Posts Tagged ‘search’

The State of Search Marketing Survey – guest comment from Ed Stevenson, MD of Marin Software

May 21st, 2010

Congratulations on your recent State of Search report.  I thought it provided some extremely valuable insight into the big issues facing our industry.

In particular, I was interested in the things that advertisers want to see more of from their agencies. Here’s the full list from the report:

• More insights from performance data, not just impression levels and basic daily reporting
• Better recommendations that can be implemented quickly
• More transparency of data
• More pro-activity overall
• More advice and assistance planning with ATL activity
• Direct access to tools for data without waiting for agency to provide it
• Ability to do more structured testing
• More meaningful (not necessarily more detailed) reporting and analysis
• Better understanding of the client’s company and its products to make PPC campaign changes easier
• More integration between SEO and PPC

What I think shines through here is a growing desire for control: advertisers want more of it; agencies have not always been able to demonstrate they can provide it.

Of course, advertisers have always wanted to know how their search campaigns are performing, but – as the report clearly shows – search spend has increased dramatically both in absolute terms and as a share of the overall marketing mix in recent years. With this growth inevitably comes greater scrutiny and a desire for more intelligence around how search is directly impacting the business.

The report also shows where this appetite for greater control can logically end up – with search being taken in house. Almost a third (32%) of clients are now taking this option and over half considering doing so. Clearly, in some cases this can make very good sense and certainly knowledge of ‘how to do search’ is no longer confined to a small niche of agency specialists – the basics are becoming commoditised.

But I still strongly believe that in many cases agencies can play a vital role in giving an outside perspective and adding creativity to search campaigns that advertisers can benefit from. And in a world where demand for exceptional search talent still outstrips supply, agencies can help clients access the skills of the best people available.  As I’ve written about before on my own blog, I think to succeed agencies need to directly address the issue of control. They need to be more transparent in their reporting. And they need to offer not just information, but insight and intelligence about campaigns and relate that back to the businesses they are serving in a language they understand.

A third of clients already see search as too important to outsource – and they may well be right.  The key to the future of agencies is to develop such a deep understanding of their clients, combined with outstanding creativity, so that an agency relationship no longer feels like outsourcing at all.

Guest blog: Ed Stevenson has worked in the search industry since the early days of AdWords and is now the Managing Director of Marin Software in Europe. Read more about his take on the rapidly expanding world of big search marketing at http://www.bigsearchblog.com.

You can read more about this State of Search Marketing Survey and download the full report here: http://www.reformdigital.com/reform-search-marketing-survey.

You can take a horse to water…

May 10th, 2010

The web is a marvel that has transformed the way consumers interact with the suppliers of goods and services, but it has not changed some of the basic rules of merchandising. Over the last few years the BBC has run a few series featuring Mary Porter the ‘Queen of Shops’, where our inimitable heroine has been challenged to improve the retail performance of an assortment of different shops, ranging from the super fashionable to the charitable end of the perspective.

Some of her focus has been on signage and window displays in an effort to attract more visitors to the individual shops, but far more emphasis has been placed on what merchandise is bought, and crucially how this merchandise is displayed. Online retailers of both goods and services would do well to understand the importance of this distinction. It is all very well developing a highly optimised website that ensures that relevant keyword searches drive traffic to your site, or indeed targeting specific paid-for-search copy to attract visitors to specific features within your site.

However the key to successful deployment of search budgets is the adoption of a holistic approach that goes beyond making your site findable, but also facilitates transactions for prospective purchasers. This means considering the usability of sites both from the point of view of being able to quickly identify the specific goods or services within a site, and also being able to complete an informed purchase with the minimum of hassle.

As the Queen of Shops would tell you, there is no point having your best selling items in a dark room at the back of the shop and only having one till operator for a queue of thirty customers; especially if you have just spent thousands painting the outside and dressing the window. The same applies to search, where the most effective budgets will utilise search spending as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy and the best search practitioners will understand the wider ramifications for servicing the customers that they drive to your site.

Blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-Executive Director of Reform

The importance of search

March 25th, 2010

In a world where technology has evolved so quickly over the last few decades it is good to see an increasing understanding that technology in its own right is of little consequence. The key is the way that technology interacts with its users. An MP3 player is not much use without its headphones, a mobile phone is not much use unless two people want to communicate, 3D films need an audience and for all their GHz and RAM PCs have not yet learned to think for themselves.

So when one looks at technology in the marketing space it is probably important to consider how capable the human body is to interact with digital traffic. For the most part consumers have two ears, two eyes, two nostrils, ten fingers and millions of taste buds, but only one mouth. This suggests that they are immensely well equipped to enquire of their environment but their ability to establish a presence in their environment is very limited. Messages can be received by hearing, seeing, smelling, touching and tasting but can only be actively delivered verbally.

Perhaps this explains why the emergence of Search is fundamentally changing the way that marketing works. Over the last 30 years the technological advances have provided new platforms through which marketers have been able to broadcast their messages to recipients who are largely ‘programmed to receive’ – one message, multiple recipients. Now the tables are turning and the increasingly ‘aware’ consumers are extending their receptor attributes and using accelerators such as curiosity and self-help to go in search of a more fulfilled life.

As these consumers take control of what they want, where they want it and when they want it, the brands that will succeed are the ones that will be ‘found’. So if someone has a product or service that they want to be seen, heard, smelled, felt or tasted, then they need to make sure that they have optimised their delivery through both SEO and PPC.

Blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-Executive Director of Reform

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.

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

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.
word-cloud-2