Archive for the ‘Search agencies’ Category

Can the gap between full-service and DIY search management be filled?

February 16th, 2010

As a director of several small businesses I have struggled to find a service provider that can fill the gap between full-on bespoke search support and do-it-yourself on AdWords- so imagine my elation when I see BT offering a service geared at SME’s for just £100 per month. Branded SearchSmart it purports to offer “Affordable pay per click management from search specialists”

Unfortunately a call to the BT sales line gives rise to a little confusion. The £100 per month for PPC is actually £300 per month unless you take other services, and BT take £90 of this and that the remaining £210 is spent on media through Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Apparently I can transfer any Google accounts that are set up back to my name without any impact on my quality score, and that “all the work is undertaken by BT employees and nothing is outsourced”. This may be news to Alex Hoye the CEO of Latitude who is quoted on their website saying “This partnership brings together BT’s reach and trust with Latitude’s technical expertise to enable small businesses to succeed as more consumers move online.”

In terms of reporting I am told that I can see reports on what is happening online, but logging on to the Demo Site suggests that I am not going to learn very much, and far less than I would learn from my existing free Google Analytics account. BT do also offer me access to Google Analytics but for £75 (with one part of the website saying this is a monthly charge and another saying it is a one off). The real killer though is in the small print on the website which says that I can’t use any of the BT services if I have had an active account with Google in the last 90 days. So much for the trouble free transfer.

Bottom line is that you still can’t get proper search management for peanuts, and the reason is that proper search management requires sophisticated and time consuming input from experienced practitioners; people who understand that each and every website is different in the same way that each and every searcher is different.

A guest blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-Executive Director of Reform and Director of Craigie Mains (http://www.craigiemains.com).

Search as a Commodity?

February 4th, 2010

The recent trend in agencies outsourcing search to cheaper suppliers, whether they be in the UK or abroad, signals the possible commoditisation of search skills in the near future.

Both SEO and PPC practitioners are available in plentiful numbers at low rates; there are companies in India willing to work on hourly rates as low as £5. That’s 80p lower than the minimum wage for an adult in the UK, so you can see why it would be tempting for clients and agencies alike.

In practice, outsourcing opportunities will deliver a very cheap solution for the simpler aspects of PPC or SEO delivery. My experience of being involved in relationships (from a third party perspective) where both PPC and SEO have been outsourced has always seen something lost in the translation though, with poor quality results being achieved through either poor campaign builds and management in paid search, or the use SEO techniques that are slightly outdated and that fail to address the real issues needed for success in natural search.

So what’s the reason for this? Where is the value being lost? Let’s face it, some of the actual delivery work in search doesn’t require a huge amount of brainpower – adjusting keyword bids when a CPA is too high or re-working meta-tags to have an emphasis on different words is a simple task. So why does it go wrong so often?

The problem comes from the fact that search strategy is inextricably entwined with its delivery. For example, with paid search, when you’ve spent several hours analysing results, understanding how various factors affect the different metrics, and deciding where to focus your efforts, the matter of performing the optimisation is a relatively simple task. Natural search will sometimes similarly require someone to immerse themself in the market, observing what’s working well for the competition, translate this into a strategy for their site, and then spend time delivering what then seems to be relatively simple output in terms of actual SEO work.

So what does this mean for clients or agencies looking to outsource work? I’d suggest that although there are cheap options out there, the skillset of this type of business or individual is never going to be able to drive real success in search for your business by using them alone. Perhaps we need to look at a more traditional model where a planner would devote their time to building a strategy and a separate buyer would then specialise in buying the media – so for search you may be able to draw value from outsourcing options by using them simply as an implementer of the more time consuming tasks, but you will still need a channel expert to decide your strategy, spend time interpreting the data and recommending what changes need to be implemented to your site or PPC account. For all but the largest of advertisers, the benefit is going to be minimal.

Of course, this may change over the next few years as businesses in lesser developed markets become more savvy and develop their skill sets further. When that does happen we may see search agencies turning into more specialist comms planning style businesses and we’ll see companies who specialise in cost effective implementation springing up to complement them. Larger agencies may choose to break staff down into planning & implementation departments to respond to the market.

So while the current standard of delivery from cheap outsourcing options isn’t yet high enough to actually benefit from the cost saving, the threat to the current search agency model from these suppliers is real – and we can expect to see it driving change in the way search is bought over the next few years.

Why I don’t want my search ‘personalized’

December 8th, 2009

So, now Google thinks it knows me. Even when I’m not logged in to one of their products. Well, Google, I’m not happy about this and I don’t want you deciding what I see and when.

Obviously Google has a massive influence on what we see on the internet these days and as the number one search engine in the UK, that’s unlikely to change, but I have to object to them taking all the fun out of search as they seem to be doing with this personalized search yoke.

If I’m searching on Google (or any other search engine for that matter) I will have some idea of what I’m looking for and I might be in one of three key search modes; navigational- getting to a site whose domain I’ve forgotten, transactional- researching with intent to make a purchase, or information search- just looking to find out something to enhance my own knowledge. I might be looking for a recipe,  I might be looking up the answer to a trivia question to settle an argument.

What I expect from Google in return is a set of relevant search results based on content from the whole of the world wide web. I don’t care what I searched for recently or what Google thinks I’ll like best. I want to decide. I am a moody searcher and my mood swings shall decide whether I’m looking for something old or something new.

