SES Singapore 2011 – Day 1 Keynotes and Panel Discussions Live Blog
Asuthosh
Day 1 of the 2011 SES Singapore is underway! With more than 50 speakers from several well-respected organizations and industries, we can expect to get another healthy dose of the latest trends, best practices, market insights and innovations in the fields of search and social marketing.
As media partner, B2Bento will live blog both tracks and bring you field reports at the end of the day. More updates will follow soon. Stay tuned!
[5:20pm] “SEM for smartphone and tablet devices” – Samuel Goh, SEM Manager, SingTel Digital Media; Adrian Tan, Digital Marketing Manager, clickTRUE; Christian Cadeo, Head of Mobile, South East Asia, Google (Moderator: Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES, Search Engine Watch, ClickZ)
Christian Cadeo – Mobile Search: Advanced strategies for performance advertisers
The Mobile Landscape: Asia is driving the smartphone revolution à it is now very compelling to reach users on smartphones and tablets.
Mobile Advertising (Singapore example): 81% notice advertising at least sometimes – apps and search engines with highest advertising recall. 61% of users take some kind of “action” after ad attention.
Start by defining your mobile campaign goals: Be ready, Be found, Be smart.
Goals:
Drive mCommerce or mobile site visits: mobile site links, product ads, communication ads
Over-the-phone Sales: 1in 3 searches have local intent (85% contacted companies)
In-Store Sales: 1in 3 searches have local intent (83% actually visited stores)
App Downloads: download directly from a search ad with click to download
Set clear expectations for performance. Expand mobile with gdn text, display, YouTube, wallet.
Adrian Tan – Extending Search Marketing into Mobile via Google AdWords
Which mobile device do we think of when we want to do a mobile campaign? We should consider ALL smartphones, not just the highly successful brands and models. If people search on desktops, they search on mobile. Mobile advertising is the fastest advertising.
5 Tips for you AdWords
Mobile Landing Pages: It is always best practice to optimize your mobile landing page for all relevant phones. Take note of loading performance because 1 second delay will result to deficits in page views, customer satisfaction and conversions.
Keyword Length: Brevity has its benefits.
Ad Position – Top Dog (first search result) wins … more so in mobile search.
Call To Action
Track & Optimise with Google Analytics / Targeting: ad serving is more precise on mobile than PC
Samuel Goh – SEM for Smartphone and Tablet Devices
Mobile SEM Trends: Tablet traffic is on the rise. Mobile SEM spending in the USA is rising. Singapore leads in non-pc traffic.
Desktop SEM vs Mobile SEM: key differences in terms of – number of ads, length of search query, localized results, average CPC, CTR and conversion rates.
Mobile SEM Basics and Optimization
Keyword generation for mobile devices
Include Call-to-Action in Ad Text
Create a “mobile” only campaign
Choose only “mobile devices” and/or “tablets”
Turn on Call Extensions – click-to-call
Create a mobile landing page
Keyword generation, ad text and mobile landing page will always be ongoing efforts and not a one-time thing.
Future developments in Mobile SEM: clickable phone number, phone thru rate (PTR) and phone call quality score, mobile landing page quality score
Panel Q&A
There is no point in creating an app for the sake of it. The question of “what is it for” very much applies.
Even if B2C is more intuitive towards mobile advertising, there are also opportunities presented to B2B companies.
[4.40 pm] Integrated marketing: Myth or reality by Mandeep Grover, Regional Marketing Director, Asia-Pacific, Johnson & Johnson Medical
Integrated marketing: unifying different marketing methods to achieve specific objectives
Brains have evolved little – but channels have multiplied and there is so little time
Multi-tasking – the bane of media planning! But with integrated marketing, it can give deeper insight and better predictability of preference, e.g., search analytics during American Idol
The evolving consumer journey: consumers turnover devices faster, talk a lot more about their products (see page 4 of this Branding in the Digital Age by David C Edelman in Harvard Business Review, Dec 2010)
4 Steps to Bring it All Together
1. Deeper understanding of insights – need to understand consumers better; not just researchers but ethnographers
Foundation phase – what we already know through thorough review of relevant data; Discovery phase – what do we need to know through profound qualitative immersion in consumer’s world; Insight Focus – what will make the connection – true insight which can change your consumer’s behaviour
2. Know the media channels inside-out to assess how closely they can align with your marketing objectives
What are the consumption habits for each media type (e.g., propensity to redeem coupons or enter competitions on product packets or labels)
3. Redefine the consumer journey – know how the customer buys (e.g., Acuvue relies on customer referrals)
E.g., J&J: Permission-based marketing with brand taking a back seat – Online ads that offer trials leading to purchase. On Facebook, design a t-shirt and upload to FB to win iPad.
