Dave Willaims from 360i first up. Key challenges; organization knowledge, integrated search strategy and data optimization. Organization's Knowledge; If everyone in the organization does not have a baseline understanding of search, how is it going to ever be a strategic marketing initiative? People invest in what they understand and are familiar with and test what is unknown. Sometime using an independent 3rd party can help build org knowledge and buy-in. One Search Strategy; is there on overarching sem strategy that is integrated with other online and offline marketing initiatives? or is your search strategy in silos? Campaign strategy will drive tractical implementations, as related to brand, keyword bucketing, performance targets and optimization and messaging. Having one integrated search strategy allows for max campaign impact and growth. Data Optimization; Do you have ownership of your data and the ability to optimize campaigns based on all historical info? statistical modeling, algo optimization and predictive capabilities. Having ownership of data allows for marketers to make accurate forecasts and ROI decisions that have max impact across all search channels. Data management and optimization is the future of search, especially as search develops. Power of data for predictions and optimizations. Search marketers can now use sophisticated stats modeling to take advantage of current market inefficiencies. We typically see a 20 - 50% lift against actively manage campaigns. Portfolio optimization example; predictive capabilities using historical data (impression by keyword, click through by keyword, cost by keyword, revenue by keyword). Optimization; predictions about future performance based on historical insights and keywords similarities. Across entire campaign or across specific buckets. Keyword grouping guidance; they typically put core terms into one bucket and say that for branding reasons we want to always be number one. For retails clients they usually assign each product a bucket and within those buckets they further break things down into high volume terms... (1) Build org search marketing knowledge for paid and seo. (2) develop a fully integrated SEM strategy that does not look at the search in a silo. (3) leverage historical data and sophisticated stat modeling to take advantage of market inefficiencies and produce abnormal returns.
Harrison Magun, Vice President, Managing Director, Avenue A | Razorfish Search. He will talk more on paid search. "1st Rule of 4": (1) Define success (2) Make a plan (3) Measure results (4) Get feedback. He was going to show a funny commercial on "Axe" but the sound card is not available. (1) Define Success: direct response metrics (sales, volume, and margin of sales...), other metrics and key indicators (phone calls, buzz, etc.), dependencies (the price of your product, site design, customer service, etc.), what's reasonable (benchmarks are critical), define key milestones. (2) Make a plan: before you build a plan, understand what you have in your toolbox. You need a bidding strategy, keyword expansion and categorization, messaging, business intelligence. Now create that project plan; how much resources do you have? Which levers (toolbox tools) do you have? What are your objectives? Also take into account your business reality (seasonality, etc.). Take into account, statistical significance/testing time. He brings up a project plan example; week x do XYZ on week n do ABC, etc. Always stick to your plan! You can't always stick to the plan!!! If you cant stick to the plan; you can have a reactive strategy or a proactive strategy, be realistic about the tradeoffs needed to be made when you do not go on the plan, the plan is your currency. (3) Measure Results: measure about weekly, measure what you did, why did you do it? what was achieved?, what are you going to do next week?, what will be achieved? The answers should inform your project plan. (4) Get Feedback: Ask for it even if you know the answer. Know who your main constituents are. Ancillary constituents are important also.
Ani Kortikar, Founder and CEO, Netramind up next to speak about leveraging tech to use tools for the session topic. How do you identify a born project manager? It is the person who is able to juggle multiple priorities, someone who can maintain the balance, and someone who can withstand the pressure, someone who can handle the customers (some funny pictures explaining it). The most common roadblocks are; Organic Growth; unsure of required skills, unclear about whats expected, unwilling to be in unknown territory, and uncommitted to taking on new responsibility. Learning to Unlearn; education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Key attitude adjustments; no longer a functional expert, lack of specifics, less flexibility with own time, no more instant gratification. You should create a roadmap for training project managers. Create many short learning units, so they can learn over time in small segments. He says use tagging to organize these notes, use webex or gotomeeting, and create a short quiz to test the knowledge. A typical skills profile for a PM; pre project, project setup phase, project continues, project roadmap and wrap up.
Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc. is last up. Initial client communication; set scope of work and get a PO, set expectations about deliverables and timelines, identify the multiple people within the organization. She explains that sometimes too many people are involved. SEO Deliverables; keyword analysis document, competitive report, ranking and traffic benchmarks, architectural, technical and source code reviews (SEO Audit), production of SEO guidelines (style guide for company), page by page audit and keyword mapping, recommendations for new content, development of unique meta data or formula for automated meta tagging. The biggest deliverables is educating people to be patient as to what is going to happen. Timeline: Deliverables --------------> Implementation --> Monitoring and fine tuning (you need to monitor during implementation) --------> Maintenance. Integration with other online marketing (competition). Education; come to a common terminology, talk about why you cant just do organic search optimization, provide case studies and suggestions as to how and why to integrate (sempo, marketingsherpa, iab research, clickz, sew, conferences). Overlapping budgets; tighten relationship with other agencies, talk about who owns what budget (you got overlapping keywords). Measurement; offline marketing effects online traffic volume, online marketing effects offline sales, attempt to merge multiple tracking systems and backend CRMs. Creatives; consistency but not the same (text vs images, keywords vs page location, ppc vers cpm, searchers vs. eyeballs) shared branding experience & responsibility for trademarks. Search +; All bests are off as Google moves to print ads, msn goes to demo targeting, local search, personalization, community based search and rise of vertical search.
