Blending: Digital Channel Integration

When 1+1 is more than 2.

An LBi/bigmouthmedia White Paper June 2011

A lot of agencies want to safeguard their own patch. From my point of view, I have always believed in doing what is right for the client. The vital thing is that the client always has a clear picture of everything.
Adam Russsell Media Account Director, LBi

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

LBi/bigmouthmedia

Specialists, clients and a twist in the integration story The steady emergence of individual digital channels into powerful marketing tools owes itself in each case to the specialists who have mastered them, refined them and stretched their possibilities. Over the years, experts in SEO, PPC, display, affiliate marketing and, more recently, social media, have rightly lobbied marketers to treat theirs as a complex discipline that requires singleminded attention and its own budget. As a result, many clients retain a variety of digital agencies to manage different aspects of their online marketing. When agencies work closely together and strategy and data are shared, such an arrangement can work. But amid an increasing awareness of the inter-dependence of these channels, brands are looking afresh at their agency relationships as they attempt to find a clear overview of their digital activity. Since long before the dawn of digital, integration has been a cyclical trend in media circles, where networks have grown and diversified and marketing directors have consolidated specialist accounts within a single group. After a period, the reverse trend kicks in and the specialists rise again. A version of the integration trend is beginning to take place in digital, but with a twist that suggests it may be a one-way move. Case study The online legal client SEO, PPC and display Story Working closely with SEO to identify core terms initially targeting with PPC as SEO rankings improved, then reducing the PPC focus, then moving onto another set of terms. Benefits of blending The ability to react across the channels to any shifting results to make sure value was maximised. Also budget flexibility: when the SEO/linkbuilding work produced particularly strong results, budget would be re-allocated to display. The effect of PPC and display on SEO was that long-term strategies were kept safe in the knowledge that other channels could react quickly where SEO could not. Those channels could capitalise in an agile manner on a sudden increase in will-writing, leaving the SEO team to focus on getting good content up fast. Results 42% increase in top 10 positions for keywords targeted during link-building campaign in 5 months and a 86% increase in organic traffic in the same period.

Part One: Executive summary

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

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The new realities 1. Consumers dont operate on a channel-by-channel basis Advances in tracking technology, combined with old-fashioned common sense, have unlocked vast reserves of data to demonstrate that consumers dont search the web in straight lines, and no digital channel works in isolation. Users free-roaming digital habits slice through digital disciplines, and the last click may bear only a proportion of the credit for a sale. Digital behaviour is evolving rapidly, and marketing approaches need to evolve too. 2. Clients need to see what all this digital marketing is adding up to Wise brands want a complete picture of their digital channels and the way they influence each other, the better to understand how a customer thinks and acts on the way to a purchase. As they find their way around the digital landscape with increasing assurance, they are investigating ways they can maximise synergies between digital channels. They also want greater transparency and co-operation at an agency level. 80% of marketing directors feel digital agencies are too fragmented and specialised, and they want a digital agency that can provide a full set of digital services (source: GyroHSR). 3. Agencies are evolving - some more than others Consolidation in the marketplace has, in a rare few cases, put market-leading specialists inside larger companies that also house cutting-edge practitioners in other digital disciplines. At the same time, many more companies have bolted on or

contracted out expertise in additional digital channels to provide an impression of an integrated service. The integration of numerous skill sets is a hard trick for agencies to master, either organically or by acquisition, and only a handful can be said to have succeeded. Equally, where an agency focuses on a single digital discipline, its vested interest is often in safeguarding revenue and fighting for its assigned channel, rather than making the best possible broader media decisions for a clients business. 1+1= more than 2 Integration of some or all of a brands interconnected digital channels under the watchful eye of a unified set of specialists is the likely next move for many marketers. Plenty of others, particularly in cutting-edge digital marketing sectors such as retail and travel, have already made that step. The twist is that digital, unlike offline channels, is a single medium whose marketing disciplines benefited from a siloed approach while they were taking their baby steps. In its maturing state, digital marketing is better served by a form of blending that unites teams of specialists. Just as it ever has, every channel needs real expertise. Experience and deep-seated knowledge of individual disciplines remain vital for the blending approach to work. Clients need to beware of bolted-on specialisms, and of digital agencies that are good, but not necessarily great, in a range of areas.

