Coast Digital Blog

In October Google began experimenting with a new look – a minimalistic approach designed to that give the user what they wanted without distraction. It was dubbed Google Fade, and it works by only displaying the Google search bar, the Google Search button and the I’m Feeling Lucky button until the user moves their mouse. At that point, a reverse fade brings everything into view.

Now you see them.

And now you don't.

 

All in all, we ran approximately 10 variants of the fade-in. Some of the experiments hindered the user experience: for example, the variants of the homepage that hid the search buttons until after the fade performed the worst in terms of user happiness metrics... However, in the end, the variant of the homepage we are launching today was positive or neutral on all key metrics, except one: time to first action. At first, this worried us a bit... Then, we realized: we want users to notice this change... and it does take time to notice something (though in this case, only milliseconds!). Our goal then became to understand whether or not over time the users began to use the homepage even more efficiently than the control group and, sure enough, that was the trend we observed.

 

Since it was launched worldwide on 3rd December, there has been a user backlash regarding the new design. On the official Google help forums, many threads are filled with complaints. 

 

Some threatening:

 

“Leave the Homepage alone, or else I'll find another search engine to use.....”

 

“Worst Google idea ever. I am about to go find a new browser for my home page. They created the perfect solution to a non-existent problem.”

 

Some frustrated:

 

“Seriously. I couldnt even beleive [sic] it myself, I thought I was hallucinating!!! Then finally I arrived here, to find out fellow googlers are also experiencing the same atrocious disaster. It is extremely slowing me down as I am a Sr. Network Engineer and have multiple windows open at all times, and opening new ones all day long. My homepage being Google, is now taking an extra couple seconds to come-up, and when you are working with seconds of time, that can be DEVASTATING.”

 

And some just downright funny:

 

“Stop experimenting with the stupid "fade" already. It isn't better and it isn't necessary. Stop making changes just for the sake of making changes. A search engine isn't supposed to be a video game. The only folks I can imagine thinking this is 'cool' are teenagers and twenty-somethings with the attention span of a housefly.”

 

Personally I don’t see what the fuss is about. It looks nice, and I know how to find the little 'Mail' icon without any fuss. However, I am intrigued to see this fade effect tie in with the upcoming Google design, as this change would then be a much more radical transformation from the Google we know and love.

 

The future?

 

I’ve been monitoring the buzz from Econsultancy's Online Marketing Masterclasses and I haven’t been surprised to hear some very familiar messages. I spotted one that I thought was worthy of further discussion on Econsultancy’s Twitter feed yesterday afternoon:

@Econsultancy: #OMM Key lessons learnt by Dell - Customers ARE talking about your brand. Either you can be aware and reach out, or you can ignore them...

Where to start? At the beginning, of course

We know that people who don’t work in our industry can find online marketing and social media rather intimidating. They become especially daunting when companies realise - like Dell did - that people are already talking about them and they can’t control it.

From experience with customers across a variety of sectors, we know that every organisation requires a tailored approach to address individual challenges. This is certainly not a ‘one size fits all’ industry. With this in mind, I have compiled some top tips which I hope will provide a good starting point for anyone planning an online strategy:

1. Conduct a situation analysis

If you haven’t engaged with customers online before, it is sensible to review your current online presence and evaluate the awareness of your brand. This kind of analysis can provide you with an insight into any issues that you might not be aware of (negative perceptions, inaccurate information in the marketplace, brand champions and so on) and give you a clear idea of what your immediate focus should be.

2. Identify your audience

Each organisation needs to have a clear indication of who it is that it wants to communicate with online.  Remember that diverse groups communicate in different ways across distinct platforms. A third sector organisation will have a very different target audience to an online music retailer, for example, and this should be reflected in their online strategies.

Selecting the appropriate channels to communicate with your desired target market will ensure that your online efforts are far from fruitless.

3. Plan and schedule projects realistically

Sometimes it’s good to dive headfirst into new projects and see where they take you; but when it comes to online marketing, it’s often far wiser to test the waters first – or work with a digital marketing agency that knows them implicitly.

Making yourself work to a structured and manageable plan can mean the difference between a successful and durable campaign - and blowing your annual budget in month one.  

4. Agree key performance indicators that reflect your wider business goals

For some organisations it’s all about visitor numbers, while for others cost per click is key. Appearing on page one for search terms that don’t make you any money isn’t a viable long term strategy, nor is ploughing budget into expensive PPC ads that don’t convert to sales.

That said, don’t be afraid to try new things and experiment with budgets and keywords. The results will always be measurable so you can see which tests really worked.

5. Track the results of your campaign using analytics

Coast Digital is all about ‘marketing you can measure’. We can confidently say this because online marketing offers complete measurability. We are able to continuously monitor, analyse and report on the very latest results from your analytics which enables us to optimise your campaign to be as profitable as possible.

Do you have this in my size?

If this tailored approach sounds like something that your business needs, get in touch. We’d love to help you launch an online marketing campaign that meets your individual requirements.

We've all become quite familiar with Bing since its arrival in BETA mode at the end of May. However, Microsoft has now rolled out a UK version - meaning its results will come under the microscope of the online marketing world.

Heavy investment from Bing to get the UK's SERPs right means the following features are now available (they're the same as in the US):

• Real time Twitter updates
• Visual Search
• Hover Mode
• A tie in with Wolfram Alpha - the computational search engine

One thing you can be sure of is that Microsoft will support the new product launch with heavy profile marketing. Plans for marketing campaigns on radio and across digital platforms mean we'll hear a lot more of the Bing product.

It was interesting to read what Ashley Highfield (Managing Director of Microsoft's Consumer and Online Divisions in the UK) had to say about Bing's aggressive positioning:

"My objective is to get Bing up to a 10 per cent share of the search market. I'm not expecting to take Google's pre-eminent position overnight, though obviously, that's a long-term ambition.
 
"This is not going to be an overnight fight – this is trench warfare. People will use both Bing and other search engines, and hopefully switch totally to Bing, because it's an easier, simpler way of searching the web. Bing is a better place to hang out."

Realistically, though, things can't get much worse for Bing. With an estimated market share of just 3% I guess the only way is up.

The news nicely coincided with a recent Bing experience of mine. Having bought a new laptop with the latest version of Windows, I found the browsers were set to Bing. I had no choice but start using the engine to get other browsers and settings in place.

To be honest the experience wasn't that horrific, and I can see how the engine appeals to regular users. But, having used Bing to do genuine searches, here are the reasons I won’t be switching over anytime soon:

• I work in Online Marketing – everyone follows the big “G”
• I do not value the Bing tools – whereas others such as Google Maps are market leading
• The algo still doesn’t give me confidence – based on a recent test case where a ‘no index/ no follow’ website can still appear in position 3.

I am all for healthy competition. So, if Highfield’s statements ring true over the next year, it will make it an interesting arena. If Bing can make it a better place to hang out then they will be a step closer to Google.

Google Experimental Labs is currently running Google Social Search. The purpose of this tool is to bring you and your social circle closer together. I guess the end goal is that there will be nothing you don’t know about your friends, what they've been up to or what they've been saying!
 
Google Social Search plugs into your Twitter and FriendFeed accounts and sifts through content based on what people have been talking about. This seems like another function that's moving you closer to Google Wave, with everything happening seamlessly in one window of information.
 
On the basis of a quick test drive, it seems a nice way of keeping search results separate from websites. In order to get the best out of this tool your Google profile needs to be regularly updated with the following information:

• People you're connected to through social services that you've listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups for Google.

Here is a nice video from Matt Cutts explaining how it works:

If you want to read a lot of misguided nonsense about SEO, then look no further than this post by Derek Powazek. Remarkable for its non-truths as well as its many oversights, it argues - unconvincingly - that search engine optimisation is not a legitimate form of marketing.

Utter rubbish. The SEO community is full of hardworking people who have earned an excellent reputation for excellent work. At Coast Digital, we prove to clients that SEO is marketing you can measure - if they didn’t get a good ROI, they simply wouldn’t hire us.

It’s true that not every so-called SEO expert is the real thing, but articles like Powazek’s have the power to cause damage to the good guys.

That’s why I’ve decided to give his piece a good fisking. Here goes....

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

First came the web, and it was a mess. Servers went up everywhere, the net connected them all, pages bloomed like flowers, and no one could find a damn thing.

Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google with its rankings of most-linked pages, we were finally able to find the pages we needed, mostly.

The ascendency of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

If they’re ‘scammers’, how come they can back up their work with real statistics? By all means, avoid anyone that can’t, or won’t. But a good SEO firm will use web analytics packages to prove exactly what impact their work has had on a website - the visitors, the key phrases that are being optimised, and revenue increases. It’s hard statistical evidence.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web. I’m going to tell you about the problems, and then tell you the one true way to generate traffic on the web, based on my own 14 years of hits and misses.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

That’s the point – the good advice is obvious, especially if you’ve got the time to learn how best to apply various techniques, manage the link strategy for a site and gain the experience that only comes with looking after the SEO for a multitude of sites. What isn’t so obvious is the amount of testing you need to do, the trial and error of new techniques, the effect of industry changes and movements by Google. Realistically, I could do my own accounting, or write my own will; yet many people will pay an accountant or a solicitor because they will do a better job, and probably save money in the long run. They do it every day, all day - and you pay for their experience.

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.

This is what we call “black hat” SEO – deliberately contravening Google’s terms and conditions. The techniques (that I do not endorse) can and do work - and often for considerably longer than two weeks. The problem is that you can be penalized as quickly as you can see gains – not something that any ethical SEO practitioner would risk on a client’s site. On the other hand, there are lots of techniques that fall into a ‘grey’ area, not outlawed by Google, but perhaps not widely accepted as best practice. It’s up to the SEO in question to balance their white hat and grey hat techniques.

And when they do reindex, if they determine that you’ve been acting in bad faith (like hiding links or keywords or other deceptive practices) they’ll drop you like a hot rock. So a temporary gain may result in a lifetime ban.

Hiding links or keywords are black hat SEO techniques from about 1999. Any SEO worth their salt isn’t going to base a strategy around this kind of thing.

In the end, you’re sacrificing your brand integrity in a Faustian bargain for an increase in traffic that won’t last the month. And how valuable was that increase, anyway? If you’re tricking people into visiting your site, those visits are going to be bad experiences.

If you are encouraging the right visitors to your site by appearing more prominently when they search for keywords pre-determined by you, your site and your SEO team, there’s no question of the quality of the traffic. How can incremental visitors be a hindrance in any respect? If you drive 100 quality brand visits a day and they convert to customers or enquiries at a rate of 10%, and then we carry out some SEO that drives 500 visits that convert at 2%, there’s still a double increase in enquiries. Why would anyone not want double the new business? If ‘brand integrity’ is the tradeoff for exposure, I’d hate to guess how this guy runs his businesses.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Google’s ranking algorithm is based on links. So the most effective way to game their system is to plant links on as many sites as possible, all pointing to your site, linked from specific keywords. This is called Google bombing.

This is not called Google bombing. Google bombing was a term used to push non-related content to the top of the search engine by using inbound links – jokes in a sense. SEO differs in that the content at the destination page is related very strongly to the keyword links. Again, this is just one small part of the SEO strategy. If you imagine that creating interesting, newsworthy content generates a buzz online, this inbound linking is a natural phenomenon. Link building simply gives things a ‘gentle nudge’ in the right direction. The trick of the link builder is to obtain natural looking, quality links on high ranking sites, a sought after skill.

Ironically, writing rubbish like Powazek is a brilliant SEO technique because it generates oodles of inbound links.

SEO cockroaches employ botnets, third-world labor, and zombie computers to blanket the web with link spam. 99% of spam comments to blogs are these kind of links. The target of these links is not the blog readers, it’s Google.

In all of the years I’ve worked in search optimisation, I have done none of these things. Again, a very small section of the industry justifies this criticism. Google is very aware of web spam and works extremely hard to counteract it. That’s why SEO companies push ‘ethical’ techniques so much.

SEO bastards are behind worms that attack blog services like Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type. Some hack into the blog templates themselves to insert links that are hidden from the readers of that blog, but visible to a Google crawler.

And they create programs to grab expired domain names, automatically create websites, filling the pages with content stolen from RSS feeds, creating billions of bad results for users.

It’s a game, and every link is a score for the SEO jerkwads and their disreputable clients. And every time they win, those of us trying to create quality work and good experiences on the web lose.

Again, this is a sweeping accusation. Hackers and Crackers break into these sites, not SEO consultants. Again, this is spam and Google penalises accordingly.

Worse than the hackers are the competent journalists and site creators that are making legitimate content online, but get seduced by the SEO dark side into thinking they need to create content for Google instead of for their readers. It dumbs-down the content, which turns off your real audience, which ultimately makes you less valuable to advertisers. If you want to know why there’s so much remnant advertising on online news sites, it’s because you’re treating the stories like remnants already.

You do need to create content for Google, otherwise you won’t have the reach that you could have. It’s a lucky thing that Google recommend that you write content for users, not the search engine, and they re-iterate that point frequently.  A better statement would be that “You should create content primarily for users, but have the search engine requirements in mind while doing so”.

Remember this: It’s not your job to create content for Google. it’s their job to find the best of the web for their results. Your audience is your readers, not Google’s algorithm.

If it is Google’s job to find the most relevant results for user searches, it must be the job of the website owner to ensure that their content is the most relevant. That is exactly what SEO is. Making the pages presented to Google as relevant as possible for specific keyword searches.

The One True Way

Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.

Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.

It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

He’s correct here. You should absolutely make your website detailed, with quality, fresh, unique content. But an SEO is a data analyst, amongst other skills, and if your content wasn’t good enough the SEO consultant can tell you why that might be, how to best fix it and how to make money from it. 

But the ‘it doesn’t work, throw it away and start again’ attitude won’t cut it when we are talking about a £200,000 corporate web build, and there are directors putting pressure on you from above about the site's performance. Similarly, to compete with large budget sites, smaller fry have to work hard to appear in the search results. Good content is a part of it, but the really enlightened website owner will combine great content with techniques that get it the exposure it deserves. Unlike Powazek, most sites can’t get massive exposure by shouting nonsense - looking idiotic is bad for most brands. And that’s why good, ethical, effective SEO is so important. Try us.

Rupert Murdoch, the driving force behind global media conglomerate News Corp, is not a man who minces his words. So, when he accuses search engines like Google and Yahoo as being 'content kleptomaniacs' at the World Media Summit, I immediately wonder what he's got up his sleeve.

This is, after all, a man who introduced electronic newspaper production in the 1980s in the teeth of opposition from the print unions, and someone who has actually welcomed the future demise of printed editions in favour of portable electronic devices: "...we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It's going to be great."

Making search engines pay

Rupert Murdoch's present stance is that search engines should pay his publications for the content they index and aggregate in services like Google News, largely because he doesn't see why they should earn advertising revenue on his content.

This is, in my opinion, a bluff. After all, if Murdoch really wanted Google, Yahoo, Bing et al to stop indexing websites belonging to - say - The Times, The Sun, The Australian, The New York Post and The Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, then he could get one of his web experts to add a few lines of code into each site's robots.txt file. The nuisance would stop immediately.

Quality content

So what's Murdoch really up to? I think the best way to make an educated guess is to look at how his media empire has been conducting itself over recent years. Even a glance at his UK operations and the state of the domestic newspaper market shows that the game has been afoot for some time.

If you'd asked me about the newspapers I read a few years ago, I could have given you a fairly straightforward answer. As late as 2005, I was reading the Guardian almost daily (had done for 15 years), regularly buying the Times and the Telegraph (seeing at least one edition of each per week), and getting the Sun when I knew there was a good scoop in it. The only papers I never bought were the Mail and the Express. Especially not the Express. Amongst other current affairs publications I would get Private Eye and The Spectator.

Then I started getting more and more of my news online, and decided to drop the daily newspaper habit. I still get Private Eye and the Spectator from the newsstands, but if I do buy a daily newspaper I'll generally nab a copy of the Times.

That's made me wonder what happened to my long-standing brand loyalty to the Guardian. Why don't I buy that on the rare occasions I now get a paper?

Leaving aside the usual gags about getting more right wing as you get older, I think the fundamental answer is that Murdoch's Times has invested heavily in good content, whilst the Guardian has invested heavily in trying to appear more interesting and groundbreaking than it actually is. As a result, the Times has improved considerably - poaching a lot of the Guardian's (and other newspapers') best columnists along the way. The Guardian has got a tidy format, many acres of dullness, a few fertile strips of delusion, and a lot less zing, zap and panache than it had at the turn of the decade, when Francis Wheen was in G2, Matthew Norman was having anarchic fun on the Diary and Simon Hoggart was doing a peerless Parliamentary sketch (he still does, but I read that online. For free).

