To say that the SEO industry has changed would be considered a massive understatement. In previous years, for a site to excel in the SERPs (search engine results page), it needed a few key important ingredients:
- A strong technical foundation, with a crawlable and clean information architecture (that also contained a clear internal linking structure)
- The strategic use of target keywords on the page and in the URLs
- Key links with targeted anchor text
Now, the rules have simply changed. Not only are the SERPs displayed differently depending on the user’s specific search query (Dr. Pete’s Mozcon presentation pointed out 85 different, distinct features in the SERPs from knowledge graph to the related search carousel), but our day-to-day roles have changed. We’re now supposed to be knowledgeable about UI/UX, branding, PR, responsive design, international considerations, content strategy/design/implementation, social media, structured data, local SEO, authorship markup, CRO, analytics… the list goes on and on. The reality is that it will always be important as marketers to have a high-level understanding about each of these different disciplines and how they should work together. However, it is impossible to be specialized in all of them. Many of the specialties above have been established industries for quite some time, and like SEO, they have improved and matured. In essence, we need to learn how SEO can integrate itself in a meaningful way with other marketing divisions, or in simpler terms, leverage integrated marketing.
Image courtesy of Mozcon
Why Integrated Marketing?
Integrated marketing is the strategy and implementation of leveraging and unifying different marketing activities. The overall purpose is to complement and reinforce the overall impact of each of these marketing methodologies, so that the marketing process is not only more consistent across different mediums, but also more effective in meeting marketing objectives and increasing a business’s bottom line.
In terms of the industry, here are some statistics on overall digital marketing spend as compiled by Gartner in 2012.
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Companies in different industries spend an average 2.5% of their annual revenue on digital marketing.
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Companies spend an average 25% of their total marketing budget on digital marketing and specifically, on these type of marketing activities:
As the image above demonstrates, companies spend, on average, 10.7% of their total digital marketing budget on search marketing (though I’d venture and guess that the vast majority of this percentage goes to paid search). However, when it comes to the activities that marketers view as most attributable to their marketing success, only 8-9% of all companies surveyed rated search marketing (including paid) in their top 3.
Images courtesy of Gartner
This perception of search marketing (much less SEO) directly impacts the amount of budget and, subsequently, head space we receive from companies for our work. Although SEOs are involved in many of the activities companies attributable to their marketing success (like content development, UX/UI of the site, and commerce experience), it can be challenging as a consultant or working in-house to be involved in these types of conversations.
As an industry, we need to broaden our scope and find ways to immerse ourselves into these conversations. Like Wil Reynolds mentioned during his presentation at Mozcon, it’s about knowing what to pitch and how to pitch.
- How can we demonstrate and provide value to a company’s marketing activities and integrate SEO meaningfully into the process?
- The goal doesn’t necessarily have to be for SEOs to become specialized experts in PR, branding, content, etc., but more focused on how we all can leverage our knowledge and provide value to these existing activities, while also integrating ourselves into discussions on overall marketing vision, strategy, and implementation.
- How can we stop viewing marketing as distinct channels and, instead, work with other marketing specializations to reinforce and complement all marketing activities/goals/KPIs?
As the online marketing industry continues to change, it becomes more vital for a company to have a consistent mission and vision across all marketing channels.The purpose of this post is not only to inspire us to think bigger about the direction of our industry, but also in our day-to-day work. I also want to showcase examples of other companies I’ve researched that have successfully leveraged multiple marketing channels to meet common goals.
Integrated Marketing Examples
PR, Social, and SEO
Being at Distilled has provided me with the great fortune of being exposed to individuals with specializations beyond SEO, such as PR. Distilled’s previous PR/SEO specialist (now at Dynamo PR), Lexi Mills, and our current specialist, Jess Champion, have really inspired me to think about how to make a content piece more compelling to its target audience and the media. For instance, Lexi once shared how critical it is to ensure that you have enough valuable resources on-hand to enhance a piece of content or a story. For instance, when making a pitch, it’s important to ensure that you’ve created enough material for people to credit and that enhances the value of a story. Once you’ve built that relationship with the media and they’ve credited appropriate and legit sources, you’ve essentially accomplished link building without realizing it (receiving links didn’t become a primary focus; it became a consequence of achieving bigger goals). Lexi said that, “As a result, the links you may have attained don’t just look natural; they truly are natural.”
For example, Australia.com‘s “Best Job in the World” campaign was effective for multiple reasons. It took a different spin on a concept that could traditionally be seen as “boring” (jobs) and created a hook to receive significant media attention. From a SEO standpoint, the team did a great job of attempting to put some of the campaign on the actual Australia.com domain (even though the actual competition is on a subdomain) because so many PR campaigns are placed on a separate domain and are never mentioned on the actual company website. Not to mention dominating rankings for the keyword phrase “best job in the world” and “best jobs in the world” (an effective branding play).
