Posts on State of Search about ‘Strategy’

NatWest and the Pitfalls of Siloed Marketing

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There is no doubt about it, marketing is changing. Over the last couple of years the ‘digital’ part of Digital Marketing is becoming ever more silent, to the extent that soon we won’t need to differentiate the two – digital marketing will just be known as ‘marketing’ – that’s how ingrained online has become to the marketing sphere.

As marketing is changing so too are marketing teams. The crossover and blend between disciplines is spreading as the need for greater collaboration between teams becomes more of an imperative. This change is being driven by our customers. Customers expect our marketing to be seamless and no matter which channel they interact with us as brands – the message and experience should be effortlessly consistent.

That consistency across search, social, email, mobile, banner advertising, TV and offline advertising is not easy to achieve – particularly when teams work in silos to deliver their part of the marketing strategy – but it is what the customer expects and it is how brands are having to evolve in order to meet the needs of the savvy consumer.

The penalty for not having a consistent cross-channel approach where teams collaborate and talk to each other can be very costly. A recent example of this is with NatWest and their latest NatYes mortgages campaign. (more…)

Social Influence Scoring, Big Data and Why ‘Author Rank’ May Never Exist

I recently produced The Ultimate Guide to Social Scoring – a project that took extensive research into the role of social influence scoring and measurement. Whatever your opinion of Klout, I soon realised that the concept of what they do is going to be incredibly important in the context of SEO. If we think about it rationally, Klout is basically a social measurement of what’s being called ‘Author Rank’.

“Klout analyses public data to measure a person’s influence. The best way to think of this in relation to how Google analyses public websites to generate PageRank” (more…)

Three Movies Every Marketer Should Watch

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I’ve always been taught that every thing you do, see or hear has something you can learn from. Movies probably are one of the most great examples of that. In every movie there is something you can take away. Most of the time it is focussed at ‘good versus evil and good always wins’. But there is much more to take out of movies.

A marketer for example can learn a lot from movies. How do people respond, what is it people like. And where is it heading. Just take a look at some movies made in the late 80s and early 90s: a lot of what was ‘futuristic’ back then is now real, just think about minority report. But there are a few movies which will bring the marketer some real valuable insights. I’d like to introduce a few of them to you. (more…)

Applying Behavioural Economics to Digital Marketing

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Classic economic theory works off of the assumption that consumers make rational, informed decisions about which products to buy. Under this assumption, market forces will lead to the best producers with the highest levels of quality and service to be successful, leading to a meritocratic marketplace.

Anyone who’s ever even taken a casual glimpse at consumer behaviour knows that this is simply not how people behave. We are not rational agents making informed decisions. Instead we are creatures of habit and instinct, making decisions based more on gut feeling and psychological biases than any rational consideration.

A relatively new field of economic theory called behavioural economics endeavours to understand human behaviour in the economical sphere, and give marketers tools and data to encourage sales. (more…)

Which Retailers are Leveraging the Marketing Potential of Pinterest?

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Over the last 12 months or so Pinterest has graduated from the school of ‘emerging social networks’ to become part of the canon of ‘established social platforms’. As such it’s no longer a platform purely for early adopter brands but a serious consideration for most major retailers.

Despite this evolution from niche to mainstream Pinterest is still in its infancy. Experian Hitwise data shows that UK Internet visits to Pinterest tripled between March 2012 and March 2013 with the website receiving in excess of 16 million visits a month. With the growth of Pinterest showing little signs of abating, this is a network worth investing in. But which retail brands are currently making the most of the growing marketing potential of Pinterest?  (more…)

7 Things My Girlfriend Taught Me About SEO

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No, she doesn’t work in SEO…

I love seeing how my girlfriend uses the internet. I take note of her search methods, the kind of keywords she uses to search, the types of sites she buys from. And of course, I’m frequently called to the computer to “have a quick look” at something mind-blowing.

I see it as a chance to see how “normal” people use the internet, you know, people that don’t live and breathe SEO like we do everyday. So without further ado, here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for sometime; here’s what Sylvie taught me. (more…)

“Big data is going to replace the majority of marketers”

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Big Data, it is a term of which many marketers still don’t know how to act on it. Maybe because they don’t understand it or maybe because it is ‘too big’ for them. But they will need to understand and get a grip on it to not fall behind and in the end get lost entirely.

