Digital - the new heart of marketing

Mar 12 2008 By The Journal

GOLLEY Slater is a marketing company with a 50-year history and a reputation as an innovator, being one of the first advertisers to use television.

It continues to innovate with a current structure that includes advertising, direct, experiential, contact and PR, but as a top 20 UK marketing company with offices in 11 cities, its emphasis on digital now puts it in the Top 10 UK digital agencies. Clients include Business Link, Center Parcs, PC World Business, propertyfinder.com and Reed.

Chief executive Chris Lovell leads the way in placing digital at the heart of all marketing activities. The group has had a digital division for some years but a recent acquisition has swelled a highly experienced digital team to 50 who work on search, planning website and social media.

Mr Lovell said: “Our aim is to come up with innovative solutions that deliver return on investment for our clients – in our words: a return on inspiration.”

Digital is a means of data transportation but is proving to be a powerful way to talk to customers, to sell or to inform. Consumers are now living in a three-screen world, television, PCs and mobile phones.

Search

Mark Fagan, director of search, describes the current marketplace.

“There are now over 24 million people in the UK who are using search engines daily via Google, Yahoo! and MSN. It’s clear there is a viable business case for search to be an integral part of a marketing plan as it provides a platform for consumers to be able to research, review and compare products or services online.”

Search engine results are split into two main areas – natural listings or search engine optimisation (SEO), that generally appear on the left-hand side and form the bulk of the search results and sponsored listings or pay-per-click (PPC) that generally appear on the right-hand side of the results page.

Mark added: “Implementing a combined search strategy that utilises the benefits of SEO and PPC is a solution that every advertiser should consider when planning marketing budgets.

“This can result in more coverage, higher-quality traffic and ultimately lower costs through alleviating an expensive over-reliance on pure PPC activity.

Search marketing is just starting to tap into its potential and provides an additional platform for advertisers to push their products or services.

“By using combined search, some clients reduce their PPC budget by 50%, saving more than £500,000 a year. Other clients saw their PPC and SEO account for an increase in online sales by over 60% affecting the bottom line in one case by over £40m in revenue. We now see search accounting for more than 50% of sales for our clients, a trend we expect to continue to increase by having it at the centre of a smartly-executed through-the-line offering.”

Social media

John Kinder, business development director of digital, explains how social media can help businesses and organisations.

“The emergence of Web 2.0 platforms and increasing popularity of social media has dramatically changed the search landscape, from traditionally being able to create and control brand messaging and results to now being exposed to a wide range of consumer opinion and social communities.

“Our aim is to help find the communities related to your business by analysing your brand reach, sourcing the major influencers, learning how they work and what they are saying about your business. We will consult with you on a strategy of engagement – telling you what to do, how to react to various scenarios, how to create your own buzz and have greater control over your brands search landscape.

Since 2001 we have been developing social network communications planning tools, sense-making frameworks, media technologies and change programmes. These can:

:: Map the global stakeholder community related to your brand

:: Offer enhanced consumer marketing intelligence – audience segmentation and insight

:: Tell you what’s out there, why it has happened and what you can do.

:: Inform you of similar cases and how other companies were affected – competitor activity.”

John added: “Examples of the various elements of social search strategies we have consulted with clients on are:

:: Social platform development based on a complete SEO strategy, encouraging users to link to the client sites

:: Engagement strategy for blogs & forums, consulting on engaging with the major influencers

:: Golley Slater’s PR and SEO teams have collaborated to provide the latest in reputation management and online syndication that optimises Press releases related to high-volume, relevant keywords, inserting deep-linking without compromising the story, distributing a client’s news to a wider online audience via the relevant online channels that generate a higher link popularity organically and drive more relevant traffic and increase your online revenues.”

Stephen Fitzpatrick, who runs Golley Slater’s social media lab, and who has worked for Greenpeace and the National Theatre, explains: “We can help transform businesses into social media enterprises that punch far beyond their weight.

“In terms of communication, we draw on what we call concealed communications capital. This is employees, knowledge, conversations, opinions and views.

“A good media lab should align communications capital with marketing operations and make sure that your people, their know-how, their news and views are fed into the relevant online habitats and in-front of the online gurus who help build brands, businesses and reputation.”

www.golleyslater.com