• by Rob Garner , October 11, 2006

Most seasoned, professional SEM practitioners agree that a truly balanced search marketing campaign contains both paid and natural elements. But some marketers still hold on to the notion that search is divided into two distinctly separate categories, and that each should be managed by separate agencies or departments. In the next two columns I will discuss how paid and natural can become inadvertently split between agencies and departments, the benefits of co-managed search, and why people are imperative to maintaining the balance.

To better understand the fundamental premise of holistic management, think of paid and natural search as the yin and yang that forms the whole of search. Each is complementary to the other, and the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In the corporate setting, whether being managed by an agency or in-house, the balance between paid and natural search is disrupted when the parts are treated differently and managed by separate units. Here are two basic perceptions of paid and natural search that can lead to an unbalanced search campaign:

"Natural search is a technical thing." Because of the technical issues inherent to natural search, many marketers push it to the IT side, or to a specialized natural search agency. In the case where an IT department or agency is not running a complementary paid campaign, the opportunity for co-management is lost.

"Paid search is an advertising thing." To many marketers, paid media is paid media, and those with this mindset tend to lump paid search in with other media placements such as banners, e-mail or rich media. Because an overwhelming majority of paid media agencies lack professional natural search skills, the opportunity for balanced co-management is lost.

Achieving a balanced search presence is not just a tech thing or an ad thing. The reality is that it is a combination of both, and marketers must accept that they are engaging in a technical form of marketing that cannot simply be coded or bought. It's in this bridged area of tech marketing where people are the most important part of the holistic search process, both in campaign management, and also in producing a cohesive strategy that meets a company's business objectives. In the next column I will discuss the people element in more detail, but for now I will leave you with a few benefits of engaging in a holistic approach:

Shared research. Dedicated paid and natural teams have the opportunity to share important data like keyword research, copy performance, and conversion performance. In most cases where multiple agencies are involved, research efforts are often duplicated or even omitted altogether.

Streamlined communication. While both co-managed and separately managed campaigns can leverage performance data, the difference is in communication and reaction time. While it is not uncommon for agencies to share what they've learned, the turnaround time for requests can be days, weeks or even months. Considering that the search business changes every day, this is simply not good enough. Close interaction between teams in the same agency also create efficiencies in project management, research, reporting, and even client correspondence and meetings.

Awareness of the impact of search behavior. Hard-wired search teams usually have a better understanding of search behavior, and also how a potential searcher reacts to the search engine results pages. This understanding has a tremendous impact on strategy for page selection, keyword bidding, messaging, and many other elements of paid and natural search.

Opportunity to achieve exponential lift. I wrote about the phenomenon of exponential lift in holistically managed search in a July column. The premise is that simultaneous visibility in both paid and natural search results can produce a greater number of click-throughs and conversions, without an increase in actual searches.

Once again, all of these reasons lead to a well-balanced search campaign, which in the end is less expensive to run, and creates greater performance--always beneficial for a company's business goals.