I attended ‘Has the Digital Age Forgotten the Art of Storytelling?’ at the aforementioned, Yahoo Provoke Summit, yesterday 8th November at the Hospital Club. It was held as part of Internet Week Europe and offered some useful insight into how the creative industries were engaging within the digital arena.

The presentation was opened by Krane Jeffery, Head of Yahoo Studio, the new creative solution from Yahoo developed to complement their editorial and advertising service and is said to provide effective brand building campaigns.

Andrew Cracknell author of ‘The Real Mad Men’ followed with some great examples of how story telling over the last 50 years has delivered some persuasive advertising campaigns, which would still stand as commercials today. His argument however was that the cleverness of the web and digital advertising platforms has distracted from the art of storytelling. He went on to say that the key to great creative advertising is persuasion. He explained that creatives need to remember it is not about what ‘they’ want to create but what they ‘need’ to create in order to make sales. A great point that often gets lost in the excitement of new technology developments and new ways of interacting with customers.

The panel consisted of Cracknell and Jeffrey joined by Paul Kemp-Robertson, Co-Founder of Contagious Communications, Richard Morris, Deputy MD of Carat and Anrick Bregma, Interactive Director of unit9.

Each of the panellists were asked to showcase their favourite examples of digital storytelling. During this process, a key argument was raised and directed to the panel, “Where is the storytelling in the examples of digital work presented today? It seems that you are offering free stuff in return for interaction, not storytelling”.

This led to an uncomfortable and awkward response from the panel but Kemp-Robertson tried to address the question. It seemed to me that the question was put forward to address the need to engage with users in the digital age. You need to give the customer what they want and often an incentive fulfils that. However Cracknell’s response clearly stated that there was a fundamental error with the approach here. Advertisers should not be asking what the customer wants – they should be using the art of storytelling and creative advertising to persuade, this is how it has always been and perhaps what is missing in digital. People are trying to be too clever with the tools available rather than meeting the objectives.

On a day to day basis I have to understand how search, social and creativity can work together in harmony so though an interesting debate followed, I felt there was no conclusion. I find it hard not to work to the end result of generating more sales or enquiries as everything is so measured and perhaps this is where the crossover falls. Digital marketing could focus on storytelling and persuasion, but if it isn’t generating results then it is time to try something different.

This video shows an update straight from the horse’s mouth about just some of the changes Google makes to its search results pages and algorithms over the course of a year to help drive more relevant search results for users.
Every year, Google implements over 500 improvements to its search algorithms. That is 500 changes to the ways in which Google will decide which websites rank, in which order and for which search queries. These changes are tested in a variety of ways before launching. They initially use ‘Raters’ who compare results pages to decipher manually which is more relevant. These changes are then tested and monitored in a live environment to learn if the feedback and findings from the ‘Raters’ translates to actual users. If this is the case, the changes are made live for all to use.

This is how Google continues to be a leading force within the search market and why users continuously return to search. However, it does mean that it can be extremely difficult for agencies to guarantee anything. Google could change their rules from one day to the next and this could have a huge impact on your websites positions as well as how and where they are displayed.

So what can agencies guarantee?
A good agency will work alongside the client to ensure that best practices are implemented both on and offsite. They should also be at the forefront of releases of new algorithms and changes to search results and keep you up to date on elements that may impact you and your business. Most importantly, they need to know their onions. This comes from experience and learning. By looking at the results that search engine marketing has generated and reporting on these in a clear, ’non techie’ way you should be able to see clear value from your agency and understand what can be done to further improve your online positioning as a successful business.

What is a PPC management tool?

It can be as broad as it sounds. There are multiple tools both online and downloadable which offer a variety of services from keyword generation and automated ad copy creation through to bid strategy optimisation and  analytics. The challenge I have had over my 8 years of working in the search market is a simple one, nothing offers me what I need! They can sometimes offer too much and cost an arm and a leg, or they only have strengths in one area or another. I didn’t think my wish list was that demanding but perhaps it is?

