SMX London is approaching … FAST. Despite the fact it only November since the last SMX London, one of the biggest conferences in the UK Search Marketing agenda is taking place between the 18th and 19th of May 2009.

Speakers include:
Jon Myers – Head of Search – MediaVest
Fellow SearchCowboy Bas Van Den Beld – Searchscape: Latest Stats About The Search Engines
Andrew Girdwood – BigMouthMedia – Understanding Searcher Needs & Intent (Suprised to see two Bigmouths on the panel – personally would have preferred to say a ‘difference’ in opinions)
Mel Carson – Microsoft – Brand & Reputation Management Strategies
Dixon Jones – Receptional – Paid Search & Tricky Issues
Ciaran Norris – Altogether Digital – What’s New With Social Media Marketing
Lisa Ditlefsen – Verve Digital – SEO Checkup
Dave Naylor – Bronco – Give it up!

One panel not to miss is certainly the ‘Blow your mind link building’ containing SEM twitterati such as Rand Fishkin, Patrick Altoft and Lyndon Antcliff early on day 2.

A full breakdown of the agenda can be found here.

As one of SMX London’s official blog partners, we are proud to announce that we are able to offer Holistic Search readers 15% off. To take advantage of the offer simply go to http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london/2009/register use the following code:

PEYOUK09

Firstly, I should highlight much of the rationale for this post comes from an earlier post from Bigmouthmedia’s Andrew Girdwood who highlighted the use of search in the current MVA (Thats Monsters vs Aliens) trailers currently doing the rounds on the television here in the UK.

In the final frame of the ad, the viewer is prompted to search for ‘MVA’. Now I am a big fan of prompting viewers to integrate with search for four main reasons

1. Many browsers ‘multi-task’ . That is they watch television whilst browsing the internet.
2. Search phrases are often easier to remember than domains
3. Potential for greater interaction with potential browsers – PPC, Organic and Blended search results
4. Ability to track the influence of the advert.

However the implementation of such campaigns is done very badly, and sadly Monsters vs Aliens is no different. There have already been a number of posts regarding its implementation on Google primarily, mostly regarding the PPC, however it is the lack of organic placement that is a secondary concern. With a rough 75% (organic)/25% (paid) breakdown it hugely suprises me that organic is often a forgotten channel in these campaigns leaving these types of campaigns open to cannabalisation from competitors (albeit limited in the MVA example) and limited impact.

And talking of limited impact, I would add that I would suggest that is exactly what the MVA implementation will be having. Whilst there is no doubt it will inspire users to search…

… What about those searches on Yahoo

Monsters vs Aliens advertising on Yahoo - erm Where??????

and MSN

Monsters vs Aliens on MSN

Now admittedly Google is the majority shareholder as far as search volumes in the UK is concerned however that doesn’t mean Yahoo and MSN should be ignored, particularly if the premise of the campaign is to encourage people to search for the campaign. After all by ignoring the other two engines, surely you are getting a slightly inaccurate reflection of the impact the ad has had on search engine traffic?

It should also be noted the impact it appears to have had as far as searches are concerned.

Impact on search trends

Just imagine the impact it could have had if:

• They had complimented the paid search ad with an organic ad
• They had thought better through the PPC creative
• They had run the ad on multiple engines.
• Considered the impact of blended search. Video search optimisation should have been a given….

Many of these campaigns are still in their infancy, with many organisations still in early rollouts, however one would suggest they may want to think about what they want to get out of the campaign – and develop a campaign best suited to maximising those targets.

At present too many of these campaigns, appear half thought out and half implemented and as such I would suggest are only getting half the returns they could be getting. Moving forward greater integration (and greater thought) is required – if these integrated campaigns are to be a fully effective marketing strategy.

Dave Naylor did a post yesterday regarding the expansion of the favicon testing in the UK, something which has been getting increased coverage over the last couple of weeks. This doesn’t appear to be widespread testing, certainly on all the accounts I tried it on, there was little or no usage of the new ‘branding features’

Source: Dave Naylor

Testing of the ads was first reported on Search Engine Land highlighting testing in Poland and Germany, however recent observations have been reported in the US and the UK suggesting a much broader test.

Given the recent ‘Vince update’, one can’t be suprised with the increased focus on brand within the search results, particularly given the recent ‘improvements’ to the search pages – in particular the increased snippet lengths rolled out last week. I would suggest the increased snippet lengths, the reduced organic search results and the incorporation of blended search must be dragging eyefall (and subsequent CTR) away from paid sources, thus the incorporation of such a visual component can only have a positive impact on CTR for paid search ads.

