Integrated Search Marketing - Possible?

• Oct. 4, 2005

Our company president wrote an article about integrated online marketing campaigns and how some companies tend to focus on specific areas of search engine marketing without considering the other areas.  Then our Head Sponsored Search Strategist followed this up with an article about managing keywords at the corporate level and how some companies compete with themselves in paid campaigns. So I thought I’d throw my 2 cents in and discuss the organic impacts of an unstructured organic campaign and in reality how both paid and organic search MUST work together, especially in large corporations.

 

It’s good timing for me and this topic as I have a client right now who has some tough decisions to make.

 

You see, they want to compete more directly with one of their largest competitors.  The problem is that they don’t have the critical mass needed to do so.  While they do beat the competitor in some key markets, there are areas where they don’t appear because they don’t have the content to support it.

 

However they are also part of a larger company which has other web properties which do compete directly with the competitor’s site.  So the question becomes, does my client “go it alone” or do they tread the somewhat murky waters of co-operation between business units?

 

There are many pros and cons to either doing it themselves or partnering up with other business units.  And while there are pains in following either path, there are also huge rewards to be reaped should they become successful.

 

And Brenda’s article really summed it up nicely.  Because right now there are ½ dozen business units in this company competing for what is essentially the same customer.  They are inadvertently driving up their paid advertising costs because each has a mandate to be number one. One can quickly figure out that they are doing more harm than good.

 

Yet on the organic side it is to their benefit to optimize well and position so that each site occupies a top spot.  Imagine that - a company with 10 competing business units occupying all the first 10 spots in the SERP’s.  What could be better?

 

But, again, from that business unit point of view, if they don’t find themselves #1, then they aren’t doing their job.

 

Which gets back to my point - consider the bigger picture.

 

Sure you may want your site to be #1, but should it be?  Perhaps the business unit that is #1 is actually a better fit for the searcher.  You may offer similar products or services as the top ranked business unit, but what’s better for the company as a whole?

 

Let me tell you:

 

What’s best for the company as a whole is to minimize their costs on paid advertising while maximizing their organic visibility.

 

In other words, the needs of the parent company must outweigh the needs of the business unit.  Sure the individual business units want to be #1, but should they be #1 at the cost of the company as a whole?

 

It is at this point that the company stakeholders must get together to figure out their online objectives.  They must consider the points Gord makes in his article about planning the online campaigns in an integrated manner.

 

They must also consider Brenda’s points about having a centralized keyword basket and maintaining it for the business units by deciding who bids and who doesn’t bid for certain phrases.

 

At the same time, they can coordinate organic efforts, trying to maximize rankings for all related business units.  This way they can attempt to cover as many of the top listings as possible, thereby moving the competition down and out of the top 10. 

 

It is at this organic level where they can say “I’ve got to try and be #1” because it is only with this persistence can they hope to achieve a top spot.  Sure they may not outrank a business unit within the company, but between the two (or more) business units, they are pushing their competition out of that prime real estate.

 

So if you are a large company which is struggling with these issues may I first recommend reading Gord’s article linked above, and then Brenda’s also linked above.  They can help get you started down the path to true online marketing integration.

 

Rob Sullivan

Head Organic Search Strategist

Search Engine Positioning by Searchengineposition

Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing