For over 20 years the New Zealand Marketing Association has run the RSVP and Nexus Awards to recognise excellence in response driven marketing campaigns.  Notably this is the first year a search marketing award has been included and acknowledges the growing importance search marketing plays for NZ businesses.

The awards for 2009 were announced at a lavish event last Friday. I’m delighted to say that SureFire won the ‘Best Use of Search Engine Marketing Award’ for SEO (search engine optimisation) work with TVNZ, New Zealand’s leading television broadcaster.

Kudos to all of the talented SureFire team for this great achievement, in particular Nick Guebhard. And of course thanks to TVNZ for their on-going committment to SEO.

Tom Cotter, General Manager of Content and Delivery for TVNZ, says the company was impressed with the campaign’s execution and results.

“The TVNZ website has experienced significant increases in traffic since the re-launch. A key element of this growth has been driven by organic search traffic, which is now one of our largest sources of visitors.”

SEO Campaign Summary

• In order to improve organic search rankings, particularly for news, sports and the online video, TVNZ engaged SureFire Search to ensure that SEO was an integral aspect of website design and build, rather than a retro-fitted afterthought when it launched an upgraded version of its news, sports & entertainment website, http://tvnz.co.nz.

• Since starting this SEO project, TVNZ has seen increases in top 10 rankings in Google for core keywords, as well as achieving top rankings for multiple long-tail keywords. This has resulted in a significant increase in organic traffic from search engines and driven a dramatic increase in overall website traffic.

• As a website publisher, TVNZ generates revenues from advertisements carried on the website and these revenues are directly related to visitor numbers and page views. The more visitors and the more pages they view, the greater ad revenue generated. Since the site re-launch website organic traffic from search engines has delivered millions of extra visits.

Wow, 2009 flew by! Staring into the crystal ball, here are 4 predictions about search marketing in New Zealand during 2010…

Prediction #1 – Paid Search Takes Off

2010 will be the year paid search marketing is finally taken seriously by the NZ advertising industry. However for many agencies it will still be given token lip service because they:

1. Don’t understand it
2. Are uncomfortable with how measurable search is & the associated transparency of agency performance this brings (‘accountability’ – yikes!)
3. The non-commission bearing nature of Google AdWords forces change in the ad industry’s traditional charging paradigm

Despite this, agencies will be compelled to include more than just token search buys into media plans because their clients will increasingly demand it. As a result we’ll continue to see growth in paid search spend at the expense of other traditional media, as has been case in Australia & UK.

Prediction #2 – More Focus on SEO

Associated with the increase in paid search marketing will be an increase in investment in SEO.

For most businesses their entry into the world of search marketing is through paid search (usually Google AdWords). Usually new paid search advertisers are blown away by how well search performs compared to traditional channels they’ve used. As a result, most wonder why they haven’t done this earlier & substantially increase their ongoing investment in search.

Smart move.

However shrewd players recognize the risk of putting all their eggs in the PPC (paid search) basket & also invest in improving their organic search performance using SEO (search engine optimisation).

Even smarter move – given that around 70% of all commercial search traffic is organic, rather than from paid search.

In 2010 NZ businesses will increasingly rely on search as a key component of their marketing mix. And those who do best will have a properly integrated search marketing strategy to maximise the synergistic benefits of paid & organic search.

Prediction #3 – Local Search Grows

New Zealand consumers will increasingly turn to using local search in preference to Yellow Pages – as is the global trend.

Switched on NZ businesses will ensure they are highly visible in local search results so they can exploit this growing opportunity. And grow it will, as more & more mobile phones are web enabled.

In fact, 2010 is likely to be the year mobile search really booms, thanks largely to the iPhone.

Of course it’s not all over for the Yellow Pages – people will still find them useful for raising the level of their computer monitors

Prediction #4 – Money that should be invested in Search will be wasted on Social Media Marketing

All the breathless hype about social media will continue & increasingly NZ businesses will feel compelled to try & ride this new wave. Unfortunately with all the hype & perceived sexiness of social media marketing many NZ businesses will waste money on poorly conceived & badly executed campaigns.

Smart businesses instead will look to the lessons learned in the more advanced markets of Australia, UK & the USA to see what does & doesn’t work.

And really smart businesses will first ensure they’ve got their search marketing strategy well & truly sorted before diluting their focus by dabbling in social media marketing.

Why? Because search marketing consistently brings home the bacon, whereas social media marketing is more of a crap shoot -  i.e. it can sometimes have astounding results, but most times is a fizzer.

OK – that’s my admittedly biased perspective on what 2010 will bring.

In previous posts I’ve lamented the fact that in New Zealand search marketing doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.  Fortunately that’s starting to change. Kudos to the New Zealand Marketing Association who, for the first time, have introduced a new category for “Best Use of Search Engine Marketing” in the 2009 RSVP Craft Awards.

According to the Marketing Association’s RSVP & Nexus Awards website this new award is for the best use of Search Engine Marketing to promote a website by increasing its visibility in search engine result pages through the use of search engine optimisation or paid search advertising.

Judges will look for:

• demonstrated use of search best practices
• integration with overall marketing mix
• campaign outcomes in terms of results, traffic and ROI

At SureFire we’re delight to have been selected as a finalist for our TVNZ News & Sport Search Engine Optimisation Campaign and look forward to the big night on 26 Feb when the winners are announced.

SEO can have an amazingly positive impact on the fortunes of businesses, especially those who rely on their website as a key sales channel. As an SEO firm this is something we regularly see and it’s very gratifying.

However, despite the real difference a well thought out & executed SEO campaign can make to a business, it won’t work miracles! It’s not a universal panacea that will make a business successful – if the core basics of the business are flawed, getting your website SEO’ed won’t magically fix things. As the old saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Whenever we get asked to do SEO work for businesses in this situation we decline, suggesting they first address the fundamental flaws in their website, business model etc. Only then can we help them. Taking money for doing SEO work when you know it won’t help a client is unethical & plain wrong.

We only want to work for clients where we know we can make a positive difference.

PJ Fusco has written a great article about this in Clickz called ‘SEO can’t fix stupid‘.  Worth reading.