Case study The international retailer SEO, PPC and affiliate marketing Story A successful PPC relationship grew to include SEO and affiliates. Challenges The retailer had concerns about running discount codes via the affiliate channel and the perceived negative effect this might have on the brand. The SEO operation, meanwhile, lacked metadata and had experienced problems with their developers. Another challenge was generic vs. brand exposure, as most traffic to the site came from brand searches rather than generic keywords. Benefits of blending British, German and French SEO and affiliate campaigns, sharing data and managed from a single location, complemented each other well. Knowledge and insights were shared across the continent. Tests showed running tactical discount code and offers worked; the client embraced that cultural shift and now sees affiliate marketing as a key channel to deliver incremental sales. Results The retailer is starting to rank for non-brand terms. Compounded PPC/SEO exposure of those keywords increased generic performance.

Small clients are able to win larger amounts of territory than bigger guys, because they can move faster. The underdog will always win out, depending on how they are structured. In search, you can do that so easily if you have the right attitude
Dee Miller Head of SEO, bigmouthmedia

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

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How it works, what it means The increasing inter-relationship of channels is a reflection of the growth of digital. Organic search, paid search and social have become far more significant and interdependent as they have matured. Even older channels such as display are in the process of joining the others in a new, more automated mode driven by demand-side platforms and ad exchanges. Paid search and SEO have always been known to link very closely together. But in the past two years, as reporting and analytics have made giant strides, the market has come to realise that the entire digital mix can often work as one. Campaigns that run in one channel invariably impact on one or more of the others. In some cases, channels cant even be divided. A paid search agency might easily run ads on the Google Display Network, using a strategy that mixes conventional search, a content campaign based on multiple words and ad placement using data from the other two. Equally, as social blossoms as a marketing platform, its effects have become inextricable from those of SEO, not least as Google is increasingly feeding social data into search. Where the two activities are not run from a single account, they are almost guaranteed to trip over each other. All in all, single-channel digital campaigns that do not take account of other channels at the planning or execution stages create interference, wastage, double-accounting and missed opportunities. Case study The financial client Online PR, SEO and PPC Story The client opted for channel integration to increase agility, efficiency and overall campaign knowledge. Challenges: Maintaining cost effectiveness of the clients online direct response activity whilst growing volumes. Benefits of blending: A holistic, flexible media plan allows fluid movement of budget between channels, depending on performance. Solution Channels were optimised holistically, moving beyond the last click wins worldview to adapt to the interactions that exist between channels. Optimisation was broadened to take into account offline conversion processes, maximising cost-effective customers, rather than cost-effective leads. Results Conversions in the first year more than doubled, up by 104%. Growth continued the following year with conversions increasing a further 60% YOY and cost-perconversion falling by 28%. Since then the campaign has seen sustained cost-effectiveness, with an increase in paid search and display leads of 16% YOY.

Part Two: Digital channel integration a blended aproach

Definition The consolidation of a clients full set of digital channels within a single account held by a single agency, for the sake of maximum synergy and optimum effectiveness.

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

LBi/bigmouthmedia

Main challenges and benefits Business can reap many benefits by amalgamating digital efforts and budgets and going with a single provider. But that provider needs to be the right one, able to demonstrate: Capability - specialism and expertise in every one of the digital channels, including strategy, design, creative and media Scale - the ability to deploy at the requested level, across the requested channels, internationally if necessary Performance - the willingness to be judged by results

Reduced technology redundancy - whereas independently-managed channels will often each employ a different technology package and use only one aspect of it Consolidated analytics and reporting - clients can view all channel data on a single dashboard The opportunity for agencies to be budget-agnostic, without the temptation to overstate the success of a channel - or make a case for an under-performing one simply to safeguard fees

Case study The publisher Social media, SEO and PPC Story The client sought to maximise the number of unique visitors and page views for the available budget. Challenges Focusing consultancy hours on spotting the biggest opportunities for quick-win trending topics and marathon long-term benefits. Benefits of blending A mix of always-on, low-CPC, strategic keywords and one-off, seasonal, tactical keywords, focused on increasing brand awareness. Bidding and positional strategies aimed to optimise the search real estate. Results Over a 12-month period, a strong overall strategy as well as careful campaign optimisation and tactical adjustments led to unique visitor increases of between 37% and 155% on five different publications, all owing to search. For one particular publication, nonbrand search visits increased by 172% (compared with 50% for brand). The cost per unique visitor from the search channel declined for all publications over that period.

Does size matter? In Malcolm Gladwells 2009 New Yorker article, How David Beats Goliath, the American thinker and writer explains, with the aid of several sporting and military examples, how underdogs that acknowledge their weaknesses and adopt an unconventional strategy are a good bet to beat their larger rivals. Blending is not simply a question of intelligently leveraging scale on behalf of big brands. The value of the method applies equally, and perhaps even more so, to those with smaller budgets and less market presence. By championing an intelligent, bespoke, broad-based digital strategy, a genuinely integrated digital agency can help a smaller client pick its battles and win them. The increased reaction speed and clearer communication lines provided by digital channel integration allow marketers to respond to opportunities and challenges in real time and well ahead of the wider market. And where a smaller client cant afford to be active in several channels at once, it needs an agency that offers experience of all of them and sound advice on which one to pick.

When executed properly, with precision, scale and accountability, digital channel integration as a truly blended exercise is a holistic discipline, not a one-size-fits-all routine. While there are certain rules of thumb, such as the inter-dependence of SEO and social, SEO and PPC or search and display, no single solution fits any two clients, and there is no template. However, there is a reliable set of advantages to an integrated approach. Done right, blending can offer: Coherent management of internet marketing and the ability to find and maximise synergies between channels Speed of reaction - brands can react more quickly when one agency holds all the keys Effective asset coordination - landing pages, infographics and other content can be shared between channel campaigns

In terms of consolidation of channels, ultimately there has to be a benefit to doing it, and it has to be something more than the fact that it is easier calling a single account manager. To my mind, thats not good enough.
Chris Lewis Group Account Director, bigmouthmedia

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

LBi/bigmouthmedia

Why isnt everybody already blending digital channels? Maybe they dont want to Many clients continue to exercise their right to organise their digital channels in silos. Some will have good reasons for doing so, such as strong long-term relationships with several suppliers, or the desire for a variety of perspectives. For these and other legacy reasons, most pitches are still conducted on a channel-by-channel basis, which is why integration tends to take place only when an agency with multi-channel abilities has proved itself in one channel first. Maybe they can achieve the same effects on their own Intelligent clients may be getting something close to the very best out of their digital channels without formally integrating

their accounts. Provided data, strategic thinking and postcampaign analytics are shared between agencies, who in turn work closely together on a daily basis, without the intrusion of inter-agency politics, digital channel integration is possible by other means. But thats easier said than done While most digital specialists pride themselves on their ability to cooperate, the reality is that a single client services team and account management team has a unique ability to identify effective strategic and budgetary shifts. At a nuts-and-bolts level, meanwhile, the problem of running channels separately is often one of technology. An agency might change a landing page or a URL for its own reasons and fail to communicate it across to its fellow supplier, tripping up another channels campaign in the process. The duplication question Channels that are run side by side dont need to attack the same targets and can do many things to avoid doing so. If one agency is running all digital channels, the duplication problem wont immediately go away, but it is certainly a lot easier to get a handle on. The analytics issue Realistically, channels all have different cost structures and are hard to compare: SEO is managed on an hourly rate, affiliate is rewarded based on performance, paid search is billed as a percentage of spend. Whether these channels are integrated or not, the job of merging and comparing data is not an easy one, but it gets a lot harder when the data is scattered across several organisations.

The data point If a client can centralise its data in one location, de-dupe and analyse it, it allows the brand to see the relative value of its channels and look at its marketing from the point of view of its business objectives. That in turn leads to more informed decisions, greater efficiencies and economies of scale.

Case study The B2B player Display and creative Story A UK and US recruitment drive. Challenges Reducing acquisition cost, refining the campaign in one country for roll-out in the other. Benefits of blending An integrated display campaign, launched and refined in the UK, then rolled out to the US. Results Through optimisation of sites, placements and creative messages, the client achieved a reduction of 30% in acquisition cost for its UK campaign in month two. The lessons were carried over to a new campaign in the US where the first month of activity delivered results 20% more efficient than the UK in month one.

