CReATION: Combine SEO with banners for a bigger bang for your buck

The past two months' activity in the MEDIA letters section seem to show that Asian marketing professionals are starting to see the incredible potential of search engine optimisations (SEO) for their online promotional campaigns. I think that Gerald Alleva from OBI and Eddie Ngan from TWC have done a fine job of explaining the benefits of SEO, but there are a couple of areas that we have found to be very important from our experiences, that I would like to add to the forum (MEDIA, July 7 and August 4) We all agree that search engines are important promotional tools and sources of information. In fact, Jupiter Communications reports that more than 70 per cent of the Internet population finds new websites via search engines, while the industry average banner click through rate is just 0.36 per cent (Neilsen/Netratings, April 3, 2000). At SubmitAsia, we have found that by combining these two tools - keyword-driven banners, and optimised search engine submissions - the results can be incredible. In a recent regional campaign for Hewlett-Packard, working together with Blue Sphere Interactive and iPlanners, we saw daily click-through rates of up to seven per cent. This reinforces our belief that the various online marketing tools, including SEO, work best when integrated strategically. The second important point to consider is "knowing the neighbourhood". Mr Alleva mentioned in his letter the complexity of understanding how each search engine works and indexes the Web. Even more important we believe is a firm understanding of the positioning and strengths of each search engine in the local markets. Submitting to Yahoo is a no-brainer, but if you are targeting an IT-specific audience in Taiwan, you need to decide which local sites can provide enough return to justify spending the time/money on a SEO campaign, and that doesn't always mean Yahoo, in the same way that a publication like Computerworld may not be the best choice for some of our B2C clients like Discovery Channel. Each search engine has its appropriate audience and advertisers. Knowing that audience, and being able to submit, optimise and track in the market's local language is vital. The globalisation of the Internet should not be ignored; more than 49 per cent of the Internet is now "non-English", (GlobalReach, June 2000) and more than 30 per cent of ecommerce sales on US sites comes from international customers. If you are not attracting and servicing those customers in their preferred manner, they will click on another link to someone who will. Yes, SEO is a complex process, but no more so than developing an intelligent media plan, or a well-crafted PR campaign. Much like these more established practices, we believe SEO will come to be appreciated in the same way. I know that our agency clients (and their clients) already value the increased awareness that a quality local SEO effort brings to a campaign.

Sign In

Trouble signing in?

Reset Password: Click here

Contact Customer Support at

Customerservice@campaignasia.com