🔍 When performance marketing takes a long view

May 14, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, we're feeling strategic today.

Back in the old days of a few months ago when we could sit and talk with one another in person, Barry Schwartz chatted with the Head of SEO at Universal McCann Digital, Limor Barenholtz. She's a programmer and website tinkerer who loves to dig into SEO challenges. But she says it's imperative that SEOs understand the bigger digital marketing strategy and not work in a silo. They'll be more effective in their own work. That advice may be an even more poignant point now than ever. Watch the full interview here.

"This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to gain market share for some companies."

Lisa Maier, CEO of digital marketing agency DirectiveGroup, said that yesterday in her talk during day two of the Paid Search Association Conference, which I had the pleasure of moderating. She also noted that this recovery is not going to be linear and that companies — and marketers — should be scenario planning now.

Whether your business is one of the lucky ones and trying to keep up with sales or among the many facing critical challenges, it can be hard to take the long view, but digital marketing will play a big role in how companies emerge from this crisis. How marketers act now will have a long-term impact.

This theme was heard throughout our digital commerce-focused episode of Live with Search Engine Land episode as well. Particularly for businesses that have been negatively affected by the COVID-19 crisis, Tony Verre, VP of e-commerce for The Integer Group advised focusing on marketing efforts that can generate an emotional return on investment (ROI) from audiences.

"We were doing a lot of our own research and what we found is that brands that go dark during recession, depression or even crisis-type periods have a very difficult time climbing back up the mountain once things begin to normalize," Verre added.

(And if there was ever a time to move on from last click, this is it.)

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Indicators

Time spent on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook breaks estimates

Social media usage has increased sharply since stay-at-home orders were put in place. Research firm eMarketer released revised estimates for usage on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook this week. Its previous forecast, issued in November, pegged time-spent on social would increase by only 6 seconds in 2020. In this latest forecast, the time spent on social is expected to increase by nearly 7 minutes over last year.

If that bears out, it will be the first year of positive growth in time spent among U.S. social users since 2017. The bonus for marketers during this time is that ad rates are still relatively depressed with many businesses having paused their campaigns.

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Search Shorts

Link buying, translating and merging or splitting sites.

Link buying. John Mueller of Google equated buying links to buying cheap items on AliExpress, both don't end up working but they are cheap.

Merge or split a site. Whether you are merging or splitting a site, you are essentially creating a new site in Google's eyes, said Mueller.

Translating content. Translating content from one language to another, that translated content will be seen as unique content to Google. Legally, are you allowed to do that is another question, he said.

What's "next" in search marketing?

SMX Next! Log on June 23-24 for actionable SEO and SEM tactics that can drive more traffic, leads, and sales — and learn how emerging technology and advancements in search platforms are changing what it means to be a tactical and effective search marketer.

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