Managing Ultra-Complex Search Campaigns
The session started off a bit slowly and oddly, with moderator Kevin Ryan trying to crack a joke by saying, “I come not to praise the search, but bury it.” Rather an odd way to begin discussing complex search marketing, although all roads do seem to lead to Google these days. It took a bit to move beyond the introductions and into the actual presentations, but we did eventually get to our main speakers.
The first speaker from the four panelists was Patricia Hursh, president and CEO of SmartSearch Marketing. Her presenation approached ultra-complex search marketing from a strategic perspective and used Time Warner Cable (TWC) as an example. Definitely a good choice, just the abbreviated organizational chart of the marketing department of TWC is enough to bring home how complex everything there must be. The main focus of Ms. Hursh’s presentation was that search isn’t just for direct marketing. Search can be used for branding, competitive campaigns, bundled services, and more. While this all may seem logical, I’m sure it was revolutionary to many people. The most enlightening part of the presentation were the actual ad examples she shared. The exact choices of wording and structure were great examples of how to implement this type of integrated campaign.
Peter Morse, VP of Search and Marketing for ECNext, Inc, unfortunately did not do much to move the session forward. He began by asking, “who’s an in-house person?” About 5 people raised their hands. He then made it quite clear that they were the only people he was interested in addressing. The majority of his presentation involved showing PowerPoint presentations of different Excel files he uses to manage large paid search campaigns on Yahoo, Google, and MSN.
Bill Hunt of Global Strategies managed to bring back a little energy to the room. As he was talking he brought up a slide from Google Trends that showed which countries search most often for a particular kind of technology. The whole room perked up and he definitely noticed and worked hard to keep everyone’s attention. Among many great points, was his recommendation that terms used in print and other media campaigns should be validated for search as well. He said that he had seen as much as a 300-350% increase in search activity due to a commercial, which is why you need to account for search in everything you do. Mr. Hunt reminded the audience not to entrust the optimization of foreign language sites to someone just because they speak the language and not to make rookie mistakes like using Mexican Spanish for a website targeting Spain. One final and thoroughly practical piece of advice was to make sure companies prioritize who owns keywords at any given time, and showed one tool with which to do this. In a large organization, you can see how people might step on each other’s efforts by doubling up on terms and negating each other’s efforts.
The final speaker of the panel was Peter DeLegge, and they saved the best for last. It took Mr. DeLegge a minute to get rolling, but once he did it was a fairly compelling presentation. Mr. DeLegge is the Corporate Internet Marketing Communications Manager for Motorola. His presentation focused on a unique and effective approach that Motorola tested during the rollout of the Sliver cell phone. The approach is the exact opposite of 99% of most search marketing campaigns. It was entirely objective approached. Click-thru rates weren’t the issue. Motorola developed a score card of objectives that they wanted to see happen after someone clicked on a search advertisement. The results of the campaign were phenomenal, and he pointed out that this works best if you have a great product that people are looking for.
The Q&A was unremarkable. Most of the questions were asked by the moderator, leaving only a few minutes for audience questions. The best comment to come out of the Q&A was from Peter DeLegge, of Motorola. He said that the problem with most SEM firms is that they are too technology focused and don’t have marketing backgrounds. This really could be the theme for the whole session. What it boils down to, is that search marketing is no longer a technical field and it’s time for the “marketing” aspect to take the lead. I think a better title might have been, “Putting the Marketing Back in Search Marketing,” because I think there was more great information about that than actually managing complex campaigns. So, is there a way to make managing something called “ultra-complex” simple. According to the panelists—no, there isn’t. But there are ways to make complex campaigns succesfull so you don’t mind as much.