The Products

The Bid Optimisers

If only you could automatically apply bid strategy changes based on targets and goals per keyword. Well this is what these tools offer. Set your CPA, ROI, CPC, for example and these tools will apply CPC changes to your account on a keyword level to meet these targets. However without someone who understands the account and the goals looking to be achieved, these tools can be misused.

Often these tools only apply strategies once a day due to API costs and restrictions and in some cases can end up being less effective than a manual optimisation process. The benefits however would be where multiple keywords are running in many different campaigns all with separate strategies and goals. The retail sector can definitely benefit from these types of tools as the variety of product keywords which perform well based on completely different metrics. Some of the algorithms of these tools have been developed by high end data analysts and that is where the benefit comes.

The Reporting Suites

These tools allow you to generate and automate graphical representation of data to make the reporting process for agencies simpler and much faster. Normally these functionalities are partnered with one or more of the others to compile a tool that adds value over and above simply reporting.

If you can set up automated reports which are sent to you and your clients every week showing them data they need to see that can save huge amounts of time which may currently be spent formatting custom reports. However this will also restrict the variety of reports available to you.

The Analytics

About  5 years ago many analytics tools started jumping on the search wagon. Realising the massive growth in search as well as the need to see integrated reporting of all online marketing this seemed like a logical step… if done well. Some have done it well whilst others failed miserably.

Alongside this many PPC tools worked to integrate analytics into their offering to enable a platform to report on all online activity not just PPC. This is where the SEO and PPC offering became much closer as agencies could run and report on both alongside each other.

The key with these tools is normally you have unique tracking codes or redirects which allow you to track all online activity on your website. This makes it easier to integrate Social, banners, SEO, PPC , email data in one place and also manage and report on your whole online presence.

One big problem remains, you change tool, you have to change the code. For some businesses this means hours of developer time spent removing current code on the webpages and replacing them with new tracing code. This can sometimes influence the choice of sticking with your current supplier or changing to a new one due to the work involved in changing.

The Management tools

The other offering is the management suite, built to help save time. One interface, one login, one password with access to all your accounts. Bulk upload changes to all the major search engines in one go. Make multiple keywords, ad or campaign changes. Essentially these tools were built for agencies to make their day to day tasks more efficient allowing more intelligent strategies and creative ideas to be applied to clients’ accounts.

This can be a great time saver as some functionality of Yahoo and Microsoft are weak and take a huge amount of time, with one interface this makes things much simpler and quicker.

On the down side the tools are only as good as the access they have to the search engines. Google is a classic example – how many changes have they made to their AdWords tools, settings and reporting over the past 6 months? Quite a few, and to keep up with the developments 3^rd party tools need to keep developing and amending their tools to access the new functionality from Google – and that is based on Google allocating them access to do so via the API.

There will always be settings you need to make via the search engines themselves and sometimes if these tools are not ahead of the game they become dinosaurs within a few months with dated technologies and functionality.

So which PPC tool is the best?

Well with the wide array of solutions currently in the market and the variety of services they all offer it is difficult to pin down one. In fact none offer me exactly what I want, there are always the wish list function that are on the agenda but never seem to come.

A revert button to change any actions you have implemented back to their original state. This would save so much time. Or an advanced ad copy testing tool which truly makes sense of the adcopy performance and how to determine which ad’s perform ‘Best’. Or even a tool where you pay what you use, many of my clients don’t need all the functionality of Google AdWords free tools let alone the vast suite of products that are actually rarely used. Even these technologies sales teams themselves avoid functionality in the demo’s because it is either dated, irrelevant or was only built initially for one big client with huge budgets.

I am not an expert on all these tools however I have had my share of experience. Being influential to developing the concept for the functionality and display within DC Storm  – No guesses what the DC stands for? Digital Clarity also became the first UK agency to champion Omniture’s Search Center, not only reselling the product and managing the tool but also working with the product development team to really enhance the functionality and robustness. However neither of these tools fit the wish list. Every demo and trial and review I do there always seems to be at least one element missing which leaves me in disappointment.

However, there is a lot of worth in using the right tool as long as you have the right people driving it.

Google have recently been developing more functionality to auto optimise your bid strategies, a/b test strategies and ads as well as reporting on more data than ever before, and they are free.

