By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of an op-ed that was originally published in Advertising Age.
When it was reported in early May that social advertising had overtaken search, many in the search-marketing industry reacted with disbelief. Some wished to take up a protracted battle with social-media marketers over whose turf reigns supreme.
Sadly, much of the discussion completely missed the point of what this data tell us: the age of the “walled garden” approach to search marketing is over. Let us all rejoice. The search-vs.-social debate is a worthless pursuit. Brands don’t care, nor should marketers.
The future of search marketing will demand a blend of many different digital-marketing components — traditional search, retargeting, display, etc. — that must reach audiences across a wide swath of media, as consumers use many different devices to search for content across multiple platforms and interfaces.
Marketers need to focus on how well they are integrating social within search, and vice versa. It’s not an either-or debate. There are two reasons this is true.
Social Signals. In the old days of search — that is, pre-2012 — many brands and agencies kept their search-marketing campaigns, both organic and paid, separate from social-media campaigns. They feared that mixing the two might alienate the respective audiences of what are sometimes highly distinct customer bases.
But that’s all in the past. Social signals and the rapid expansion of the digital-advertising industry are forever altering the search-marketing landscape — for the better. While still a relatively small portion of search marketing, social signals – the signals from Google +, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that Google considers in its algorithm — are already being optimized for by sophisticated search marketers. More broadly, the digital-advertising industry is poised to reach $39.5 billion in 2012, according to eMarketer, and will overtake TV advertising spend by 2016. That’s too big a pot to be arguing over.
Read the full op-ed in Advertising Age.
By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
Want to feel like a super-spy while learning valuable secrets that can help grow your client’s business?
Here’s how you do it: invest your time and money in paid search marketing (PPC) competitive intelligence and, please, shhh … don’t tell anyone.
As the auction grows more expensive and more complex, it’s critical to have a view into your client’s competitors paid search program, otherwise you’re fighting blind. The simple truth is that PPC is a competition. You’re competing for the world’s most valuable inventory and for the top positions in an auction that you can’t just win with a wallet, but with skill (i.e., your ability to generate click-thru-rate).
Dozens of factors go into winning, of course. One of the critical factors is knowing your opponents. If you don’t know them, it’s going to be difficult to beat them. Competitive Intelligence tools can help you do that, and in this post, I’m going to disclose a few that we use at MediaWhiz to look at some key metrics and some tips on how to use them.
Budget
Here you can see the average monthly spend. Ispionage tends to be on the low side of its estimates when it comes to spend, so be sure to cross-reference with KeywordSpy, which tends to report on the high side. It also shows you seasonality which can allow you and your clients to know when to expect more competition and potentially higher returns.
By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
As digital marketing professionals, we work with a wide range of clients. Some are Fortune 500s and some are mid-tier businesses trying to compete in tough markets. The latter of these can be considered “challenger brands” for two reasons: contending with the industrial strength heavy hitters can be daunting for them; and positioning these brands to stand head to head with the top players can be difficult for marketers.
So what is the solution to effectively grow the market share of these challenger brands while improving their online positioning?
Turning a challenger brand into a market leader requires following a specific five-step process. Each step builds on the one before it resulting in a continuous cycle — a cycle of growth and efficiency.
Let’s review the steps:
- Conduct a market analysis of your client’s vertical.
- Dig into their competitors using Competitive Intelligence (CI).
- Audit your client’s program and baseline.
- Create efficiency through optimization.
- Use the room you created to test and drive growth.
Rinse and repeat.
By properly leveraging this cycle, you can take a brand that is spending significantly less than its competitors and incrementally increase its market share through growth and efficiency tactics. (more…)
By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
I’m excited to report that MediaWhiz’s award-winning search marketing division continues to win accolades from the digital media and marketing industry. MediaWhiz is among nine full-service digital agencies ranked in the 2012 Direct Marketing News “Ultimate SEM Services and Products Guidebook.”