Earlier today I spoke to Bryan Eisenberg when he was on his way to his keynote presentation about big data at the PPC Hero conference. Bryan, on his birthday actually, made an interesting point which he will also be making in his keynote speech: we might be heading into a direction in which marketers are (partly) being replaced by automation.

Let’s elaborate a bit on that. The idea is based on several different elements which Bryan and his brother Jeffrey describe in a new whitepaper which can be gotten from the website http://www.usethedata.com. It is about understanding big data, or as Rod A. Smith, an IBM technical fellow and VP for emerging Internet technologies says in the whitepaper:

“Big Data is really about new uses and new insights, not so much the data itself,”

(more…)

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts – Applying Ramsay logic to SEO

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I like most Mondays after football sat watching Channel 4′s Gordon Ramsays Kitchen Nightmares. For those that don’t watch this – particularly the US version its well worth a watch if not to revel in some US loving for the evening. Its not often I watch these programmes and can relate back to SEO but for some reason last nights episode seem to relate back to SEO – particularly in the light of recent changes to SEO.

What I am referring to is the barrage of Google updates which SEO’s have had to deal with over the course of the last 12 to 24 months. In that time, SEO has changed immeasurably – some would say for the worse, but when one surveys the SEO is approached certainly at an agency level, one can only say these changes have been for the positive. There’s no doubting snake oil still exists – and one would certainly be foolish to think that bad SEO doesn’t exist but in terms of a more mature approach to marketing things are certainly better than they have ever been – If only Google would work out accountability doesn’t just apply to channels which provide Google with revenue. (more…)

Interflora, Brand Building and the New Role of the Search Agency

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Last week Interflora was quite humiliatingly outed for its use of advertorials and unnatural link building; even for its own brand name, the site all but disappeared from the SERPs. Without speaking about Interflora or a collection of newspaper sites that were clearly selling advertorials directly, Matt Cutts wrote a statement reiterating Google’s position on paid links: it’s bad, don’t do it. While that position has been clear for some time, it’s not been clear that Google was prepared to act quite so abruptly on punishing major brands. With the dust from the hit still floating around, it appears that this is another step by Google to clean up Search Engine Optimisation, and another notch in what has been a tumultuous two years for the industry since the first Panda Update in April 2011.

With advertorial link building now clearly presenting higher risk, some SEOs must be wondering where to pivot. Inevitably, brand building will seem a likely option, and building credibility through quality content and inbound methods is the future. I’ve read and heard this rhetoric many times before, but I’ve often wondered how suitable the wedding of SEO and brand building will actually be. (more…)

Personas and the Facebook Graph Search

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When I was working in the TV industry between 1997 and 2003 and my job had nothing to do with Internet Marketing, one of mine biggest problems was identifying clearly what our real target of paying viewers was. Usually we were relying on market research and on audience analysis based on data collected by Nielsen and other sources.

The definition of who were our potential viewers was quite empiric, though, and gut was playing an important role.

In some cases that was enough: for instance it was relatively easy to paint a set of typical users for our Classic Movies Channel (CineClassics). And not that hard was defining the same for the Classic TV Series Channel (Canal Jimmy). But that investigation was harder in the case of our generic Movie Channel (CineCinemas).

Over the base of that studies, a person like me, in charge of planning the channel scheduling and buying the TV rights of movies, documentaries et al, I was able to create the most compelling possible programming (and win few TV awards as well). (more…)

Valentines Day – e-commerce Gaps, Fails & Things to Fix

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I was going to write a post about PPC Tips for Valentines campaigns, but as I started to research screens and brand positioning for the main Valentines product areas, I discovered a whole heap of things not working as they should, and a lot of tricks that are potentially being missed for both PPC and SEO.

I also found many things that could affect your bottom line, or issues that you may want to look out for before the busiest shopping period before Valentines Day gets underway…

I don’t mean to point fingers as things go wrong with e-commerce all the time, but a lot of these issues I see time and time again and many have simple fixes so I have used the actual examples I came across while doing my research that are currently live.

A quick check now, or a few additions now could save you a little more in advertising costs and make you a little more in sales revenue so don’t shoot the messenger! :-)

(disclaimer: some of these issues may depend on your last delivery dates, regularity of search engine indexing and red-tape you have to go through before you can make any changes!)

(more…)

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