Maximising Your Media Through SEO – Ric Rodriguez

As SEO director of iProspect, Ric Rodriguez knows about the value of SEO as part of a wider advertising strategy. This talk provided smart insight into the interplay between ATL and SEO, with pointers on how you can implement it into your strategy.

Overview

Speaker’s name: Ric Rodriguez

Job role and company: SEO Director at iProspect

Links to Twitter profile: @ricrodriguez_uk

Link to LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/ricprodriguez/

Link to the slides:

What was the talk about?

The talk focussed on how combining SEO with above the line (ATL) media can increase the effectiveness of multi-channel campaigns and boost results for clients.

Ric suggests that marketing is about mental and physical availability. Mental availability is all about making your customers think about you; physical ability, on the other hand, is about being there when they do.

ATL refers to traditional media like television and print, and it’s great for creating mental availability. However, with the huge amount now being spent online, developing physical availability is increasing hard to maintain.

“Search is a key online shopping channel”

Despite search being a key part of the online shopping experience, Ric argues that SEO is not considered as part of the overall media plan enough. But, if more businesses and agencies were to combine search and ATL media, they would enjoy much better results.

Potential impact on the industry

The industry has a massive opportunity to generate better results if search and above the line marketers worked more closely together. To do this effectively, they would need to focus on three key areas:

• Planning
• Activation
• Measurement

Ric provided a total of 30 ideas (ten for each key area) that will help. You can click on the slides for the full list, but these are some of the highlights:

• Search data is free and very insightful
• Brief IT well in advance if your website needs changes
• Don’t invest on media unless you sit on page one
• Branded CTAs are easier to rank for
• Build out a new site section for each product launch
• Microsites are an SEO headache and are best avoided
• Use SEO to reinforce ATL campaign messages
• Communication is vital
• Put ATL straplines in meta descriptions to improve click-throughs
• Keep measurements simple

Key takeaways

• The impact of ATL on SEO can be huge
• Collaboration between teams is the key to making both work together
• Always think SEO when planning, activating, and measuring