Yesterday, I hosted a panel for El Dorado Ventures on trends in search marketing. We had Ellen Siminoff (CEO of Efficient Frontier), Maura Lewis (Director, Measurement Planning & Analytics for Grey SF), and Chad Baldwin (Senior Product Manager for marketing optimization at Coremetrics - thanks to Chad for the pinch hit for John Squire, the SVP and GM of search at Coremetrics who had a last minute conflict). We should have recorded it and posted a podcast and some photos today, but I didn't think that far ahead. I'll be a better host next time.
A few themes came up repeatedly:
1. You must use data to buy search (or any marketing) effectively. Just having the data isn't enough, you must actually use it. There are no hard and fast rules about exactly what to buy to get the best return - if there were, everyone would buy that, and the ROI would get bid down quickly.
2. Walk before you run. Ad dollars are flowing online quickly and search is capturing almost half of the influx. So search budgets are still going way up. As you start out, though, or start to increase, do so slowly. Expect to make some upfront investment in learning before spending the big bucks.
3. Do not silo search. Search is one component of a healthy marketing mix. All of the components work together to achieve marketing effectiveness. When you buy and measure, make sure to do it across all channels.
4. Attribution is a big area of research for most of the companies that do search. Should you attribute "credit" for a transaction to the first click, the last click, all clicks? There are no good rules yet, but every panelist suggested you should at least know all of the clicks that precede an action - regardless of which one you currently credit. Some data presented showed that almost half of search budgets can get redirected to different words just by changing the attribution rule.
It was an interesting panel - thanks again to the panelists, and kudos to El Dorado for arranging these meetings to help add value to their portfolio. Many venture firms don't do stuff like that.
Technorati: El Dorado Ventures, search marketing, GreySF, Coremetrics, Efficient Frontier
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