Case study The international telco Display and PPC across US, EU and UAE Story A new international product launch. Challenges: Managing display and search without cannibalisation and while maximising the value of both. Benefits of blending Two campaigns each ran search and display over a three-month period. Results Budgets increased 175% for the second campaign based on strong performance. Overall CTRs improved by 250%.

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

LBi/bigmouthmedia

The LBi and bigmouthmedia approach Blending is central to LBi and bigmouthmedia. It allows the agencies to take ideas from strategy and concept to launch and evaluation as quickly and effectively as possible regardless of the specifics of the business challenge. Market-leading specialist teams focus on SEO, PPC, display, affiliate marketing, social, analytics and a full spread of digital disciplines. A cross-digital team blends those units, giving a single point of contact to clients who want one. Those who prefer to talk to the groups on the ground can do that too. From its own experience, LBi and bigmouthmedia identify numerous examples of digital channel integration strategies that have helped to realise key business and marketing goals. A household name in travel, having merged its PPC and SEO activity, was able to consolidate its content and keywords. Creating a tiered structure of routes, it directed SEO and PPC searches for a given destination to the same landing pages. That approach resulted in dramatically improved organic rankings across numerous routes, as well as a reduction in campaign costs and an increase in revenue and conversions. A major financial client, likewise, developed a standard SEO strategy into a flexible online PR, SEO and PPC plan, allowing easy transfer of budget between channels, depending on their success. Optimising these channels, adapting to their interactions and factoring in offline processes resulted in consistent year-on-year rises in conversions against a fall in conversion costs.

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I dont think you should appoint an agency to do any piece of digital work for you unless they are an expert in that single piece of digital work. If you have two digital channels to manage, the best case is an agency that is good at both. If you cant find that, you need to find two agencies.
Andrew Girdwood Media Innovations Director, bigmouthmedia

BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

LBi/bigmouthmedia

The move towards blending digital channels is a different debate to the time-honoured specialist vs. network argument that has pinged back and forth for years. The consolidation of digital isnt a matter of agency empirebuilding, but the maturation of digital habits and channels and the need to manage inter-related channels with a single strategy. Brands and agencies are all attempting to answer the ultimate question of what makes consumers act. Digital collectively represents a single window through which to contemplate that question. To regard the space in terms of individual channels is to decline the opportunity to build a true picture, given that those channels overlap and interweave at every turn. Ease of communication, both between clients and agencies and among specialists, plays an important role in the case for blending. So do economic arguments around the sharing of technology and content, and the vital issue of data hovers over the entire piece. But the key measure must be effectiveness, and the great majority of evidence points to the basic truth that digital channels operate far better when synchronised. It is in this position of power, with their digital marketing working as one, that clients can maximise returns, reduce costs, minimise wasted time, effort and investment and fit their marketing to their business goals. Thats a heady collection of potential achievements. Some single providers can offer the full range of specialist disciplines and guarantee each will be managed with equal

insight and experience. Many will offer them in the heat of a pitch and fall short. Those that genuinely fit the bill will be able to demonstrate: Capability Scale Performance

Part Three: Conclusions

The debate also needs to take in the question of future-proofing. The online landscape of tomorrow will only vaguely resemble todays digital space, as the web blurs into television and mobile, each of which will offer offshoots of the established online channels as well as new tools of their own. Brands simply cant afford to operate channel-by-channel and also space-by-space. That is why they will need at their disposal a small army of specialists who know how to march in step.

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BLENDING: DIGITAL CHANNEL INTEGRATION When 1+1 is More Than 2

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THANKS
0845 130 0022 0207 063 6465 info@bigmouthmedia.com info@lbi.com @bigmouthmedia @LBiLondon This document is copyright of LBi and bigmouthmedia. We are very happy (and flattered, actually) for you to quote or reproduce the content (with a link please, if online) as long as you source it to LBi and/or bigmouthmedia and you dont reproduce it for any commercial purposes.