Dave Snyder for SES London 2009

Dave Snyder

Co Founder
Search & Social

Bio

Dave Snyder is the Co-Founder of the search and social media marketing firm, Search & Social. He shares his opinions as well as tips on search and social media at various industry blogs including SearchEngineJournal.com and MarketingPilgrim.com. Dave parlayed his gifts as a teacher and published writer into his current career as an Internet Marketer. He is also the founder of IMBroadcast.com, the first UGC video site for Internet Marketers.

Dave’s strengths lie in both organic and paid search marketing, as well as utilizing social media for brand building and online reputation management.

Interview with Dave Snyder

> 1) With the recession firmly biting at the heart of many businesses both large and small, what would you consider to be the most vital action to take to try to win and retain new business?

To be honest our job is easy. Print publications, radio, and television have failed to improve their business model, and with that businesses are pulling their dollars from those outlets. Our job is to simply show the high ROI available online, the instant data availability, and how we can leverage that data to increase conversions.

> 2) As an online marketing company we often have companies approach us with a limited or reduced budget for the coming year, what advice would you give any business marketing on a budget?

You get what you pay for.
If I offer you a 1000% ROI on your dollar, spending $500 a month instead of $5,000 a month doesn’t make much sense. Even at a reduced ROI for larger spend it often makes more sense to spend more to make more.
The issue is companies have often not had direct data to tie revenue to specific marketing channels. Online media has changed that. However, many large companies are still approaching online marketing like they have more traditional media, simply lying out a marketing budget, rather than working from data backwards.
Our job is to educate them, and make them understand why spending more, will make them more.

> 3) Web 2.0 is no longer an emerging concern but is now firmly established as a specific marketing strategy, with this in mind where do you see the path of Web 2.0 leading?

Search is going to change drastically in the next two years. Engagement factors are going to become a key player in most search algorithms, and with this in mind, companies need to make a decision to make social media optimization as large a component of their search efforts as link building.
With that said, companies are going to continue to be interested in the traffic, links, and reputation management social media can bring, so companies that can truly understand social platforms and how to leverage them will be able to bring in a lot of business in the next few years.

> 4) When planning a marketing strategy many companies prefer to have a year on year budget for marketing and promotion, would this be the best approach over a monthly flexible marketing strategy and what would be your preferred strategy?

We do a lot of social promotion, organic search, and paid search work, so we always prefer a 12 month marketing strategy with a consistent budget. A monthly flexible marketing strategy becomes very difficult to deal with as clients begin to think they can achieve similar results no matter the budget.

> 5) There are many businesses fail to survive their first trading year and in a recession this is likely to be even higher, based on this assumption, what key areas do you consider a must for any start-up business to have covered in their marketing strategies?

1. Build a search friendly site with a strong information architecture. (I will be speaking on this at SES London)
2. Get your business in local search if its relevant.
3. Look at Yahoo SSP (paid inclusion) if you are a first year company, with a site that might face the sandbox. Cheap clicks, good conversions.
4. Before you even think about hitting television, radio or print in your first year, think about hiring a company such as mine to devise a social promotion campaign for you. We can drive 100s of thousands to millions of eyeballs to content, and seed it in a way that gets you mind share and links to help your search marketing campaign. A better ROI than traditional media.

> 6) There are no quick and easy fixes for reduced sales and underperforming web sites but there are companies that relish the chance to prosper where others fail in these difficult times, what is your stand point on being more ruthless to stamp your business presence over that of your competitors?

If you are an online business, or do a large amount of revenue online, now is not the time to pull back on your campaign, it is time to push it to the limit.
We have a client that deals in a very recession influenced industry that we have ramped up campaign initiatives for, and continue to see double digit year over year growth.
The reality is that in that market, our competition is dying fast because they do not have strategies in place to make the global economy work for them.  With the death of each competitor, our consumer base widens.
With every down economy, a handful of people actually show growth. This is due to the ability to see where opportunity lies and grab it.
This opportunity lies in search and social media marketing right now.
Those that seize these channels will succeed.

Don’t miss out on Dave’s sessions at SES London 17 – 20 February 2009

Successful Site Architecture

Learn to successfully architect your site for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies may impact your ability to gain good organic listings. Covers topics such as directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage, and much more. Toward the end of the session, volunteers from the audience will have their sites examined to see how changes could be made to their site architecture and design to increase search engine traffic, as time allows.

Dave Snyder

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