From a social media perspective, the only way to apply for the position was via Facebook. As a result of the campaign, several media outlets provided links to both Australia.com, as well as the “Best Job in the World” landing page. From the campaign, the site received 1,462 links from 442 linking root domains (including sites like ABC news, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, etc..) From a social standpoint, the campaign has 483,534 likes and approximately 1,000 user interactions on every post.
Images courtesy of Australia.com
PR alongside SEO doesn’t just apply to bigger organizations, but also to start-ups or any organization participating in crowd funding. Also according to Lexi, when doing PR for a start-up or an organization participating in crowd funding, it’s important to make sure that the actual site is receiving link equity (and not just the crowd funding site). This is important when maintaining the sanctity of the brand because you still want to sell the product on a website once the crowd funding round is complete. You always want to rank first in search engines for your product name. Hence, leveraging the PR surrounding your crowd funding round will help get your potentially new site off to a great foundation.
Or, you can ultimately decide to crowd fund on the product’s actual website and reap all the benefits from PR and media coverage directly for your site, such as the case with the Tile App.
Finally, like many other online marketing channels, it’s important to make decisions off the back of data. SEO and PR can support one another because SEOs and PRs can work together to determine the specific keywords they want to target for a campaign (both from a branding and from a search engine/user intent perspective) using tools like Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Tool. We can also work together to help establish the sites we want to target both from a publicity and a link equity standpoint using metrics, such as DA and PA, as well as what types of credit we want to receive (dofollow link vs image, etc…).
Overall, as SEOs, we also want to help ensure that once a PR campaign is complete, the company can still reap long-term benefits from it whether it be from a technical standpoint (during the course of researching this post, I observed countless PR campaign sites containing 3-5 duplicate home pages and non-indexable content in iframes, sites built in flash, broken links, etc.). In addition, doing so will help ensure that the company will continue ranking for that campaign name in the future, instead of only the PR agency ranking for it (when they publish client case studies).
Offline (Events/Print Advertising/Billboards), Mobile, and SEO
Offline campaigns (like events/print advertising/billboards) have historically been a powerful marketing medium. At the same time, it can be challenging figuring out how offline channels can work seamlessly with online ones. I found inspiration through this image of a recent American Express campaign seen in London (unfortunately it’s a little blurry).
There’s so much potential from a campaign like this. Having users search for an easy-to-remember keyword phrase on their mobile devices (in this case, having them search “AMEX Gold Tube” is another opportunity to gather data for a traditionally difficult-to-measure channel). Depending on the brand, it’s an opportunity to measure traffic (and some of the keyword data that brought users to the site, with the notable exception of “not provided” and others), as well as some compelling mobile usage data (do your research beforehand, especially as it pertains to iOS6 and Android 4 search traffic). It’s also an opportunity to create a seamless offline to online interaction that could result in SERP dominance for specific, brand-based terms. Also, depending on the search term that was chosen, it could also be an effective medium to immediately convert users from both a PPC and a SEO perspective. The biggest challenge and goal for a SEO is to ensure that the correct landing page for the specific keyword lands on the number one spot in the SERPs while also creating an ideal SERP landscape (alongside improving conversions for that specific landing page).
Another interesting offline campaign that has become more and more popular is the emergence of pop-up stores. I found the use of Debenhams virtual pop-up stores particularly fascinating. Debenhams created a tour of London’s most famous sites and once shoppers were in the correct location on an app, users could “try on” different outfits using augmented reality technology with a backdrop of famous London landscapes. Shoppers could then upload their favorite outfits and receive opinions via social media. If they choose to purchase any of the outfits, they’d automatically receive a 20% discount. Debenhams also implemented SEO best practices in a compelling way by leveraging the press to garner links to key category pages, such as in press releases and asking for any articles or media coverage mentioning the Debenham’s virtual pop-up store to give the company proper credit.
PPC, Branding, Content, and SEO
Snickers’ ad agency put together am amazingly creative PPC campaign. They compiled a list of the top 500 most commonly misspelled words in search with the help of Google (as usually Google Adwords automatically corrects misspellings and it is against the terms of service to deliberately target misspelled words) and used an algorithm to generate 25,381 different misspelled words. They used these terms to create a “You Are Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign. Within two days – yes, two days – Snickers received 558,589 impressions with a stunningly high CTR of 1.05%. The three-day campaign resulted in 5,874 visitors to the site. The endearing video below explains the campaign in more detail.
Initially, the campaign was intended as solely a branding exercise and not necessarily designed to generate CTRs. However, it’s important to be aware that this specific campaign might not have been successful solely off the back of the PPC campaign. The “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign has been in the works since at least the 2010 Superbowl. To build interest around the campaign, teaser videos and a PR outreach were released that showcased celebrities, notably Betty White. The campaign also utilized print to showcase a variety of celebrities, display ads to relevant audiences, an online video campaign, and social media to engage with the brand’s Facebook community. It also appears that the campaign has, at some point, leveraged celebrity tweets, newspaper placements, and Snicker’s handouts that have resulted in 705,000 additional Snicker’s bars sold that year compared to the previous year, as well as double digit growth in sales.
Although this specific campaign did not involve SEO, it’s a reminder on how we can all leverage PPC to test our SEO ideas. It’s a reminder that taking calculated risks and being innovative can pay off. For instance, we can leverage PPC to test out relevant keywords and ad copy before we decide to invest significant resources into targeting them. At Distilled, we strongly believe in the concept of testing. For many of our clients, developing creative content is often times one of the most resource and budget-intensive aspects of SEO. As a result, we want to be sensitive to the costs they are incurring. Thus, we’ve used PPC to test out different titles for our creative content pieces to determine which ones generated the highest CTR or the greatest number of conversions. Supplying clients with this data helps develop trust, and consequently builds more buy in for our on-going strategy.
For instance, we can leverage PPC to test out relevant keywords and ad copy before we decide to invest significant resources into targeting them. In addition, at Distilled we strongly believe in the concept of testing. For many of our clients, developing creative content is often times one of the most resource and budget-intensive aspects of SEO. As a result, we want to be sensitive to the costs they are incurring. Thus, we’ve used PPC to test out different titles for our creative content pieces to determine which ones generated the highest CTR or the greatest number of conversions. Supplying clients with this data helps develop trust, and consequently builds more buy in for our on-going strategy.
Content, Branding, and SEO
Content is one of my greatest passions because I find telling compelling stories and helping my clients build a brand so personally fulfilling. In many ways, content and SEO work seamlessly together, especially in an era where so many individuals have developed the habit of researching information on their own using the Internet. For example, Adria Saracino and I have repeatedly found (whenever we conduct customer surveys), that so many individuals decide to purchase a product based on what they read over the Internet. This means that in order to become successful at SEO (not just in the form of rankings, but in conversions), we need to ensure that we’re consistently developing content that relays trustworthiness/authority/loyalty to our customers, while also remaining vigilant about our online reputation.
There have been so many amazing companies that create content for the benefit of their intended audience and subsequently reap the benefits of it like the often mentioned Survey Monkey Survey Templates and MailChimp Resource Guides. However, not all amazing content is in written form. Sometimes content in image form is as, if not more effective (especially if it’s pertinent to your brand).
Take, for instance, Polyvore‘s vision “to capture the breadth of soft goods and people’s tastes better than any other platform thanks to a unique, vibrant community of contributors and cutting edge technology.” (more detail about the vision can be found here.) Polyvore encapsulates its vision by providing its users with a platform to essentially create their own content using their editor (it’s so simple, yet fits so seamlessly with their target audience and vision). Its editor has generated 18,664 links from 237 linking root domains. However, Polyvore also created a tool that doesn’t limit its users to build collages out of products that can be found on their site. You can drag, edit, and link any clip onto your collage using their clipper (and for SEOs, the clipper landing page has generated 18,646 links from 70 domains. Plus, from an SEO standpoint, all the tools are a part of the domain, which is an added bonus. Oh, and if you really fall in love with your collage, you can purchase it immediately on their site (content merging with commerce…so many opportunities!).
In the competitive non-profit world, countless numbers of organizations clamor for the mind share and resources of the general public, all while facing limited budgets of their own. It’s often times difficult to know what type of content to put on the website that would be effective in immediately developing an organization’s credibility. Having previously been a part of the non-profit world, I was really impressed by the Robin Hood Foundation‘s website. All the content on their site speaks back to their mission of fighting poverty in New York City and they’ve carefully invested their resources on organizing and presenting the most relevant data on their site in a clean, visually stimulating format that is incredibly easy for anyone to digest. It has also been effective – their Hurricane Sandy page has garnered links from MTV, Forbes, and Foursquare.
Finally, I was really inspired by Brittan Bright of iAcquire‘s Moz meetup presentation last year when she talked about her experience working on AXE’s Susan Glenn campaign. Brit worked closely with a few other large agencies like Edelman and BBH on a meme marketing campaign that integrated branding, online reputation management, social media, and SEO on how to ensure that the term “Susan Glenn” would come to mean the girl that got away but who remains untouchable for the guy that covets her. There were television commercials (see below), a separate website, domination in the SERPs in universal search results (with image snippets and video results).
In Conclusion
Going through this process is hard work, requires a collaborative effort between multiple marketing channels, and can often feel as if it takes a long time to accomplish anything. However, relaying a consistent message across all marketing channels and unifying the marketing vision for the company is incredibly powerful. That consistency reinforces the brand’s trust and authority to potential consumers. Truly, our end goal as marketers, regardless of channel, remains the same: we’re all here to support the organization’s vision/mission/values, and to work hard to fulfill and grow the company’s bottom line.
I’m extremely hopeful that this industry will continue to propel itself forward, continuously ask itself the right questions (the why’s and what’s the big picture), and really push ourselves to think outside the box. Only then are we in a position to effect change.
