Re: Do you trust your agency?

jen evans — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:15:24 -0000

Jake - I am not sure it's that they don't have spines. Let me self-edit. the reason that spines are not more firmly in place is because the agencies themselves don't feel confident in the space. So much is emerging and new and there is so much movement that it's tough to find your sea legs - and this is a major type of transition.

The reality is that agencies and clients need to be really clear on what their goals are and be committed to an iterative process of understanding what works best for THEIR community.

Walking into a community engagement with any pre-formed sense of what the community actually wants, the content they need and desire, and how they want to be communicated with is the first problem. Do away with those assumptions, engage with customers qualitatively (what do the numbers day), quantitatively (what does the feedback say) AND behaviourally (what do they actually DO) and you've got a solid foundation for a functioning program.

And I'm still going to respond to that other post too. I promise. ;)

Re: Is online advertising heading for a cliff?

jen evans — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:16:40 -0000

I'm at the marketingsherpa B2B conference in Boston as I type this, and search was everywhere today. Wanted to comment on paid search.

I doubt that paid search is going to decline in the short term - and I see room for expansion even in the long term. Trends coming out of the presentation included signficantly increased competition for keywords (good for google since they are auction based), meaning higher search costs - which might be an indication that the search market is starting to overprice itself, except that many of the presenters also reported improvements in cost per acquisition or conversion due to improved search fulfillment. One of our clients used to spend $2K a month on Google, and is now spending $20K/month without batting an eyelash because the returns are there.

Many of the presentations today focused exclusively on search, and *all* of them included some element of search. These are some of the most forward-looking but pragmatic online marketers in the world, and they're bullish on paid search.

As a marketer, it doesn't seem to me that this is a part of the mix on the decline; in fact, under challenging economic conditions, i think it's likely to expand due to its comparatively low cost, powerful ability to target and budget, and low risk.

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Re: Do you trust your agency?

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