By Lynn Russo Whylly

Online marketing is evolving at lightning speed today, with new moving parts being added in the blink of an eye. Today, marketers are managing Google AdWords and other PPC campaigns, natural search engine rankings, link building and tracking, and social media, to name a few.

Particularly challenging is the fact that many companies still compartmentalize these areas. Not only are the data sitting in silos, but so are the employees – often in contiguous cubicles with little to no communication.

These silos are slowing marketers down, and can sometimes even lead them down the wrong decision path. To effectively compete in today’s fast-moving digital world, marketers must be able to see the bigger picture, literally, by seamlessly integrating the data streams of these constantly evolving online components together into one holistic view.

A centralized or singular view provides several benefits. The first is the reduction in or elimination of duplicate work, saving employees valuable time and allowing them to be more productive by focusing on, for instance, the most successful keywords. Second is the sharing of insight. By linking the pieces of the puzzle together, search and social media staff can see the broader trends coming down the horizon before competitors do and can capitalize on them quickly, while maximizing cost efficiencies.

Sharing the Load: Working in Teams Provides Tangible Benefits

Often, there are multiple team members working simultaneously — and independently — on various aspects of getting a brand to the top of the search engine results page (SERP). This can result in duplicate work, redundant data or coding and last-minute scrambling to gather information stored on individual computers.

Organizational politics can be a factor when each area is fighting against each other for budget dollars, and ultimately, the ability to lay claim to the ROI. However, if SEO, PPC and social media sit under the same umbrella and within the same budget, in-fighting goes away and everyone functions as a team, fostering a collaborative rather than a competitive environment.

To facilitate collaboration, companies are finding that using an integrated suite of tools allows all team members to simultaneously work on the same platform and even within the same data. Some staff members can be working on keyword research and updates, while others are building links, while still others are analyzing reporting data such as website traffic.

Raven Tools centralizes SEO, advertising and social media campaign management, allowing the entire marketing team to work in sync from the same platform — so everyone can work and report from the same toolset.

Maintaining a singular or holistic approach to data usage also provides more opportunity to spot and fix mistakes, and allows marketers to complete projects faster because employees share the workload.

Two Heads: SEO and PPC Work Better Together

Progressive search marketers are seeing positive results from breaking down silos and taking an integrated approach.

According to Melanie Mitchell of Digitas, companies are generating a 32% clickthrough rate and a 420% increase in brand recall when running organic and PPC campaigns together.

Having a platform on which staff can work on PPC and natural search side by side promotes the ability for PPC to inform natural search, and allows both sides to focus on the highest-conversion keywords simultaneously.

A cross-platform tool also facilitates viewing of keyword results side-by-side across all major search platforms, maximizing staff’s ability to always be bidding (for PPC) or utilizing (for SEO) the most effective keywords. Marketers can reduce PPC costs by learning which paid keywords also generate the most natural activity.

Raven’s SEO Tools set integrates both proprietary and third-party tools to provide trusted data that can be customized to a particular campaign or client need. Real-time data is accessible in one central location, for keyword data, competitive intelligence, link building tools — the full range of SEO tools.

In August 2011, Raven introduced its Advertising Tools, which closed the loop for customers looking for an integrated marketing tool that can look at all aspects of a campaign. Marketers who are managing both paid and organic campaigns can access data and reporting seamlessly in one place. The Raven Tools Report Wizard enables marketers to automate and schedule reports that include metrics from AdWords and provide and at-a-glance look at how paid campaigns are complementing SEO.

Adding Social Media to the Mix

As social media marketing matures, it’s also becoming integrated into the overall marketing mix.

Most companies still look at their Facebook results separately from their Twitter or YouTube results, and update these pages separately. The ideal scenario would be to look at customer behavior across all three to determine what drives a customer or prospect to one versus the other, such as timing (someone might tweet more heavily in the morning but check their Facebook page at night) or have different behaviors whether they are at their job versus at home or out with their friends. A combined scenario allows companies to maximize their social efforts.

With Raven Tools, marketers can engage with social media from one central location — post to Twitter, comment on Facebook, or check to see how your YouTube videos are performing. Listen to what others are saying about your brand, or create white-label PDF reports for your clients to monitor their own KPIs. The point is to integrate, simplify, and collaborate.

SEO plays a role in social network discovery and vice versa. Optimizing social media for search provides more content for the search engines to capture and identify. Meanwhile, utilizing every element of a social site, including video, blogs, tweets, podcasts, links and other content, can both improve natural search rankings and maximize social clickthroughs.

In addition, integrating social reporting with search optimization and PPC analytics spotlights synergies across all three areas. For instance, by monitoring Twitter feeds, some marketers have been able to get a head start on the latest subjects, keep their natural search keywords up to date and stay ahead of their competitors.

Raven’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube monitors are integrated with Google Analytics, which allows marketers to understand which content, where — and when — is the most effective. This gives you the opportunity to quantify social media traffic and demonstrate its ROI easily and with confidence.

Holistic Reporting: A Clearer View and a More Logical Thought Process

Overall, holistic reporting improves workflow and offers better administrative control, while at the same time providing the flexibility to easily hand off administrative control to a coworker. Also, an integrated reporting tool allows both internal and agency staff to access the same analytics reports through a single account from multiple locations. Access can be tiered with customized permission levels.

Aggregating data into a single source allows marketers to see the influence that one channel has on another, providing opportunities to look at campaign results side by side and make changes either to individual campaigns or across the board. A holistic reporting tool should provide the ability to update settings, including pausing, starting, adding and editing or removing ad groups, keywords and ads.

An analytics package that includes Google AdWords reporting closes the loop for many marketers, providing the last missing link needed to create a single cohesive view of all Internet marketing. With an integrated reporting system, settings for most campaign options are centralized and can be easily updated within the system, without having to go, for instance, to Google AdWords.

Putting it All Together: The Benefits of a Single Integrated System

Economies of scale, reduced management and overhead costs, a single point of contact for making quick search and social media decisions, faster time to market. These are the main benefits of utilizing a system that integrates PPC, SEO and social media into a centralized, holistic view.

With a fully integrated platform, marketers can look at analytics across, for instance, Google, Yahoo! and Bing and see which keywords are working best for each site and make quick adjustments.

Marketers can pre-schedule social media posts, write comments, view analytics, see which videos are performing best and monitor brand mentions across all social accounts from one central location.

Marketers today need all the help they can get maximizing productivity and keeping costs down. With a suite of tools such as Raven Tools, that allows viewing of PPC, SEO and social media together, marketing team members can multitask and focus on the most important keywords and campaigns, generating increased efficiency and ROI without letting anything fall through the cracks.

Raven Tools continues to integrate and update its features to improve integration and encourage the collaboration that’s necessary for a successful internet marketing campaign. With the addition of its Advertising Tools in August, Raven Tools offers the complete suite of tools needed to run a truly holistic online marketing campaign.

Lynn Russo Whylly is a freelance writer specializing in advertising and marketing.

About This e-Solution Spotlight…
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