incremental changes, whether emergent or planned. We can help realize our clients’ value, potential business development, and increased profitability. Through our process of exploring the business, utilising data, looking at search behaviours and so forth, we develop and deliver planning tools and action plans that enable truly transformational change outcomes, without causing a revolutionary shake down.

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, non-Executive Director of Reform

Analytics & Content Strategy Among Key Topics

January 25th, 2010

As the UK search marketing industry awaits the sound of the Search Engine Strategies 2010 conference wagon wheels rolling into town in February, we took a look at the event’s schedule, to see what some of the key themes and topics will be this year.

Many will be excited to hear the keynote speeches from Avinash Kaushik, Google’s leading Analytics guru and Author, and from Jim Sterne, Author and Chairman of the Web Analytics Association. And indeed the theme of analytics and conversion modeling, conversion attribution and optimisation features frequently throughout the three-day event schedule. Clearly search marketers are no strangers to accountability, but being able to lift search out of its silo and beyond the last click, and to model its success in line with the performance of a brand’s website and of its entire cross-media activity is front of mind for the industry in 2010.   

There are the usual suspects for those new to search marketing such as Introductions to Paid Search and SEO and link building strategies. And it is important that such industry events accommodate the needs of new market entrants as well as stalwarts.

Another theme which has more prominence on the SES conference schedule this year than it has in previous years is the importance of ensuring that search informs and shapes content strategy. On Wednesday 17th February (Day 2) there is a panel called “Developing Great Content” which will explore a range of web content development strategies that are born of the search marketing set (as opposed to the more ‘traditional set’ of journalists, copy writers and designers).

Reform’s Amanda Davie will be speaking in this session, and will be joined by search content and publishing specialists from Site Logic Marketing, SearchEngineWatch, SuccessWorks and SEO-PR.

For more detail about the “Developing Great Content” session or indeed the SES London conference schedule in it entirety, please visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london 

Are clients right to be doing it for themselves?

November 3rd, 2009

The agency vs. in-house debate for Search is, to an extent a red herring. It shouldn’t be a debate about who does it, but how it is done. Even if an agency is appointed, brands are not devoid of responsibility for the strategic planning piece. Though sadly, many brands absolve themselves of this responsibility, to the detriment of their campaign results.

Whether in-house or via an agency, there are some common considerations for the brand; e.g. who owns the PPC account data (agency or client)? Who owns the third party technology license? Are the business goals and sales targets being shared with the campaign manager (whether in-house or agency)? Who will manage the information flow between the business and the online marketing team? Are campaign management techniques up to date or tired? Who handles the budget modelling? Can the agency influence changes to the website to improve conversion? Who will feed the search marketing (and behavioural) insight into the broader integrated comms planning piece?

We find that there isn’t necessarily a one size fits all approach to managing Search. Many retailers and large ecommerce / online brands derive such a high volume of sales and revenue from search marketing, that it is simply far too business critical to be managed out-of-house.

And all is never as it seems in that many agencies – including search pure plays – subcontract PPC to cheaper suppliers (who tend to be based abroad). Again, this can be both very cost effective and disastrous if the supplier relationship isn’t carefully managed and the strategic goals communicated by the primary agent.

Paid search has become a media for the masses, largely thanks to Google’s sales strategy for AdWords, so agencies definitely have to work extra hard with Search to demonstrate to their clients why their clients shouldn’t simply DIY.

Time For Digital Reform?

August 27th, 2009

Digital media planners (the good ones!) are used to change. More than that, change is in our DNA. Outside of work my friends think I’m slightly barmy – always busy, oversubscribing myself, running around – I don’t do standing still. I’ve never not worked in digital, and I fear my work may have conditioned me :( . Either that, or the worrier in me chose a career in digital. I’m well versed in the “what if’s” of life!

Still, it’s not all bad. Digital planners don’t fear change, they embrace it. They thrive on it. It’s our trading currency. We’re continually telling brands to change and to try something new. Not to throw the baby out with the bath water – to apply tried and tested marketing methods but with a new twist.

And slowly but surely brands are starting to change. They have to, to keep up with consumer change. Now, after fifteen years of digital growth and, let’s face it, significant cultural transformation (some argue that the internet has had the biggest impact on our society since the industrial revolution in the late 18th Century), it’s time for businesses to change too.

A year ago, I left the comfort of a big digital agency where I worked on ‘digitally advanced’ brands, and entered the real world. I was shocked to find that there are still thousands of businesses who have yet to take advantage of this digital reformation. And some businesses who really should know better: retail businesses who aren’t maximising their search marketing and customer acquisition efforts; media owners and publishers who are watching their readers consume digital content, yet they are too scared to reach out to them via new channels; membership organisations who are nervous to test new online community strategies.
I do get it, I understand – businesses are groups of people who are scared to change, worried about being exposed by what they don’t know. And that’s OK. There is a massive education and hand holding process to be done.

As Harold Wilson said: “He who rejects change is the architect of decay”. And the writing is on the wall for businesses who don’t embrace digital change. And none of it is rocket science – it is process change, commercial change, systems change, skills change, strategic change and communications change. Physical change is the easy bit – it’s the psychological change that is the hard part.

Trying out new tactics and seeing which work (and which don’t). Of course there isn’t one blueprint to digital success that fits every business. But we’ve been in the digital space long enough to have tested all the options. We’ve taken the hits and the learnings, so that our clients don’t have to!

Having survived the Recession (fingers crossed!), it’s time for businesses to step it up a gear. To stop being afraid of the dark. This is why we’ve created Reform. We are facilitators of digital change for businesses who are hungry for more success. All our clients have to do is to demonstrate the will to change – and we’ll calmly navigate them through the digital waters.
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