When any user searches, they normally have some idea of what they want to find. There is obviously a big difference between someone looking for an apple phone and an apple pie recipe and Google can easily distinguish between simple behaviours each time we are searching to show appropriate result sets. But, sometimes I am looking for something out of the ordinary. How is Google supposed to know that? Sometimes I’m looking for something on behalf of someone else, or I just feel like branching out. Sometimes, heaven forbid, I’m interested to see what’s new out there.

I’ll be clearing my cookies and deleting my history so Google can’t try and understand me. If you want Google to be your friend and predict your inner thoughts and desires go spend some time on your igoogle page, but I say Bah Humbug to giving my soul to Google.

The reinvention of an all together more grown up search

November 19th, 2009

Search, for some has always been a dirty word. Swathed in mystery for a long time with images of wizards in ‘black hat’s’ springing to mind whenever SEO was mentioned. Lots of nerdy types claiming to have the magical fairy dust to get to number one in Google and such like. Then things started to change. Every man and his goat was ‘doing search’ with hundreds of agencies claiming to be the experts. Confusing for the client and a bad user experience all round for those of us in the industry.

Google’s tools in particular mean that literally anyone can do it, but it is now starting to be recognised that, although anyone can do it, in order to really benefit from search’s efficiencies, clients need to take more responsibility for how search is actually working for them, instead of just switching it on and waiting to see what happens.

These days change is still afoot but new trends are emerging in the way people purchase and manage their search marketing. Many of the UK’s biggest online retailers now handle all matters pertaining to search in house, with roles filled by ex agency gurus or mathematical whizz kids who are very good at excel. J There are plenty of reasons for looking after search in house. Often, dissatisfaction with agency service levels, or lack of transparency, but also the realisation that search is an integral part of marketing for any business nowadays, and it needs to be positioned within the overall strategy and understood by all stakeholders in the business.

In the agency world too, things are changing. Search is being given a new value at different ends of the process chain. Design and build agencies are being asked by their clients to work on their search strategy, PR agencies are overwhelmed with requests to manage online PR, and they all need to pull up their socks and get stuck in, and ask for help where they need it from bona-fide search experts if they want to maintain their quality of offering across everything they do.

There isn’t any mystery to search, but it requires a lot of patience, and analysis, and it can be laborious, tedious even and, well, it’s not very glamorous. But, one thing is clear: it’s undergoing a reinvention, which Reform is glad to be a huge part of, where search is at last a big cog in the process for all sized and shaped clients from the first website ideas to their 10 year business plan.

Search has come a long way in its early years as a marketing channel. But it is still immature, and we all need to take responsibility – clients, agents, engines and trade associations – to take the industry to a new level of innovation and efficiency. It’s time for search to grow up. To be reinvented.

We are conducting research into how people use search as a marketing medium. If you would like to take part, please click on the link here: www.reformdigital.com/research

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.

Are you getting the value you should be getting from your PPC agency?

October 23rd, 2009

So investment in paid search is growing and growing, clients are bartering harder on agency commissions, more and more focus is being put on the efficiency of your search marketing programme. So what, as a client, can you do to ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck?

One thing that you can do is review the practices involved in the management of your account. All of the engines will be able to support you in this, but some of the things you can review to get you started are:

Bidding & Budgeting:

Are you operating at a fixed CPA across the entire account, all year round? Or are you flexible on your CPA so that you can maximize ROI? The uplift in traffic around seasonal peaks may make competition more fierce, and as such each conversion more expensive, but if you’re willing to be flexible you can capture the volume and improve profit. Your agency should be feeding back to you on a monthly basis what the investment should be in different areas of your campaign, understanding this can allow you to further your understanding of what’s affecting different parts of the PPC account, and adjust bidding strategy accordingly.

Coverage:

Are you testing to see if generic keywords that don’t cost in on their own create an uplift across the rest of the account? It’s not always the case, but if you’re in a quest for the final 5% of volume it can make the difference.

Have you got the balance of investment on your brand terms right? Sometimes you need to bid on them to keep out the competition, but sometimes you’ll cannibalise your natural traffic – again, testing is the answer!

Using a search query report will help you ensure you’ve got coverage on the right terms, and you can use the searches that you’re getting clicks from but don’t have content or products for to inform you over what you need to be doing – search isn’t just about traffic or conversions, but about listening to what the searchers are asking for!

Structure:

Does your account structure evolve, or is it static? Paid search offers an opportunity to constantly improve your account using the timely, conversion focused data that it’s capable of supplying. As a result, keyword lists should constantly change shape and new ad copy should be built. The structure will have to change around this to support the delivery of relevant ads – so if your structure isn’t changing then either your account isn’t, or it’s not making the most of the changes that are being made.

Processes & Automation:

Of course, these recommendations are only a starting point, and rely on a smooth, uninhibited flow of information between an agency and a client. Once you’ve reviewed these and all of the more granular points that you investigate as a result, it’s time to review the processes that will help you improve your budgeting, coverage and structure.

Do you have a report that informs you what is being spent on what keyword groups and clearly shows you the trends over time?

Do you have processes set up that allow you to feed new keywords into the campaign quickly and efficiently?

Do you have a process in place to test different ad copy and continually optimize your creative messaging?

If not, then it’s likely that the time being put into your account is inefficient – and if time equals money for both you and the agency, there’s an opportunity for improvement here.

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?”