6 SES San Francisco Key Takeaways

Big data and business optimization versus campaign optimization and quality content.

If you weren’t at SES San Francisco this week or weren’t following the #SESSF Twitter hashtag religiously, then you may have missed out on some key learnings and takeaways. Before I delve into the specific takeaways, perhaps we’ll touch on a few themes that in many cases transcended across the paid search, organic search, and social media topics. Those themes were “big data” and “business optimization,” in contrast to campaign optimization, which can be myopic, and “quality content.”

I had the privilege of speaking at the event and I presented “The Foundations of Search Engine Marketing,” a PPC and organic primer session for those who are new to SEM, SEO, and perhaps digital marketing. Quite a challenge for a solo 50-minute session, but I did what I could. Perhaps the bigger challenge was following up directly behind Avinash Kaushik, Google’s digital marketing evangelist, who always rocks the house. For PPC search strategists, perhaps Avinash’s points are among the most important, which brings us to the six important SES San Francisco takeaways:

  1. Marketing myopia results in a sub-optimal campaign, every time. Avinash Kaushik, the opening keynote, discussed many areas but a clear theme evolved and that would probably be best described as a railing against marketing myopia, a shortsightedness that manifests itself differently depending on the marketer or agency involved. Avinash poses the theory that we should focus on:
    • Influence. Generating influence on and over consumer preference by meeting or exceeding the needs and expectations of the consumer. If it helps to use old-school marketing-speak, think of influence as moving consumers down the buying funnel. Any positive influence that increases branding metrics or tips the consumer’s likelihood of purchase in our direction is a positive outcome of our marketing.
    • Experience. Delivering an amazing experience to your customers and prospects. Obviously large brands have the resources to do so across platforms and screens, but delivering a positive experience should be an aspiration of all marketers, large and small.
    • Value. Value and price are not the same thing. When one exceeds the expectation of the customer, the customer feels that they have received value, even if the cost is high. Delighting customers is a great way to deliver value. Avinash prefers to call them mini-orgasms.

    Purely focusing on the converters and trying to influence them and provide the value and experience to those site visitors is myopic. We need to meet the needs of anyone who has an interest in our products or services. With social media, we even need to take into account the influencers. Unfortunately for the SES audience, few of whom are CMOs, the metrics for success are often handed down from above. Until CMOs and VPs of marketing can be taught to think holistically about marketing spend optimization, I’m afraid most of the audience will continue with last-click attribution and only measureable short-term ROI as their success metric.

  2. Content is king again (perhaps it always was). One of the reasons the search agencies and search marketing professionals have been well-positioned to advise within the social media space is that organic SEO (particularly white hat SEO) relied on a constant flow of great content that delivered value to the reader. Not only did great content stimulate link activity, it also helped cement the business, brand, or even the individual blogger or columnist as a subject matter expert. The same holds true in social media. A key difference is that social media conversations are most effective when they are indeed conversations. Businesses aren’t always used to engaging in conversations other than through customer service departments or sales channels.
  3. Paid and earned social media successes are more easily arrived at when there is an amplification effect. Messages that get passed along either in their original form or with additional commentary are more likely to break through the clutter. Sometimes advertising can jump-start the process of sharing and conversations, or the advertising can amplify the existing conversations.
  4. Feedback loops. Social media metrics can serve as an easy way to determine if your messaging and marketing are resonating with consumers. Never before have marketers had an opportunity to learn immediately if their campaigns suck. Perhaps a nicer way to put it is that one can test and iterate against customers and prospects, using social media not just as a form of media or as a communications conduit/channel but also as a metric. Social media and search share this dual personality as both media and metric. Never before as marketers have we had an opportunity to refine our messages and media mix based on analytics and data that arrive in almost real time.
  5. Mobile is here to stay. Mobile search and mobile social stats are rising. We all need to figure out how to delight and serve our customers when they choose to interact with us on their mobile devices. It may not always be easy to measure the influence that we get from our mobile customer interactions, but the time where we can ignore those of our customers who arrive via those devices has passed.
  6. Big data can take your campaign to new heights. While the big data theme was most prevalent in the social media and display advertising (including retargeting) conversations, my team has actually found that big data can revitalize even a stale search campaign.

So, if your to-do list wasn’t long enough, and your marketing budget wasn’t large enough before, now you’ll have some ammunition to get some more resources allocated, because if you don’t step up your game, your competition will and they’ll eat your lunch.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource