Search Engine Strategies And Media Integration

There are _some_ benefits to being a Canadian living in America, and one of them is proximity to the big US Internet industry events. Last week, I had the pleasure of attending (and speaking at) the “Search Engine Strategies”:http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall05/ conference in Chicago, where industry insiders congregated to discuss both organic (natural) and paid search. There were a number of interesting sessions, ranging from writing effective paid search copy, to designing search engine friendly sites. One issue that came up time and time again, particularly in the advertising-oriented sessions, was media integration.

I just wrote a white paper on this very topic for my agency (“download the PDF”:http://www.enlighten.com/pdfs/wp_search_marketing_12_05.pdf free of charge), and it seems it’s a very timely one. Many companies are still segregating their search marketing efforts, employing different agencies and firms to handle their search marketing, display ad, and email campaigns. That’s all well and good — as long as they maintain open lines of communication, and share resources to ensure consistency across all media channels. Unfortunately, this isn’t a “given.”
If your client’s search firm isn’t sharing its data with you, how can you measure the degree to which your banner ads are driving related searches? If you don’t offer the search marketers access to your banner copy, how can anyone ensure the brand messaging will be consistent with the keywords in your client’s paid search campaign? Without a kinship between ad vendors, it’s impossible to maintain an accurate overview of a campaign as a whole.
As companies expand their online advertising efforts, they’ll likely continue to outsource the work to numerous — and autonomous — specialists. It’s important that the marketers involved reach out and make contact for the greater good: the client.