Net result, the Guardian is leaching readers at a faster rate than the Times - but both are suffering from circulation drops.

The strategy's not for printing

Which brings the Murdoch strategy into focus. He lost about £2 billion last year. Why is he investing so heavily in good content for his print editions? If the newspaper market is contracting, it's only going to be a short-term fix.
 
As you may know, Murdoch has convinced other publishers the way forward is to lock their content behind a pay-wall. This is fine, and I think wise, but people need a way of finding what's behind the barricades.

At the moment, this is where Google, Yahoo, Bing etc come in - they index the news sites, pull the material together in places like Google News, and make a considerable amount of advertising revenue out of the process.
 
It's also why Murdoch has got to get as many rival news outlets to follow his lead. If only Murdoch's titles went behind a pay-wall, then Google et al could relax - they'd just carry on indexing all the rival papers and Murdoch would lose readers and subscriptions.

A Murdoch search engine?

But, if Murdoch gets all the best global news outlets behind a pay-wall, they can collectively tell the search engines to get stuffed.

There's still a problem, though. Because readers have got used to cherry picking from news titles across the world (I love the fact I can trawl newspapers in the UK, US, Australia, South Africa, NZ, Ireland, Singapore, France etc etc), brand loyalty is only going to go so far. I might, if there were no other option, get a subscription to the Times. But there's no way I'm paying for additional subs for the Washington Post, New York Times, Sydney Herald etc etc.

That's why I suspect Murdoch's longer-term strategy is to get quality, paid news providers to opt out of Google and Yahoo and to set up their own search/ directory portal - perhaps a higher quality version of today's Google News. That way, Murdoch will be leading a movement that:

a) starves Google and other search engines of content
b) brings back third party advertising revenue into the portal in which Murdoch has a stake
c) creates a new search USP - quality (ie, subscribe to us because you've no way of knowing what rubbish you're getting via Google)
d) allows subscriptions to be ploughed back into journalism
e) gives the news outlets a strong online citadel, from which to expand into other online operations.

Of course, it's all speculation. But however it does pan out, decent news content is rarely going to be free in the future. The job now is to make online news generate money for the people who create it, rather than the search engines that distribute it at little cost to themselves.

And what better way to do that than with your own search engine?

If you’re new to the world of online marketing, it’s fair to assume that sitting at the top of the natural search listings for the most competitive terms is the way to increase online revenues.

Unfortunately it’s often not that simple, and achieving pole position for a generic term might not be the best way to generate qualified online traffic and increase your web-based sales.

There is a crucial distinction to be made between the keywords that drive conversions/ revenue and those that we affectionately term “vanity keywords”. The latter might deliver volume but won’t necessarily generate the kind of sales or enquiries that you’d expect them to. But they will give you a sense of pride, have a negative impact on your competitors’ rankings and, perhaps most importantly, please all of your company’s directors.

Unashamed vanity or good business sense?

Online vanity seems to have gained impetus this year, and it became particularly noticeable when Facebook introduced free "vanity URLs" in June. Although no-one could get their hands on trademarked or protected names, everything else was available on a first-come, first-served basis and everyone was keen to claim the most desirable domain names possible. 

Dominating the top spot on the SERPs (search engine results pages) is comparable to owning a sought-after Facebook URL. Both can compound a company’s authority and credibility, but success with vanity keywords can also be an invaluable means of demonstrating market dominance to potential customers, investors and key influencers (the media, for instance). It’s also a good "bragging tool" for dinner parties, of course.

But when it comes to marketing you can measure, search engine vanity alone will not cement the future of your business/website and your accompanying online marketing campaign. Your long-term strategy needs to be based on conversions, goal acquisitions and constant keyword refinement.

Conventional advice is to optimise around volume as an early strategy (typically the more generic, vanity terms) and then use conversion data for subsequent optimisation. Experience with a campaign will teach you that it’s not all about position one and page one – in the end, it’s about what makes you money. Conversions and volume are just as important as SERP positions.

