SureFire Search is delighted to announce the appointment of Jeremy Templer to the newly created position of client services director.

A returning Kiwi expat, Jeremy brings a vast amount of in depth search marketing knowledge gained from over 13 years  working in highly competitive offshore search markets.

His most recent role was in San Francisco as Director of Search Marketing for global interactive services company Acxiom.  Prior to this Jeremy was a senior manager at US web analytics and business optimisation company Coremetrics where he established an in-house search agency managing search campaigns for Coremetric clients.  Jeremy has also worked in a range of roles both in Australia & the USA for search advertising network LookSmart.

We’re really pleased to welcome Jeremy to the SureFire Team & know that our clients will benefit from the extensive knowledge & skills he’s gained working in highly competitive markets that are significantly further along the curve than the relatively immature NZ search market.

If you’d like to meet up with Jeremy to discuss your search marketing requirements please contact us.

Probably the penultimate post before Christmas so I thought I’d try and keep this news roundup as positive as possible!  I wanted to start with an article from the Economist that one of my clients sent me in the post today but can’t find it online (yes, Google failed me!) so thought I’d write it a really relevant part of the article for you to enjoy:

“Another reason for optimism is that online adverting is making obsolete the old distinction between marketing spend “above the line” and “below” it. In the jargon above the line spending drives “awareness” (probably on television) or “consideration” (probably in a newspaper). Such spending is often slashed in a recession. Below the line spending includes promotions or coupons to whet the consumer’s preference for the brand as the near a purchase, or scheme such as frequent flyer miles to increase their “loyalty”. These budgets are most robust.Online marketing aims for awareness, consideration, preference and loyalty all at once. An example is a rich-media ad for Kraft in which a yummy image raises brand awareness, a click reveals a recipe that increases consideration, another click provides coupons and yet another initiates a game.”

You can now therefore defend your online marketing budgets as being both above and below the line!! All we need now is to get publishers here in NZ to start to see the real benefit of rich media advertising, which of course needs to be backed up by search!!

Right, some on to the news of the week:

Further to the release of the top ten searches in NZ in 2008 Google has now released this information for the entire globe. Have a look at the way people around the globe use (and abuse) Google… Google Zeitgeist

Looks like the battle for the “cloud” is going to hot up in 2009, with Microsoft due to release  web versions of some of its most popular programs, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The most amazing news is that these will be distributed free (as long as you don’t mind seeing a few ads). Obviously a tactical move to combat Google docs and I think a really interesting battle to watch! Microsoft Office to debut online

We always think that Google (in the US) has had this monopolistic strangle hold on the search market but back in 2004 the market was pretty much a four horse race between AOL, Google, Yahoo and MSN all with around 25% of the market. This has now changed to 4%, 63%, 20% and 9% respectively. What a long time 4 years is on the internet! This article from SEOmoz explains why getting back to this market share would be better for us marketers. Why a Google Monopoly is Bad for Search Marketers

Site of the week this week is another shameless plug for a client of ours who as well as being a digital consultant also somehow finds time to run www.tasteyoucansee.co.nz/. Check out their fruit arrangements – As I am writing this with a belly full I can testify that their strawberries dipped in Belgian chocolate are pretty damn good!

I hardly ever get to point you to an article from a NZ source so I was pleased to find this interview with the head of Google Australasia in yesterdays Herald online. Probably the most insightful question is “Whom do you blame for the discrepancy between the large amount of time people spend online and the small amount companies spend advertising online? “. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10545232

Apart from the news that the NZ Herald knows what Google is the big news of the week is the (rather sketchy) launch of Google’s Search Wiki: the biggest change to their search engine since, well since ever! If you’re not familiar with SearchWiki then in a nutshell it is Google’s new feature that allows for users to organize search results and make comments. I.e. if you often do a search for say “weather nz” and the top search result is from a website you don’t like you can delete that entry so it never shows up again and even let the rest of the world know you don’t like that website!” The reorganized results only show up for the user that made the changes, but the comments are made public. Hope that’s clear! Well if not have a read of some of the articles below that might explain it a little clearer than me!

Google SearchWiki 101: An Illustrated Guide

Google’s SearchWiki Is Here To Stay: Is This The Death of SEO?

I for one never really saw the value of twitter, unless you are a celebrity or business guru that would impart words of wisdom that I really wanted to listen to, but even then I found that I became really bored of reading about the tediousness of people’s lives! But these two articles have (kind of) brought to life how twitter could become a genuinely useful tool.

I Can’t Believe Some People Are Still Saying Twitter Isn’t A News Source

First Hand accounts of terrorist attacks on twitter

If any of you are blogging or thinking of blogging then have a read of this handy guide to making your blog more engaging from Google: For bloggers

Many of our clients here at SureFire are B2B focused and therefore like this article states sometime find it difficult justifying the value of search engine optimization (SEO) to senior level executives. This article gives a great overview of ways to prove and demonstrate the effectiveness of SEO. Measuring the Effectiveness of B2B SEO

If you’re looking to “gen” up on your digital marketing over the Christmas holidays then take a look at this list to see if anything takes your fancy: Best Books on Social Media

As for website of the week. Well, we are all familiar with open source software such as Linux, and open source Content management systems but last week I came across this open source ecommerce platform which in a word incredible. If you are looking at an e-commerce platform then you could do a lot worse than this: http://www.magentocommerce.com/

Thought I’d start today with a couple of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” stories. Firstly, the long anticipated (if you like that kind of thing) new Guns and Roses album is being debuted on MySpace before general release: Web debut for Guns N’ Roses album. Nice to see innovation where you least expect it!

Secondly, the BBC has finally succumbed to pressure to air certain programmes over the internet at the same time as on television. I think this is a major step forward and hope that TVNZ follow suit soon: Main BBC channels go live on net

As touched upon a couple of weeks ago YouTube is exploring new avenues of making their website profitable. This article which I came across the other day does a great job of explaining these options. Not available in NZ yet, but we will start adding this to schedules next year as I think this will be a powerful means of getting messages across to certain demographics, especially for FMCG brands. All backed up by search of course! YouTube Unveils Two New Ad Options

Bit more serious now with a great article that looks at the pillars of a successful internet strategy. This looks at much more than just search, but in fact can be boiled down to: Data + Software + Skills + Network = Internet Marketing Success. Imperative to ask these sorts of questions to your digital marketing company. 4 Components of a Successful Internet Marketing Strategy

Over the last couple of months Google had been talking a lot about the fact that it can now index flash content. We had been initially a little sceptical but does seems that Google is starting to take Flash much more seriously with an announcement of a simplified solution for tracking Flash content for everyone, called Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash. Google Gets Flashy, Will It Take Adobe?

If you only have time to read one article please read this one! Without experimentation you get stagnation, and no innovation. And there is no better place to test ideas than online. Experiment or Die. Five Reasons And Awesome Testing Ideas.

People like to search. That much is fact. And people like and trust Google. So with this in mind, if your website has an internal search function firstly test it to see if it is any good. If it isn’t (and it probably isn’t!) then think seriously about implementing Google’s site search. It works, and people are used to the interface, and they have as you will see from the article below have just added some pretty cool new functionality. New Google Site Search Functionality: Initial Thoughts

I’m in the process of planning my holiday to Dubai next March for the Sevens which reminded me of this fantastic Web 2.0 website, which is this week’s website of the week that allows you to organise travel plans neatly and quickly. Also, automatically builds itineraries with all your plans, weather, maps, restaurants and more. Give it a go next time you go off on holiday… http://www.tripit.com/