4. Clear metrics to demonstrate value – marketers should understand numbers
“Trial to conversion”: leading indicator of sales
“Net Promoter Score”: leading indicator of growth
In Summary
Understand and optimize the customer journey – avoid too many steps
Consistency is king for integrated marketing: increase in strength, reach and frequency; IMC framework still works
Set the right KPIs to measure success – integrated backend, number of downloads, leads and conversions; net promoter score
Q&A: Drive everyone to a central hub: a microsite with deep and extensive analytics built in
[1 pm] Special Address: Digital transformation by Arun Poojari, Senior Manager, Consumer Engagement, Marketing, SEA, Nokia
Get the background right: have a vision, get stakeholder buy-in and assemble a great team
Have the right principles – digital effectiveness, digital investments, campaign planning, campaign optimization, operations, etc.
Digital Effectiveness – gauge what digital media is more effective for the purposes you are looking at – e.g., brand favorability, purchase intent?
Digital Investment – Owned, Paid and Earned. Trend towards putting more in Earned and Owned, less on Paid.
Campaign planning – have constant impact across owned, earned and paid media. Bought media is more effective in the “sustenance” phase of the campaign
Campaign optimization: Constant optimization – Involvement factor vs campaign timeline – in newer models of CPC campaigns, effort is more in “execution” phase, while in traditional, it’s typically in “pre-campaign planning” phase
Digital share: overall marketing mix, digital type share (display/SEM etc.), digital buy share (CPM/CPC/CPA)
Data: retargeting, capturing data – who, what, when, where, why
Keyword driven marketing
Media – SEM keyword buys. Measure things like share of impressions, cost per high quality engagement, and at the “always on/tactical” layer
Offline – Above-the-line (ATL) and Below-the-Line (BTL) activities. Right-linking to the correct pages. Using anchor text for links. Optimizing PR releases – insert relevant keywords, add images, add videos, social buttons.
[12.40 am] Executive address: eCommerce lead generation and search marketing overview by Marcelo Wesseler, Head of eCommerce, RS Component
Customer discovery: Traditionally – word of mouth, press advertising; Now – SEM and social media marketing
Knowing customers: as a company, catalogue response, intuition
Marketing led e-commerce – Chief Considerations
Understanding the B2B consumer
Who is the real customer – the person within the company
What engineers want and told them
New approach to Search Led Generation
Pulled PPC in-house and set up company wide automation tool
Generated 1m keywords
Remarketing
Affiliate network
Tips for PPC keywords
Stay on topic
Know how your customers speak (not your internal terminology)
Be wary of “lost in translation” – ensure you “localize” and not just translate; work with local/regional experts
Landing pages: match expectations in ad copy, use bulleted points, include credibility (awards and testimonials), compelling call-to-action, address all stages of the buying process
Post-analysis – data and leads: conversions are (not always) sales
SEO tips
Target high-converting keywords
On-page – follow the rules – content is king
Build links “ethically”
Blog and guest blog
Use partnerships and your internal content experts
Social Media Lead Generation
Facebook/Weibo for customer service and public relations
Design Spark – own social media platform for community of global engineers
Resource site for electronic engineers
Free-to-use tools, etc.