Other articles on the Google Adwords favicon testing

Dave Naylor – Online Bingo ads in Google

Search Engine Land – Google expands Adwords fav icon test

Kerstin Baker-Ash – Google uses new partner icons in paid search results

I was recently involved in a conversation regarding the best fit for brand reputation as many legacy PR agencies were arguing that this function should be purely a PR activity rather than a combined, holistic approach to brand reputation. I hadn’t really thought more of that conversation until recently, whilst evaluating potential companies from which to buy a new kitchen from.

As with most people, our purchase process began with research. A simple search for kitchens was the starting point for the purchase, and a number of initial organisations were shortlisted for further evaluation. In the end we decided to bring a couple in for further discussion including Company A. Company A came into present their product and service, and after a 5 hour sales process we ended up suggesting there was a reasonable likelihood of further progress. That was until further evaluation was undertaken regarding Company A.

Company A brand search results

Such a search however produced a wide range of results, both from generic promotional activity such as Local Directories to the usual republished press articles. However it was the overwhelming response from a number of high profile forums which was the major factor that started ringing alarm bells. It is generally accepted that people only naturally leave comments when they are unhappy with a product or service – however the extent of the feedback was surprising to say the least.

The first 5 results post brand were all review forums, all containing 98% negative feedback regarding the organisation of which 50% contained the term ‘Do not touch this organisation at any cost’ (or variations thereof). Many traditional PR responses are often tailored to one-off responses – however online these responses can manifest themselves within the online brand space for a significant period of time, and can (and do) have a significant effect on both click through rate and ultimately the number of conversions. According to a recent report by Microsoft 9 out of 10 people use the internet for shopping and as a result ignoring these search results is just something that cannot be ignored.

It is therefore surprising little further activity has been reviewed in the circumstances. Certainly PR has its place to play in the whole remediation of this process particularly as the tone of the response in such a circumstance is crucial – and a dearth of 10 best types of kitchens type articles is not the type of response mechanism one should be considering in these circumstances. Instead one should be focussing on:

• Identifying the most vocal contact points. Identify if any brand advocates do exist in these areas. Understand what people are writing about you, and whether there is any truth in what they are saying (honest appraisal is the best approach here)
• Formulate a response where applicable. I would always suggest engagement with a PR Practitioner in these instances as you should only be correcting fact, not entering into a slanging match as this is only likely to compound the problem. Be personable and where applicable personalise this to the target audience – don’t standardise a response – people can tell a mile off.
• Get an Online PR campaign under way. Wires such as PRNewswire are great at hitting touchpoints like Reuters, Bloomberg, Topix and the Press Association (amongst others) – however again it is imperative, you have a good story not just an advert. Keep this regular, a simple one-off will not suffice
• Utilise internal assets. Many organisations have group websites, microsites, subsites etc, all of which could be optimised in their own right in response to such issues. This could allow you to dominate a greater proportion of brand search space than just the typical 2 results (+ sitelinks)
• Engage with social media if applicable (Obviously this will be more applicable to some brands than others), but sites such as Twitter are very quick to respond to breaking news and very viral in nature.
• Work with brand partners. Some of the best instances of such partnerships of this can be found in open source programming areas with hosting providers such as Rackspace providing hosting to PHP.net – saw one recently between Total Jobs and the Home Learning College as well). Often (not necessarily in that last example), these partners can aid with promotional opportunities.
• Don’t forget your PPC. For example, blagger.com (one of the examples in the image above, runs PPC ads at the bottom of the page. Content Network targeting would allow you to run ads on these sites, which via site-targeted would allow you to respond directly to these instances (indirectly)

There are a number of other small things that could be done in these instances, however the main point of this is leaving such feedback to stagnate is not necessarily the best approach. It IS affecting brand perception, it IS affecting your conversion, and it IS affecting your bottom line

Can you really AFFORD to leave it alone?

Finally managed to upload a presentation I did to the Interactive Marketing show in Manchester to Slideshare. Attended by a number of organisations in the North West including BigmouthMedia, the BBC, KMP and a number of other internet and e-marketing agencies, it was a first step into the world of conference presenting (something I will be looking to step up in the coming months….)

SES London is coming, in just a smattering over three weeks time. SES London is always a good mix of Search Engine Marketing professionals from both the UK and the US, including (but not limited to:)

• Jon Myers – Head of Search/Associate Director – MVi  (MediaVest Manchester) – If anything his landing page talks are always worth catching – however I think he is on just the 5 panels this year.
• David Naylor – Bronco/DavidNaylor.co.uk – Always worth listening to if you get the chance – the ‘Brand and Reputation Management’ session in particular will be worth attending
• Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz – The people over at ‘Moz have had a great year, and Rand has been involved in search since year dot. Well worth catching his talk on Day 2
  
• Frank Watson (aka AussieWebmaster) – Again day 2 – and a name I don’t remember seeing last year – saying that he has always been AussieWebmaster to me
• and a range of others including Mike Grehan (does Mike have  a Twitter account), Brett Tabke, Mel Carson, Fellow SearchCowboy Lisa Ditlefsen, Jill Whalen, Judith Lewis, Brian Turner, Dixon Jones and  Andrew Goodman – however it doesn’t look like Girdy (Andrew Girdwood) or any of the BigmouthMedia team will be talking this time round.

So what do you need to remember for this years SES London

1. Business Cards – Whilst I doubt for the vast majority of you that any significant business opportunities will come out of SES (very much more OM bods attend these events), it is still a great place to meet not only the SEO ‘weblebrities’ (such as those mentioned above), but also other peers in the industry. Lunch between the late morning and afternoon sessions is always great to meet new people
2. Pen and Paper – or even better your laptop – These events are getting more and more coverage thanks to the advent of things like Twitter, however they have always been well covered in terms of online coverage. Many of the sessions have a fantastic array of SEO talent, and I would be suprised if you didn’t pick up a think or five from one of the sessions. At the very least you may see a spike in traffic to your blog (should you be covering the event – I seem to remember there is wireless there – however someone may want to confirm that)
3. Agenda – In my opinion, to get the best out of SES (from a learning perspective) , you need to know what you are doing before you go. Most panels are often crowded – and as such getting a good position is essential. Do your research and know which panels you want to go on. There is that much on – and so many people round that it will help you get the maximum out of it.Its also worth knowing the places to go. Last year, Will Graham (the Online Manager at Connectpoint (my previous agency) – now at Lake Star Media) and myself ended up in some dingy hotel near Kings Cross – not something I plan to do again….
4. Money – After a hard day at the conference, there is often the opportunity to join other search marketing peeps for a drink (or five – more if you are lucky/unlucky enough to be with Rob Kerry (Ayima). Mines a Mojito if your offering
5. Your ticket/Yourselves - Just go and enjoy. We only have the two dedicated SEM conferences these days – although Ad-Tech, TFM and the Internet Marketing Show are also worth attending should finance etc allow

Whatever your reason/agenda SES always delivers a good show, and I doubt this year will be any different.

Just in case you couldn’t get enough of me on the Holistic Blog (or on Marketing Pilgrim), have no fear. I will be doing regular posts over at the Search Cowboys site, with the likes of Joost De Vaalk, Heini van Bergen, Martin Beijk, lovely Lisa Ditlefsen and Bas van den Beld.

Despite only recently starting up, the Search Cowboys have already built up a heck of a following, and I can only see them going from strength to strength. After all, isn’t it time us Europeans (UK included) had our own equivalent to the Search Engine Ninjas .

The first post ‘A bloggers view on Search in Europe: Peter Young‘ is now live on the site, and introduces a number of the reasons why I personally find the challenge presented by European search campaigns so fascinating.

According to a post on the ‘PPC Hero blog‘ it appears that Yahoo are planning to shut down their Content Match network ads in the UK. The Content Match network efffectively was a contextual ad network which displayed Yahoo’s ads based on the contextual relevancy of the page content to the keywords  the relevant advertisers purchased.

Despite gaining some limited traction in the US, Content Match never really caught fire here in the UK – or anywhere else to be completely honest – however the decision by Yahoo (should the rumour be true) is all the more suprising given the level of revenue generated by Google’s Adsense/Content Network. That however could come down to the quality of many of the publishers (and from my previous experience down to Yahoos ability to police it).

In the email sent to PPC Hero, Content Match is pencilled in to close on the 31st March. Currently however, the YSM UK makes no mention of it on the Content Match product description page, however PPC Hero are quite widely respected in the industry.

The correspondance reads as follows:

As a valued client we are writing to give you advance notice of the closure of our Content Match product in Europe.

