SES Berlin: Bill Hunt on search 3.0

Below some highlights from the presentation which will be available online next week.

What does search marketing offer?: The best opportunity marketers have to engage "intent-driven" prospects

• only discipline based on marketplace opportunity
• works across the funnel
• a cost effective tactic for driving audiences to marketing content on client websites

Why is search not more popular?
It's mostly about job preservation:

• classical advertising expenditures are safe
• media mix often mirrors agency budgets and relationships
• search marketing success scares people by higlighling lack of performance on other media
• we "over-measure" the ROI of search

Tomorrow's search marketing
New Ecosystem: Now its what the brand says and does, instead it will be what the world says and does

Future search marketing offers:

1. a customized experienced for each searcher
2. results based on interest or intent. He talks about Bing as example, being a decision engine. He's looking forward to getting the Bing API
3. Increased opportunity to dominate the results listings

Tapping into the voice of the consumer
He shows an interesting graph on the searcher's intent. There are models which can help getting keywords better connected to the user's intent.

Hunt talks about keyword research. First you do keyword research, then you look at what are people talking about, based on the keyword. Mashing up the data shows interesting things.

You need to look at who is talking about it. You want to find out the influencers. If you look at the data more holistically you will find out more important things.

How to get ready for search 3.0:
He shows the company search maturity cycle. You can see four steps in the timeline

• Search is project based
• Search is tactical
• Search is strategic
• Search is integrated

You have to learn how to integrate search with the rest of the teams.

Why do people search? What drives search?

New planning Paradigm: integration:

• keyword analyses is a combined insights and social media monitoring
• Product messaging
• Influence Creative SEO/PR
• Content Distribution Media & Metadata
• By tracking analytics you can improve this and put it back in the circle.

Go back to the premise: people are searching today, take that opportunity.

Search & Social Media in the Marketing Mix

• feed the need for information and create compelling information consumers will pull and interact with on demand
• capture those who are interested now in the products and services you offer
• plan for and take advantage of the increased relevance in search engines' results
• deploy and integrated plan to "Own the Shelf" and "Customer Journey"