Quick, clear and easy communication with users informing them they can watch world cup matches while at a David Lloyd club or during their stay at a Best Western Hotel.

If used correctly the local listing can sit next to a local business ad (which works on a CPC basis) and can communicate key information without the need for the user to click through to the website. Through efficient management the user experiences a positive experience, always good for brand perception.

Chris kicked off proceedings and outlined the benefits of using infographics for viral marketing/link bait. He said that marketers get hung up on text and video but infographics can be incredibly successful. One piece they created was featured in the national press and generated 30,000+ completely natural backlinks. Another good point Chris made was that virals like these create a link profile that can never be 100% replicated. He recommended submitting pieces to Stumble Upon, Digg and Twitter.

He also recommended offering to provide guest virals to high profile content sites. They are often glad for the user engagement these pieces provide and will gladly provide a followed link.

He validated what had been mentioned by Rob Kerry (Ayima) on Day 1: cross domain 301s don’t seem to be passing the authority they once did. I’m not 100% convinced on this one myself – I have data which suggests otherwise – but the effects may be more pronounced in particular sectors.

His other top tip was keeping a rolodex of Social Media users who regularly link to or promote your content. That way you can build reaching out to them into your comms plan.

Next up was Parks Blackwell who took us through her approach to Social Media strategy and engagement. Said there was real value, particularly for luxury brands, in reaching our personally to disgruntled customers. This can be prefaced online with a simple : “Sorry to hear that, somebody will contact you directly to help resolve this.”

She also recommended having a variation on strategy for each channel : “Twitter is its own beast.” Amen to that.

I also liked her tip to look within for your social media coordinator. A good customer service rep who is au fait with social channels can make a scalable difference to customer sentiment online in comparison to fielding calls and enjoy themselves doing so. A win-win situation.

Melissa Campbell was up next and took us through some of the salient points from UK legislation applicable to Social Media marketing. This included the much maligned Digital Economy Act. She said impersonating a consumer was a big legal no-no and could lead to high profile embarassment. She did state however that while some of the approaches you take may trangsress the boundaries, the biggest risk comes from causing offence. As, if your activities are reported to the industry body you are likely to be investigated and the full scale of any transgressions will be uncovered. So behave yourselves out there!

Melissa had some issues with her PPT which interrupted her flow, so in the interests of fairness here’s a link to it.

Kevin Ryan threw some contrary statements into the mix to close matters, asking the panel to prove the improvement to a company’s bottom line or conversely the opportunity cost (to C-level executives) of doing nothing. Chris et al mentioned improved natural rankings leading to increased revenue as an ROI. I would add the potential to retain customers who are openly declaring: ‘about to cancel my subscription’ or ‘at the end of my tether’ as something very measurable.

So, that was it for “Social Media: Give It Up!”, a practical and informative session with Chris Bennett’s talk the undoubted highlight.

Eli Goodman, Comscore was up first and took us through a whole heap of stats, worthy of note was the data on European search usage – Spain up over 50% YonY to March 2010, showing that the market is really maturing, men aged 25-44 were said to be the largest group in that country. Interestingly the UK has the highest number of searches per searcher indicating a high level of sophistication and the importance of understanding your user’s click paths.

Martijn Bertisen of Google was up next and spoke about real-time insights – Google tools include: YouTube Insights, Insights for Search, Keyword Tool, AdPlanner, Search Options and Insights for Audiences (coming soon). Really plugged Wonder Wheel – understand how Google view topics semantically, the related synonyms and sub-topics. It really helps with keyword targeting and understanding searcher behaviour he said.

Moved on to AdPlanner – you can segment by ‘keywords your audience searches for’ and then your target demographics. This allows you to see the sites where individuals with the desired intent are likely to spend their time.

Josh Smith from facebook: facebook’s reach is akin to a major television show. Advertisers can target by keywords in status updates – ‘looking for holiday’, a new  gym etc. facebook holds this data for 30 days for adtargeting or you’re tagged with that keyword for 30 days, it wasn’t clear which.

He said it’s important to think about personas – a company targeting young men from market towns who like to fight targeted users with mispellings in their profiles – controversial but true. And it worked!

Robert Barnard from Decode up next and said that 35% of Generation Y (15-29) have less than 10 online friends they interact with regularly, despite the received wisdom to the contrary. He showed an interesting chart showing that for Generation Y the number of online friends dips when they become young couples and rises again considerably when they become young parents.

He also said that we need to understand online behaviour in terms of stunts vs. sustainability, your 1 hit YouTube wonders like OK Go (little commercial success) vs. Lady Gaga (phenomenal brand).

Those were the main takeaways from the session for me. It was kind of insightful but fairly basic. Luckily there was much more meaty stuff to come later in the day so stay tuned for more filleted chunks.

We’re really excited to win another prestigious client!

Burgess has appointed Make It Rain as its sole search agency to provide all PPC and SEO services.

Burgess is the superyacht industry leader with 9 global offices including Monaco, Miami and New York, uniquely specializing in yachts of over 40 metres. Burgess guides it clients through every aspect of the yachting experience including sale and purchase, new construction, management and charter.

With a noticeable shift from traditional industry channels, Burgess are placing increased emphasis on search engine optimization and pay per click in 2010 following a recently refreshed website. Lucy Thornton of Burgess said “We had great chemistry with the team at Make It Rain and were impressed by their understanding and integrated approach to search marketing.”

Make It Rain Managing Director, Justin Hayward said “ Burgess is a premium luxury brand and the leader in its field. We’re excited to be chosen as their online partner, which reflects our agency focus of working with best of breed brands. We’re delighted to be working with them in 2010.”