I guess the key is determining which functionality is important and what value it ads to your business. Until there is a pick and mix pricing option or tool which is suitable for all clients the decision of which tool’s to use will always be a challenge.

SURVEY REPORT

I am planning to compile an up to date report on the available tools on the market and very keen to get some feedback on the tools below in regards to cost, functionality (what intelligence they offer over and above human optimisation ) and support (customer support to troubleshoot and guide on functionality) out of 10 marks, 10 being the highest. All feedback is greatly appreciated.

7.45am I arrived at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, a new venue for the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Exhibition.
After a well deserved coffee and biscuit I headed to the 4th floor for the Search and Social Media breakfast workshop presented by Brad Kleinman – Director of Education at Online Marketing Connect.

He presented an overview of the Search and Social markets honing in on vital statistics that identified why ‘Social’ was becoming essential to most businesses and what market trends were being predicted. There were many sources used for the insights however the key resources which stood out were eMarketer and Global Web Index.

Some key points to take from the slide share is the shift in social media and how people are using different social platforms and comparing this to businesses opinions or approach to social media. Also the data showing that micro blogging has increased +35% based on research comparing wave3 to wave1, however writing blogs and visiting forums and chat rooms is down. A 35% increase in micro blogging raises the importance of the likes of Twitter as they are being recognised as platforms to share real-time and breaking information to a huge audience. It is now for the advertiser or social media strategist to plan how these social platforms can enhance business goals via these platforms by managing customer service, sales opportunities, product reviews or customer word of mouth selling to mention a few.

This was followed by the SES conference welcome and opening keynote presented by Jeffrey Hayzlette, Celebrity CMO, former Kodak CMO

A very entertaining and energetic presentation about story telling to engage with potential customers and focussing on what hayzlett calls the 118, others may know this as the elevator pitch. As well as this he talked about the 4 E’s – Engage, Educate, Excite and Evangelise and how these play a vital part in talking to your audience and building customer loyalty through your branding and positioning.

We were exposed to a few snippets of social media activity Kodak had run and one of the most facinating statistics came from a twitter campaign which they ran to come up with a name for their new waterproof video camera. They asked people via twitter what they should call the camera, the winners would have the product named after their idea and would be announced the mother/father of that product.
This campaign generated more followers and interest in a few days than they had had in the whole history of the account. This just goes to show how powerful the engagement with your audience can be. I would be interested to know how many of those followers then went on to purchase a Kodak product and within how long after the campaign.

The ExhibitionHall
The Exhibition hall was fairly ‘compact’ as we have seen year on year at London SES and it was interesting to see many SEO link building companies competing. Amongst the rest of the 19 booths was a majority of SEO services and a spread of social media tools and technologies as well as some search marketing software and analytics tools.

Although I did not attend the following days I heard the seminars on everyones radar (other than the cocktail reception and parties) were ‘PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle’, ‘Update on realtime search: I want it now!’ and ‘Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics’.

Did you attend? If so what seminars were of most interest to you? I would love to hear your feedback.

Hosted at Microsoft’s London HQ, presenters included Orla Malone – Sales Associate UK and Ireland for Facebook, Director of Search at Bing – David Coplin and Colm Bracken – Microsoft Advertising’ Group Search Manager. It was a good turn out and some interesting case studies were delivered by Radisson Edwardian’s Amy Clarke, as well as some interesting insights into Microsofts steps to integrate Social and Search.
However throughout each of the presentations the elephant in the room was Google.

In the UK Google still holds 92.27% of the search market with the remaining 7.73% being split across Bing, Yahoo and other search sites according to StatCounter Global Stats data.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

The US tells a different story however with Google only reporting to have 80% on Global stats but as little as 65.6% reported from ComScore for January 2011. However Google search on mobile is by far the dominant force in both UK and US.

The US search and social market leads the way for the UK and often we see the same or similar trends breaking in the US reflected in UK market. This would suggest that Bing’s Search Engine market share is likely to grow and that growth may be to Google’s detriment.

So what does this have to do with Facebook?

