SES NY 2010 Blog Coverage – Search Powered Marketing: Harnessing the Voice of the Consumer

Sponsored Session: Search Powered Marketing: Harnessing the Voice of the Consumer

Preview/Summary from SES Website: Search and social media are changing the way brands interact with
their consumers, and will be even more influential throughout 2010 and
beyond. Consumers find and engage with brands in social media, print,
radio, tv, and outdoor ads, which in turn influences what they search
for. How should advertisers use integrated search and social media
strategies to influence search terms and results, improve overall SEO
and drive increases in return on ad spend?… more

• Speaker:

  Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice
  President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario

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  Speaker Profile
• Panelists:

  Maura Ginty, Senior Manager,
  Global Web Content, Autodesk

  Cheryl Max, Director, Corporate
  Functional Capabilities, IBM

LIVE Summary:

To start off the session, Craig MacDonald talks about Search Powered
Marketing and how Social Media has reached an hysteria level. He breaks
down both Broadcast Media and Interactive Media. in 2010, Companies will
spend $106 billion on overall media and highlights that PPC only
accounts for $12 billion.

Next, Cheryl Max talks about the Voice of the Customer (Search & Social Media)

• The Objective (what are the best keywords to go after for the business)
• The Metrics (wanted to see Lift in visibility, however it then became a conversion exercise)
• The Systems
• The Process

Cheryl goes into say that with IBM, Visibility is/was the #1 Priority and success metric, then measuring traffic, then engagement then conversions. It’s a numbers game for IBM. A few years ago it was awareness, now it’s all about visibility and optimizing conversions. They are relatively very careful with it comes to PPC spend but expect to expand based on conversions. Cheryl then talks about lessons learned and specific tactics in which IBM pursued PPC. Also, IBM is evaluating their Lead System (monetization). For example, “Is a Video worth more than a Whitepaper download?”

Engagement was a single interaction on the webpage. Depending on how deep the interaction took place within the site, determined the LEAD value.

Funnel Segmentation: IBM is moving to perpetual websites, rather than specific Landing Pages.

Next up is Maura Ginty who talks about Signal vs. Noise and Prioritizing Responses. Social Media offers a deluge of self-noration. Sift, Sort and find an influencer and audit all social media to make sure what is being said and who is saying what.

• Listen
• Engage
• Respond

Maura mentions for AutoDesk, Youtube is a primary vehicle for traffic and lead generation, but of course it depends on your business.

How to join the conversation? Listen, engage, analyze. Authenticity of the message is key for the company’s reputation management. Also, the social conversation is a double edged sword where companies have to be very careful not to leak out sensitive material that could affect the company’s reputation.