The decision to close Content Match underlines our commitment to focus on our Sponsored Search and Display business and to simplify our solutions to deliver a high ROI for our advertisers.

Content Match will close on 31 March 2009, after which the product will no longer be supported. All Advertisers should therefore opt out of the Content Match marketplace by this date. Your account manager will be happy to assist you.

Opt-out instructions: 1. Login to your account. 2. Click on the ‘Administration’ tab. 3. Click on the ‘Edit’ button next to ‘Tactic Settings’ 4. Set ‘Content Match Status’ to OFF. 5. Click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

We aim to work with you to propose alternative products.

As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things – he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer – and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm ). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer – DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie – http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts – Latitude – SEO – Stephen Pavlovich – Bonytoad – http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland – SEOMoz/Ayima – Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis – I-Level – Search Director at I-Level – http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen – Base One – Head of Search at BaseOne – http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin – Johnston Press – SEO Evangelist – http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh – Various – http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington – http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis – RedFly Marketing – http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson – Amaze PLC – http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

Much like 2008, 2009 is forecast to be another difficult year for businesses. In the UK, we have seen the demise of many established bricks and mortar retailers, household names such as MFI and Woolworths. It is no surprise therefore that advertisers are demanding that their advertising and marketing activities are as effective as possible, and this can only mean that agencies will have to ensure their campaigns are water tight.

It is also a time when advertisers will be looking at trimming wastage from their marketing budgets. We have already seen a number of traditional channels seeing significant falls in spend, areas such as radio in particular. Online is not immune from this, and there is evidence of significant reductions of paid search campaigns and display, affiliate and SEO budgets.

However despite these reductions we are still seeing increasing numbers of advertisers shifting budget allocation from traditional channels to online marketing. These are new and interesting waters for everyone. The last time, many people experienced a recession was in the last century, and many organisations such as Google, Yahoo et all were either in their infancy, or not even thought of. For this reason it is difficult for marketeers to draw directly on any previous experience, however that is not to say, previous experiences should not be discounted.

In particular, during previous recessions – there were examples of many organisations that decided the ‘bunker’ approach. That is – they decided to wait it out, until the recession ends cutting back on assets and investment – including marketing. This often results in an inability to react when market conditions improve – and thus a loss to faster, more nimble competitors. Recessions often see periods of real innovation, and we only have to look at the boom of e-commerce & as a result of search following the dot-com bubble bursting to see how a potential negative can become a positive very, very quickly.

With many downturns, two things often go hand in hand. Accountability on the one , and innovation on the other.  For this reason, I would suggest the winners from this recession are going to be those that innovate during this period – offering clients extra value for their money, and those that invest and provide quality service to their clients.

Accountability is not a difficult thing to cover. In times such as this clients want their money to work even harder. Channels which do not perform will either see reductions in budget, or alternatively the chop altogether. Display for example is seeing falls in budget as marketeers struggle to determine effectiveness.It is therefore imperative, the tools in place to measure effectively – thereby allowing you as the marketeer to make educated decisions based on fact rather than guesswork.  Simple Clickthroughs and traffic are not enough. Conversions and ROI are going to play (and are already playing) a more and more important part – and branding exercises are likely to become more and more scarce.

Spending through a recession may seem like a daft idea, however Dave Morgan of AOL makes an interesting point

“The financial pressure will be severe,” …”When you take out big chunks of money, it’s not just the spend that disappears but also the competition.”

This is likely to mean that two potential scenarios could develop. Areas where ROI cannot be easily determined are likely to see slowdowns in spend (if not reductions) – with channels which deliver on spend seeing increased spend – albeit this comparitively. Expert analysis would suggest channels such as Search (SEO and PPC) are likely to see stability in spend, with other areas such as social media still remaining high on many peoples agendas. Whilst social media has been a bit of a hit and miss channel for many marketeers, there are becoming an ever increasing number of success stories such as Comcast – who have seen successful campaigns on social media platforms such as Twitter, and I would expect the number of success stories to continue to increase in 2009.

Reductions in spend however are reflected in industry figures – E-Marketer have forecast an increase of 8.9% in 2009, from $23.6 billion to $25.7 billion – down from an initial forecast of 14% back in August 2008.  As an agency, we are going to have to work harder to make campaigns work – advertisers are going to be scrutinising all aspects of campaigns, and as a result, I would suggest we are going to see greater movement between agencies over the coming months. It is therefore essential that you get your house in order now – before it is too late.

This is the first post in the Digital Marketing and the Recession series.