Well Microsoft and Facebook seemed very comfortable together and currently Bing provides the search results within Facebook. Facebook is the most used website in UK and with over 500 million global active users and 50% of them logging on every day, with this in mind if Facebook can integrate a search function that delivers the relevance at the quality of Google’s results then this may be a fighting force for Google. Whether they develop this themselves, partner with the likes of Bing to deliver the search results or if they move in this direction at all is something that Google must have on their radar.

The clear problem I see at the moment is Bing’s Search results are just not as relevant as Google’s.
To test this I ran a search for ’what is Quora?’ on Google and Bing and this was the result:

Bing is delivering Sponsored links for totally irrelevant ads to the search query as well as the natural listings being less relevant. The layout of the page even makes it difficult to find what you want and the related searches bear no relevance to Quora only the ‘what is’ part of my search query.
So Bing has a lot of work to do here in my opinion. But back to Facebook, if people are spending such huge amounts of time on Facebook every day, and this includes on their mobiles, tablets, PC’s and laptops, why not facilitate a search into the tool which allows users to stay in the Facebook environment but effectively search.

I then looked on Facebook to see what results were delivered on the same search for ‘What is Quora?’ to my surprise the results (which are powered by Bing) were more relevant than the Bing searches themselves? It displays fewer results but all are highly relevant to Quora.

There is no denying it Google have the Search market sussed at the moment, however in order to stay ahead of the curve and to drive search and social integration I am waiting to see there next move. Google’s search results currently integrate social results and often Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn results will populate the search engine results pages (SERPs) but what are they doing to engage with users on via social platforms?

Facebook on the other hand have their own challenges, people are there to communicate with friends and family, to share photo’s and updates on their lives, are they there to search? And if so what is the best way to facilitate that and try to take some of Google’s market share?

In every review, audit or consultancy I have done on a Google AdWords account I have always been asked by the client ‘What should my Click Through Rate be?’, ‘How can I improve my CTR’ or ‘Is my CTR good for my industry?’.

Now these questions do not have a straight forward answer. This prompted me to look into the influences of CTR and hopefully identify how you can try and gauge if your CTR is good, bad or indifferent.

What is CTR?

Click Through Rate is the percentage of clicks you have received from a number of impressions.

E.G. If my AdWords ad had 500 impressions and 50 people clicked on my ad my CTR would be 10%.

This is one way to measure the relevance of clicks based on the keywords you are using. By delivering a strong ad to capture people’s attention, which also clearly reflects your products and services on the website, the more likely you are to achieve a good CTR. In some cases though you may want a lower CTR to show you are deterring irrelevant users from clicking.

E.G. If you sell Skiing holidays and have the keyword ‘Holidays in France’ your ad copy is the only thing conveying that you only sell Skiing holidays. By making this prominent in your ad copy you can prevent clicks from those users looking for sunny holidays in France and hence you’re CTR may be lower.

What is in your control?

So when you are optimising your account to try and improve CTR what can you change to influence your CTR percentage.

• Keyword Selection
• Keyword Match Type
• Ad Copy
• Negative keywords
• CPC bid price

Keyword Selection

Be conscious of which keywords you select to use. The more generic the keyword the broader the range of meanings. If you are looking to run a very tight, specific campaign with a high CTR choose long tail keywords which are very specific to your products and services. This will allow you to get a much higher CTR but can restrict the exposure and volume of traffic and conversions you can look to achieve.

Generic keywords will often overlap into other market sectors, meaning the keyword is relevant but it depends what the user is looking for. This is where generics are great for drawing in the users at the research stages, i.e. before they have refined their search, however they may not be the keyword to show conversion to sale.

Keyword Match Type

By choosing your match type you can influence how specifically you’re ads are matched to a search. Again the more volume you are looking for the broader you should match. If you are looking to refine your search terms and improve CTR it is recommended that you use exact match to appear only when someone searched for your exact keyword. This will limit the number of impressions you achieve and in turn clicks. However if you have selected your keywords to be specific and you’re keywords are on broad match you should get a higher volume of clicks from your impressions and a higher CTR.