DMNews listed agencies across various categories, including total number of Google-certified staff; the number of dedicated search marketing staff within the agency; the percentage of an agency’s work dedicated to direct response marketing versus branding; and other relevant metrics.
MediaWhiz is the only agency in the Guidebook that DMNews verified capabilities across every search marketing service category.
According to the DMNews Guidebook, our level of service and capabilities is unparalleled in the search marketing industry. Our ROI turnaround time for clients of one to three months is rated by DMNews as one of the best in the industry.
With expertise and capabilities across all facets of search marketing, MediaWhiz is a recognized leader in search engine marketing. Advertising Age also recently ranked MediaWhiz as the No. 11 search marketing agency in the U.S.
The keys to MediaWhiz’s search marketing success come from a deep understanding and respect for the new realities of digital marketing. (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
We’re big fans of the semi-annual industry confab known as LeadsCon. For this summer’s event, LeadsCon East, we’re hosting a special workshop aimed at helping marketers garner better value and more leads from their digital marketing campaigns.
On Wednesday, July 25, our workshop, titled, “Guaranteeing ROI and Accountability: The Benefits of Online Channel Integration,” will help marketers understand how they can effectively utilize online channel integration to generate results in an accountable and measurable fashion. It’s about more than just placing an ad across various online channels. Our panel of experts will discuss how they utilize multichannel integration to keep the leads coming in while ensuring real ROI for their brands.
We’re excited to host this workshop and invite all who will be attending LeadsCon East to attend. Session details are below.
For more information or to schedule a private meeting with our sales team while at LeadsCon East, please contact Keith Trivitt at ktrivitt@mediawhiz.com or 646.264.0144
Be sure to check out the MediaWhiz booth at LeadsCon. Visit booth #111 for cool giveaways and to chat with our friendly sales team.
MediaWhiz LeadsCon Session Details
Session: Guaranteeing ROI and Accountability: The Benefits of Online Channel Integration
Date: Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Time: 9–9:45 a.m.
Room: Rendezvous Trianon, Hilton New York (more…)
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
Of all the hot trends in digital marketing — Facebook advertising, the future of display ads, mobile payments — perhaps none is getting more attention at the moment than mobile search. As developed nations continue their march into the era of the mobile-dominated Web, mobile search marketing has taken on an increasingly important role for brands, marketers and advertisers.
According to IBM and other industry observers, 2012 is shaping up to be the year of mobile. Direct Marketing News reported in May that mobile commerce accounted for 13.3 percent of all online sales in Q1 2012, up from 7 percent a year ago. The growth and power of mobile commerce is further magnified by data from IBM showing that mobile traffic to retailer sites made up 17 percent of all online traffic in Q1 2012.
And as Kleiner Perkins partner and Internet analyst Mary Meeker famously reported in 2010 (and others have confirmed since then) mobile Internet is projected to overtake fixed Internet by 2015.
Clearly, mobile marketing and mobile search have taken their places as digital marketing’s rising stars.
Here at MediaWhiz, mobile search is part of the lifeblood of our successful and growing search marketing practice. It has helped us retain a top-20 ranking among search agencies in Advertising Age’s Agency Report, and it is increasingly being utilized across various client campaigns.
It’s also a topic we love to talk about, both internally among colleagues and externally with clients, analysts and the media. The latter is where we recently had the opportunity to discuss this fascinating industry trend.
In a detailed report out this month in Direct Marketing News, Adam Riff, MediaWhiz’s senior vice president of digital strategy, offers analysis and perspective on how brands and agencies can develop effective mobile search marketing campaigns. (more…)
MediaWhiz’s search marketing experts share their wisdom in a new white paper
The search marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Gone are the days of a walled garden between a company’s organic and paid search programs and the rest of its online marketing strategy. Now, there is a recognition by marketers that search, like any form of marketing, must be engaged in a holistic, interconnected manner. It must create measurable results that tie into the whole of a company’s marketing campaign, rather than being off in its own universe.