3D CAD program
3D models of component downloadable for free
Design Spark PCB
World’s most powerful, unrestricted, free PCB tool
Tips
Create valuable content – don’t influence too much
Great customer experience is a good driver for positive sentiments
Listen but don’t overreact
Use customer service for a potential quick win
RS saw 53% online sales growth – big chunk driven by SEM and social media marketing
eCommerce as a multi-channel growth driver
Additional Considerations
Look at goal definitions – don’t track just digital revenue; mechanisms to co-relate digital to offline revenue; use click to call, chat and prominent contact data display
Cookie duration – consider longer due to to longer sales cycle
Multi-channel attribution – track multi-channel, work together with first click attribution
Last click vs First click attribution – what keywords/channels led consumers to website; helps to understand effective channels
Communicate value proposition clearly – use a good hook like incentives
Employ local/regional partners
Key Learnings
Understand customer and purchasing lifecycles
Start with Search – first PPC then SEO
Focus on sSM campaign on customer centric value creation
Don’t neglect onsite customer experience and lead conversion tactics
Be diligent with traditional onsite web analytics – set up robust reporting mechanisms
Use free tools, e.g., Google Analytics, seokeywordstracker, yslow and pagetest.org, before investing in expensive tools
Build in-house expertise to complement agencies’ work
[10 am] Keynote Panel: “Managing Search and Social Media Marketing in Regulated Industries”
David Garceran Nieuwenburg, Head of Marketing and Services, HONG KONG JOCKEY CLUB (HKJC); Barry Lloyd, President, Webcertain Asia; Moderated by Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES, Search Engine Watch, ClickZ When it comes to search marketing and social media, one of the most commonly heard phrases by marketers in regulated industries is “we’re not allowed to ”. While customers continue to actively search and thirst for information, marketers in the regulated industries have different approaches to sharing experiences and dialoguing online. David Nieuwenberg on HKJC:
HKJC faces several regulations and restrictions in advertising their products
Have to use Responsible Gaming Guidelines in all circumstances
They use social media hubs under corporate brand contol to bring in traffic to their site, and listen to their customers
Social media traffic results have been fairly impressive from Facebook and YouTube
Facebook campaign: provide match and team statistics, using “gap-fillers” such as videos and sharing winning experiences, exclusive offerings, match alerts, news/highlights/videos and live match promotions – a detailed roster is prepared for each of these activities.
Search engine optimization and marketing to support reach via purchasing of keywords – using words that don’t have direct association with club’s activities
SEM starts around the time SEO strategy generates diminishing returns
SEM focuses on campaign categories
Barry Lloyd on Restricted Markets – Avoiding Restrictions? [Intriguing topic – ed]
“Pills (pharmaceuticals), Poker (gambling) and Porn (“adult”-related)” – the most competitive and difficult challenges for the internet marketer; a minefield for the unwary
Other restricted industries: financial, firearms, tobacco, multi-level marketing
Paid Search considerations
Different rules in different countries
If search engines bar terms, try an “oblique” approach (like HKJC above) or specialized search vehicles for target audience
Your audience may form a substantial grouping on their own
Organic search considerations
Don’t use terms blocked in your markets
Even if allowed by search engines, it may run foul of legislation – no overt adult terms are allowed, but innuendo may be acceptable
Get popular sites to link to you or talk about you
Look at specialist sites (blogs, forums, social media) where your target audience congregates – contribute content, start conversations, inform
Social media is great news for restricted markets
Get a huge number of followers if done right
Improve visibility dramatically as social sites are often highly ranked
Remember rules of etiquette
It’s FREE! And can give astounding results
Channels are different across markets
Also pay attention to how the Internet accessed across markets, e.g., in Japan, more than 90% over mobile
Panel Discussion
David: grey areas of search engine marketing – making it more “accessible” vs. “enticing” people
Barry: Use affiliates instead of using “black hat” sites, but affiliates may indulge in “black hat” stuff; Assist them! Also have people talk about the positive experiences they had with with your services.
David on justifying Facebook marketing efforts vs SEM: translating “views” to “market value”; the networks and content generated by these networks are highly valuable; delineating customer service on blog (restricted, heavily moderated) vs Facebook page (allowing more vocal comments)
Barry on how to come up with key words: research what keywords your competitors use, and what search engine knows about user intent.
[9 am] Opening Address: “Search and the Connected Consumer” – Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES, Search Engine Watch, ClickZ
Internet and World Wide Web are not the same.
Information retrieval vs Data retrieval – making all previously gathered human knowledge accessible – let’s thank the Hypertext thinkers: Vannevar Bush and Sir Tim Berners Lee, and more recently Google: “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Shows how search engines work – a schematic diagram
Crawling the web vs. Indexing it
Building the inverted index and modeling using the vector space model
Genesis of social network analysis – PageRank and Hits (Larry Page/Sergei Brin); Citation Analysis using influence weights (Pinski & Narin); Hubs, authorities and communities
Not all links are equal – some links are more equal than others and some are infinitely more equal, e.g., when building links, look for one from the most influence, “who’s the Pope?”
End user behaviour has changed
The “taxonomy” of search
Understanding user intent: information, navigational and transactional
Strongest signals in a search engine: text on an HTML page, linkage data and link anchor text, social media – tagging, bookmarking, etc. Gathered most by toolbars and inbuilt browsers.
End user data: query chains and user trails; what the user is looking for may not be the same as what they asked for
User mediated content far exceeds “web” content – can’t be indexed in time!
Shift towards information-seeking on social networking sites
Preference for knowledge shared by one’s own networks – an “all about me” society
Applications sidestep web browsers to deliver specialized content
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