So, by all means aim for the number one spot – but be sure of what you want to achieve. That way, you’ll not only be able to set the correct expectations within your organisation, but you will shape the way that your digital marketing agency reports on your campaign’s successes.

Be honest about what’s really important

Justifying agency fees and online marketing spend is an unavoidable part of most marketing managers’ day job, and the problem is that success is hugely subjective. This is why it is vital that agencies work with you in true partnership – not just as a peripheral supplier – to establish what you would consider to be a thriving campaign. Do you want success be measured by keyword positions, revenue generation, click-through rates, or different measures entirely?

If this joined-up approach sounds like it could be just what you’re looking for, talk to us today. We think that achieving eye-catching SERPs whilst generating measurable results can give you the best of both worlds.

We all got rather excited about this morning's news that online marketing spend in the UK has overtaken that invested in TV advertising - for the first time ever.

I was busy putting together this story about it for our news section when online marketing executive James Fairweather dropped me a line about it, cc'ing in consultant Kayas Fayez at the same time. I told him I was busy posting about it, when Kayas kicked off a series of exchanges that showed we all had strong feelings about the news, but didn't necessarily agree...

We thought we'd share our emails with you and find out what you thought. I've not edited them, as I think it's nicer to keep the flavour of how we communicate at the beginning of the day.

So, over to Kayas:

This is good news for the industry. However, have to bear in mind that there are a lot (85% of all UK businesses are SMEs I believe) of businesses that can’t afford TV advertising as there’s little bang for their buck. Digital is usually the only channel that’s commercially viable for them.
 
A better examination of this would be to carry out a separate report for businesses that engage in both TV and Online and see what the overall split (media spend) is for those businesses.

I came back with this (I'm Ben Locker, by the way):

If there were figures for effectiveness of TV spend compared to digital spend, that would be interesting. Though the rogue factor would be that all TV advertising has to be done professionally, whereas a lot of online spend will be done by amateurs (esp PPC). So a more accurate comparison would be, say, ROI comparison between the top (say) 100 TV agencies and the top 100 digital ones...
 
Thinking out loud. Do excuse it!

Kayas developed his ideas further:

Good point. However, just because an amateur runs a digital campaign doesn’t mean it should lose weight in the fact that it is still media spend. By comparing top 100’s you’re essentially omitting recognition for the primary USP of digital – it’s available and accessible to all to use as an advertising tool.
 
Also, ROI shouldn’t be considered for reporting media spend – the big boys spend millions on digital brand campaigns for brand (and not direct response) purposes because digital works. ROI is not a KPI for those campaigns.
 
Feel free to jump in – I’m up for a Wednesday morning discussion :-)

Me again:

Yes, I agree, but I'm looking at it from the selfishly commercial POV of encouraging greater online spend away from TV. In other words, if you can say to the big boys that digital gives you more bang for your buck, you will attract more of them to agencies like Coast (especially in tight times, when TV and print spend is dropping). But as you say, the fact it is accessible to everyone is a great attraction to SMEs, that form the bulk of the market (I think - do they?).

So, no - ROI isn't a KPI for the TV campaigns, but it's a great marketing tool for online agencies.

What interests me about what you're saying is about brand. It's not easy building brands online - it would be great to find ways of doing so. After attracting a lot more people to online marketing, it would be easier to retain them if you could add better brand building into the mix.

James jumped on the question of brands:

I think the real issue is that there aren’t many brands that can afford television presence that have no existing brand awareness in the marketplace. From the Web Analyst’s perspective, this essentially means that if you measure the website visits, TV coverage will drive both brand and direct traffic, Brand awareness from other efforts will also drive brand and direct traffic. This ‘pot’ of brand and direct traffic is where things blur, as it is very difficult to measure where these have really come from – TV, other offline advertising or returning visitors from any possible initial source.
 
The ‘Compare the Meerkat’ ads were probably the smartest way to measure just that – run a separate site with a TV campaign to assess the effectiveness of that channel alone. Again, the boundaries blur as soon as you get involved with social media and people start passing links around virally and through email and social networks.

I ended with this, and I'm sure the matter isn't going to rest here:

I suppose if you then look at it from the point of view of an SME, the advantage of digital marketing is that agencies like Coast can prove - and deliver - an impressive ROI. So, assuming people want to buy your products and services in the first place, services like SEO and PPC are going to result in measurable profit. And that's extra money that can be investing in brand building exercises like TV ads etc, which in turn drive more online traffic as well as bolster brand.

I think my point is that digital marketing is, or should be, a core part of every business's strategy (for sales, and for growth) - whereas it's part of a virtuous circle for companies that use brand-building marketing such as TV.

So, that's what we do in the mornings when a good story comes along. But what do you think? Why is digital marketing spend overtaking TV? What do you think about comparing the effectiveness of online marketing with TV advertising. What are your thoughts about using digital direct marketing for brand building?

So many questions, and even more answers. Let's hear yours in the comments below.

On Wednesday, I spent the morning at ad:tech London, the show that bills itself as being “all about interactive marketing”. For those who didn’t make it and are interested in what they might have missed, here’s a quick run through of this first-timer’s observations.

Footfall indicates a flourishing industry

Unsurprisingly, the exhibition floor at Olympia was packed from the moment I got there until the moment I left. Forrester Research recently predicted a further 15% growth for search marketing between 2009 and 2014, so it’s no surprise that so many people want a slice of the action. Don’t underestimate the increasing importance of social media though (also discussed in detail at ad:tech), for which Forrester is predicting a 34% expansion.

I took a sneaky peek at other visitors’ badges and found a healthy mix of marketers and small business owners. Exhibitors and speakers alike therefore needed to adjust their pitches if they were to address the many different levels of understanding possessed by this mix of visitors.

Seminars cover the basics – in a good way

I attended a range of seminars throughout the day – alternating between the analytics/affiliates and search/ad networks theatres. The first seminar was pitched at a relatively basic level, but the speaker made some good points. This is my summary of the most interesting ones. 

• Web marketing activity should be integrated with offline marketing activity. A good point and one that too many people overlook. If your online marketing agency is aware of offline campaigns that might be driving additional traffic to the website, it will be able to track success with analytics and ensure that those visitors are driven to relevant landing pages that meet their expectations, rather than just a generic homepage. 
• Pay per click results should inform natural search campaigns, and vice versa. This is often one of the primary benefits of working with an agency that manages both. PPC data can tell you which keywords are resulting in the best conversions, allowing you to be more targeted with natural search efforts
• Many people who manage their own online marketing campaigns fail to set up analytics accounts properly – and some don’t have any monitoring in place at all. This concern was echoed by Microsoft’s Group Search Manager whose lasting message was “Know your searcher”. Analytics data can be used to help you plan more efficient campaigns. Microsoft also argued that you not only need to track everything, but you also need to be able to respond...
• Be flexible with your online marketing budget. This by no means implies that you need to be prepared to plough more money into the campaign at any given time, but simply that you need to take advantage of seasonality and ROI trends. You can achieve this by reallocating budget if there is a surprising upturn in search volumes earlier – or later – than you expected.
• Invest in your brand as well as your keywords. This message resonated well with me, particuarly as I’m someone who has come to the online arena with a background in more traditional forms of marketing. It is an irrefutable fact that people still click on the brands that they recognise ahead of those that they don’t – even if the known brands are further down the SERPs (search engine results pages).

This links back to my very first point – get your PR agency talking to your online marketing agency and make sure that your various campaigns support and strengthen one another. According to Microsoft, 54% of people are more likely to search on a brand term (company name, tagline, key phrase from adverts, etc.) once they’ve seen a display ad. And, of course, this can all be tracked online.

Why should you go to ad:tech 2010?

Overall, it was a good day and I’d recommend the seminar programme to anyone who is interested in increasing their basic understanding online marketing. The main seminars were completely free (you can pay to attend the Google University if you so wish), so they’re a good option if you want to learn whilst avoiding the persistent sales pitches from the exhibitors with stands.

If you’re a seasoned online marketing professional, I couldn’t say with confidence that you’re likely to get a lot out of a visit to this exhibition – unless it’s a bit of competitor analysis that you’re after, of course.

If you didn’t make it to ad:tech this year and would like to talk to someone about online marketing – or if you did go, but were disappointed by the companies you spoke to – give Coast Digital a call. We’ll be happy to help you with any aspect of digital marketing that interests you.