About Burgess
Founded in 1975 with 9 offices globally, Burgess is the superyacht industry leader. Burgess has been involved in the sale of many of the most significant yachts afloat, while their new construction division is currently managing the build and development of a diverse range of superyachts. Burgess’ first-class charter service offers a portfolio of the finest yachts in the best cruising destinations around the world. The superyacht credentials of Burgess are unmatched in the industry, ensuring that clients enjoy the highest level of customer service.
http://www.burgessyachts.com

If so you’ve been hit by the Expanded Broad Match bug.
Google will serve your ad against, for what they interpret as, a relevant search.

E.g. Your keyword – ‘toner’, Search query is ‘HP colour printer’ = Impression for your ad.

First port of call is to review the search query data in the Report Centre within AdWords to see what searches your ad is appearing for. This will help you on two fronts:
- Add relevant terms that you don’t have in your account.
- Add irrelevant terms as negatives.

The quick way to control how your ads are served is to move all terms away from broad match and use phrase or exact.

There is however a downside to this tactic. If the account is not built with sufficient depth then there is a possibility that you will see traffic and conversion volumes drop when moving away from broad match.

The most effective tactic is to optimise the negative terms used. This should be an ongoing process and be part of your optimisation cycle.

Utilising negative terms will give you control over your account performance and will not sacrifice the volume of relevant traffic. Tighter control should also improve a number of KPI’s:

- Increase in average CTR by ensuring relevant impressions only.
- Improve quality score.
- Potential decrease in average CPC or improved average positions.

Monitoring the search queries on an ongoing basis will naturally help you move away from relying on broad match in the long term by increasing the keyword variations in your account. One step further is to monitor the search queries that are generating conversions via your tracking tool(s). Unfortunately the new Google Search Funnels does not provide converting search query data…..yet.

Adding long tail terms to the account and understanding the influence of each keyword will help you devise a clear bidding strategy.

Yes the term is relevant to your offering but is it converting? Is it part of the conversion funnel? Where in the conversion funnel is it? How many times is the term used in the funnel?
Answering these questions will give you great insight into user behaviour and in turn will help you devise the correct bidding strategy for different type of terms. I.e. Browser terms vs. Research terms vs. Converting terms.

We thought that it might be a good time to recap on the rules, what this means for your PPC account, and what you should do to protect your brand.

At present all advertisers can bid against any search term, this includes brand terms. If you are not relevant for that search then your quality score will be hindered and you are likely to have an inflated CPC to accompany your poor conversion rate.

Bidding on competitor brands is common practice in today’s search results, especially in competitive markets like car insurance. In such markets it is imperative that you use PPC ads in order to protect your brand and not give your competition a free run at your traffic and potentially your conversions.

Good practice is to utilise the site links functionality to help occupy more of the landscape and push your competitors down.

On a side note if there is no competitor activity on your brand terms it is still advisable to use PPC as studies have shown that it provides significant incremental conversions.

Google’s analogy is to compare their results with a supermarket shelf where the user is exposed to a number of brands despite knowing what they are looking and want. The Google results are designed to give the user relevant choice.

To help protect your brand it is important that you submit your trademark to Google. This will restrict advertisers from using your brand in their ad copy unless they are an approved partner/reseller.
To register your brand as a trademark with Google you need to submit the following form.

Contact the Make It Rain PPC team for advice/consultation/account management.

Luke leaves search agency Latitude after 3 years in various senior roles, most recently as Head of Social Media, in this time he has worked with brands including Tesco, Skype, Victor Chandler, British Red Cross and Post Office.

At Make It Rain he will focus on leading SEO and Social Media strategies for Make It Rain clients including David Lloyd and Best Western.

Make It Rain Managing Director, Justin Hayward said “ Luke is a great addition, backed by excellent senior experience on major brands.  The continuing convergence of SEO and social media channels is a natural fit for Luke’s talents.  We’re delighted to have him as part of our team.”

Luke Regan commented: “I’m delighted to have joined Make It Rain. We have a strong, experienced team committed to delivering excellent service and innovation to our client base. It is clear to me that SEO and Social Media should work together to maximise results and I look forward to an exciting and successful 2010 and beyond.”

We’re excited to announce that hotel brand Best Western has appointed Make It Rain as its search agency following a competitive three-way pitch including incumbent Bigmouthmedia and Greenlight. Make It Rain will provide all PPC and SEO services to Best Western Hotels.

Best Western are placing particular focus on pay per click and search engine optimization in 2010 with the imminent launch of a completely new and re-vamped website. Jason Munslow, Interim Head of Ecommerce and Distribution for Best Western commented “Make It Rain showed great understanding of our brand and the travel sector and we believe they are the right agency to maximize our competitiveness against the many aggregators and other hotel chains”

Make It Rain Managing Director, Justin Hayward said “ Best Western is a great brand with huge potential to increase market share by advancing their search marketing. We’re delighted to be working with them in 2010.”

About Best Western
Best Western is the largest group of independently owned and managed hotels in the UK and worldwide. Member hotels maintain their independence, charm and personality, while benefiting from being part of the Best Western brand. Hotels benefit from sales and marketing activity available to them by joining with like-minded independent hoteliers.

With this in mind, Justin Hayward along with Econsultancy will be presenting ‘Five steps to better PPC’  in London on 26th November.  If you can’t make it to the event Econsultancy will also be running this session as their first ever webinar on 1st December!

We’ll be covering:

1. KPIs and objectives – What do you really want to achieve and is it feasible?

2. Keywords & account structure – Long tail, brand, ad groups, have you got it right?

3. Creative ad writing – Is your message better than the rest?

4. Site landing pages and SEO integration – What happens when they get to your site? Designing for conversion.

5. Tracking & technology – Data blindness? Are you analysing the right stats?

All details can be found at the Econsultancy site