I know I am not in London now, but Liana “Li” Evans is and she has sent over a session from SES London for me to post.
European Case Studies
Chris Sherman introduces panel
Jamie de Valle Sansierra Chevrolet Search Marketing in UK – triple sales in the uk Solid e-base built in less than 3 years
Running a European web platform for 31 countries – france, Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, etc. SEM activity for 3 years 2004 focused natural search 2005 PPC Pilot – optimized existing platform 2006 Redesign plantform, PPC campaigns 2007 Holistic SEM – borrth ppc and sem
Over 50% of online auto shoppers consider search to be the most influential information sources in their purchase decision Search is responsible for delivering and average of 19% of their traffic
SEM helps build Brand Awareness and Product Familiarity in Europe (have the big gas guzzlers reputation) Run SEM centrally – gave them one voice for chevy – saved costs – cost efficiencies, leveraged common web platformMarketers must believe in SEM, believe central is, in principle, better Best channel to make relevant information available The most cost efficient channel Chevy stands for the same brand values across Europe Cross marketer learnings, cross market testing, cross market budget optimizsation
Management must be convinces – make a business case, comparison to other media spend, examples opportunities
Make others believe in it too Management and markets
Not all campaigns are better managed centrally Add value and not workload Involve them from the very beginning – training, style guidelines, adapt don’t translate Make country tiers – each country can be different both resources and skill wise
Paul Hugget– manger for HMV Offline sales erosion increased their need for Online marketing - Increased in competition, aggressive multi channel marketing strategy Search is a key channel – allows HMV to intercept a huge customer segment
Online Marketing was – promising channel with only a little bit of resources dedicated to it Online Marketing now is – key channel responsible for 30% - doubled their market share in the last 6 months Didn’t just buy their way to the top – sales, ROI, profitable
Challenges – we have hundreds of thousands of products, rapidly changing inventory, life cycle is short margins across categories are varying Demand and sales volume categorization – focused on creating sales volume
Worked on getting all their products into search engines 4 things important to their process -get new items out to search engines immediately, -bid prices analyzed and reviewed every day, with ROI control - creating satisfying experience that augments their Google quality score - Watching inventory availability - pull ads when inventory is out to prevent wastage
Use Greenlight’s AdApt tool – market all their SKU’s in near real time, split test ads, deep linked alternative landing pages – essentially lets them keep complete control of all campaigns
Price inclusion in their ads – dynamic prices – if it updates on the site, it updates shortly after in the ads Control wastage on out of stock items gave Nintendo wii as an example – tied their software into their database for availability – works both ways sold out .. or just got in
Has this worked for HMV? Resoundingly yes! Reach →CTR → Engagement → Conversion Benefits are clear – highest market share ever, traffic has increased significantly, improved efficiency in conversions, improvement in sales
They can get entire stock to market, increased ROI and can track traffic all the way through to the sale
Audrey Benoit - SM Brussels airline SEM strategy from Brussels Air
Three areas -Virgin Express – strong brand, looking at social marketing, games, didn’t need to invest money into -SM Brussels Airlines – no one knew them, so they needed SEM, Lots of things weren’t working - New – Brussels Airlines – Brand new, starting in March, other two will be closing
In 2003-2004 – focused on where they were flying too and built the brand on that, expanded campaigns (focused on brand identity)
PPC had a limited budget – so they focused on SEO Once Belgian market was solid – they focused on European markets -- didn’t have a lot of help here Strategy – don’t push the brand – push forward the offer – the price Focused on pay per click
SEO for key markets, PPC Ad hoc campaigns Support the markets PPC/SEO Mix – home market 40/60, euro 80/ 20
ROI drives their campaigns – SEM is natural choice for e-business teams, but not necessarily for sponsors Convince top management with business cases, screenshots of competitor positions and visibility Home market results to help fee investment on local markets
Team of seven people – run projects for marketing because they aren’t familiar with SEM They set the strategy, their agency runs the campaigns – and they are paid on performance base All team members have to be on board – need to be aware of everything going on
SEM is different from one country to another – they should know your culture and habits Translations agencies are used, but again must be aware of the true message They have over 40 local websites, so they need their centralized CMS to manage content Manage, monitor and avoid internal competition, so that their own France site isn’t competing with the Brussels site – utilize the local markets too
Challenges Competition – its hard to be reactive, and proactive Language – is difficult , plus jargons, and spelling issues (umlauts) (everyone needs to know what the aim) They are doing this for 4 years, and now have to start from scratch with the new airline
Edda Gisladottir (www.bluelagoon.is) Blue Lagoon Iceland
Blue Lagoon Skin Care They rank #1 and #2 for these terms, however the movie is a indirect competitor
Focus has been mainly on organic, submitted to several directories, On page optimization is important, url optimization, navigation optimization, internal linking
quality linking – from good sites, rather than from a quantity of sites
use ePR to distribute their press releases - get picked up by Google News
Quality traffic improve 40% from 2005-2006 Direct traffic to specific landing page Position the most important info Clear path to purchase Minimize navigational choices Start optimizing for their Blue Lagoon Hotel will be ready in 2010 Separate site for each country Start a community
You Tube – Social Marketing, all becoming a huge opportunity for them Testimonials important Flickr and You Tube are huge for them – customer evangelists are posting their own stories about Blue Lagoon on these services
Have not done PPC – researching and studying for possible future use
Utilize Call To Action to help build content
E newsletters – aggressive – links to their online shop
General - encourage people to come back to site Research -> Decision -> Buy
Challenges for Online Marketing and Online Shop Exchange rates, different tax rates for different countries, spamcheck, opt-in database of 50k emails, landing pages for certain keywords,
Number of orders increased 8% from 2005 to 2006 Internet sales increased 73% 2005 to 2006
Contributed by Liana “Li” Evans, of Commerce360 and Search Marketing Gurus.com.