Ad Copy

Your ad copy is the door to your landing page. It needs to tell the user what they are going to find on the next page they click to. Therefore by selecting the right keywords, match type and reflecting these searched in your engaging adcopy, this can influence a higher CTR. Try using pricing, incentives, USP’s within your ad copy and make sure they include your keywords.

Negative Keywords

Prevent the wrong clicks by using negatives. If you are on broad or phrase match then negatives are essential. Keywords like ‘Free’ and ‘Images’ are often top of the list to make sure irrelevant searches are not leading to clicks and wasting your budget. Without negatives you may see a lower CTR because you are not promoting ‘Free’ products in your adcopy for example. In order to increase the CTR, make sure the people searching are the ones you want to be clicking.

CPC Bid Price

It may not seem obvious that your CTR is influenced by your CPC however it can be. Position one on Google will often receive the highest volume of clicks and the highest CTR as it is the first listing that people see when they search. Often users will click the top ad without even reading it. Equally if you are half way down the page you are going to get a great deal less clicks but still a high volume of impressions generating a low CTR. By increasing your cost per click bid, you are likely to see an increase in CTR, however all of the above still apply to making that CTR as strong as possible. It is best to experiment with the best positions and CPC’s for the results you are hoping to achieve.

What is out of your control?

There are many influences outside of your control which may affect your CTR and this is important to take into account when optimising your AdWords campaigns.

• Google’s algorithm
• User behaviour
• Seasonality
• The Weather
• Breaking news
• Google instant
• Competition
• How Google report on CTR’s

So what is a good AdWords CTR?

I use a general rule of thumb when running accounts however there are always exceptions to the rule as that is the nature of Google and search marketing in general.

Break your reporting into 3 sections:

• Brand terms
• Generic terms
• Specific terms

From here I allocate an ideal CTR based on experience and results I have seen over the years as well as current trends and performance. This is not going to work for all industries, countries, campaigns, times of day and budgets, however it gives a ball park figure or bench mark which you can gauge your campaigns to, maybe just as a sanity check. If you feel you are not getting the results you expect from your campaign you should contact your account manager to discuss what options there are.

Expected Estimated CTR

• Brand terms – 10 – 100% CTR
• Generic terms – 0.5 – 5% CTR
• Specific terms – 2 – 15% CTR

You will often see that the generic keywords generate the majority of your clicks. Therefore on average you will notice your overall CTR will tend to follow the trend of your Generic terms. Remember, Google reports on the CTR for a keyword and its ad copy at any time of day. The averages can therefore vary dramatically just on one keyword. This is accelerated when you start to implement optimisation changes however the overall collective average may not reflect this.

Hopefully this gives a little clarity to a complex metric that can help you to improve the performance of your account or simply a better understanding of the reporting you are provided by your PPC specialist.

Although I think this makes the process more complicated than clicking the mouse. I guess there may be occasions where this could be useful. The table navigation could save time as it can be useful to scroll down through campaigns,  ad groups or keywords.

After having a play around with the shortcuts I actually found it could save some time albeit a few seconds, if you use the AdWords interface day in day out then that can add up to minutes and even hours saved. Try for yourself:

Google Global navigation:

• g then o: Go to All Online Campaigns
• g then c: Go to Campaigns tab
• g then r: Go to Ad groups tab
• g then a: Go to Ads tab
• g then k: Go to Keywords tab
• g then n: Go to Networks tab
• g then u: Go to Audiences tab
• g then s: Go to Settings tab
• ctrl+right arrow: Go to next campaign or ad group in sequence
• ctrl+left arrow: Go to previous campaign or ad group in sequence

Google Table navigation and actions:

• j/k: Next/previous row
• o/enter: Open current row (campaign or ad group)
• x: Select current row (shift+x for multiple rows)
• p: Pause selected rows
• n: Enable selected rows
• d: Delete selected rows
• l: Download

Editing ad groups and keywords:

• e: Edit selected rows
• ctrl+arrows: Move between editable fields
• ctrl+s: Save changes
• esc: Cancel edit mode

From all at Digital Clarity – http://bit.ly/hmGXbU

This video explains how it works and what the benefits are. We are currently running tests with some of our retail clients to review how successful the results are. We will keep you posted!