With that in mind, MediaWhiz has collected the best of its insight and perspective on search marketing for a new, informative white paper, which we unveiled this week in the eMarketer newsletter. It presents 10 new ideas for enhancing your brand’s search strategy. Each comes from MediaWhiz’s stable of search marketing experts. Each represents a new way of thinking about online search and an innovative way to grow your business.
Learn five trends for navigating the modern search landscape. Explore how your brand can convert online traffic into franchise foot traffic. Discover how to incorporate Quality Score into your brand’s search campaign. All that and more can be found in MediaWhiz’s new white paper, “10 New Ideas for Enhancing Your Brand’s Search Strategy.”
Download your copy today.
Because with the marketer’s world showing no signs of getting any easier, we could all use a little advice from the experts. (more…)
Setting up and maintaining a successful brick and mortar business has always presented unique challenges. Offline storefronts are in constant competition with neighboring franchises, co-ops, malls and mega retail chains. In order to stay a step ahead of potential customer foot traffic, local businesses must have a strong online search presence to deliver traffic from the initial search to the final purchase.
For franchises, leveraging Search expertise is about more than constructing a web site or creating a social media page. In order to maximize the Internet’s revenue-generating capabilities, your online presence must be continually optimized to increase brand awareness and improve sales conversions. This requires developing relationships with Search experts to precisely target your audience. These Search professionals are able to apply proven strategies which can support your ROI goals.
Local business owners have a results-driving entrepreneurial spirit and are accustomed to directly dealing with issues that can positively or negatively affect their franchise. It might be tempting to attempt to tackle a Search program internally. This should not be your tact. Running a brick and mortar shop is complex. So is Search. The do-it-yourself approach could end up costing you time and money. It could also adversely impact your online reputation.
Effectively launching and running any Search campaign requires specialized expertise. A forward-thinking Search team with experience driving results within your industry can tailor a robust Paid (PPC) and Organic Search (SEO) campaign to meet and perhaps exceed your program goals helping you acquire customers more profitably. How do they go about laying the foundation for online to offline growth?
PPC experts can incorporate tightly focused, cost-effective branded and non-branded keyword groups into your landing page or site to drive user engagement. Search professionals can thoroughly optimize registration and contact fields as well as continually revise and expand content to improve rankings, keep up with customer interest and stay ahead of industry trends. Also, Search marketers with a track record of building profitable online programs can strengthen your social media channels. They can create buzz and control messaging, thus protecting and growing your brand.
Franchise customers have many store options to choose from. Search makes it easier for them to locate your business and saves them from another trip to a crowded mall. They will thank you for it with their business.
Though they are distinctive approaches to Search, Organic and PPC provide a strong value proposition to users when implemented together into a Search campaign. Organic and PPC Search campaigns drive legitimacy for the user and prospective customer. Click-Through Rates see increases in these dual search initiatives. For Organic and PPC, their significance in establishing an effective Search program is their most important similarity.
It is easier to draw distinctions between Organic and PPC Search. The course you decide to take depends on your Search needs and what you are looking to accomplish in your campaign. Going organic enables your search program to generate long-term growth through efficiency. The cost of an organic campaign is far less than PPC. Organic campaigns produce more clicks and give your business, product or service the potential for vast exposure. Organic Search engages the user at the “moment of relevance”. This is when a user is actively seeking information on a product or service of interest. Going organic maximizes highly relevant traffic while building brand equity and consumer trust.
Still, there are contrasting benefits to PPC. PPC provides users with complete control over their campaign, the manner in which it is managed and how the campaign is ranked. Also, PPC offers quick, short-term results and generates ranking based on accuracy, not assumptions or projections.
The success of a search campaign is ultimately defined by ROI. In order to drive the biggest bank for your Search Marketing buck, consider launching a coordinated SEO/PPC campaign. By integrating Paid and Organic, you can position your Search iniative as a short-term and long-term results driver.
