Strange as it may sound, a similar philosophy has been debated in search marketing circles over the past decade. Some agencies have built their models around chosen software services that underpins all of their work for clients. This is fine, and many companies have had a great deal of success selling the virtues of these platforms to clients willing to pay for access to that software.
But there is a certain inflexibility in adapting the client's required campaign processes to ensure they fit in with third-party technology. Unless there is a 100 per cent fit between an agency's chosen platform and the required processes and parameters of a campaign, it's unlikely the agency will be able to deliver the most efficient work possible, and therefore results could suffer. If you do need bespoke requirements, the likelihood is the software company will demand a king's ransom to make even minor changes, and then these will only take place if they believe the adaptation will be of benefit to multiple clients.
The alternative approach is to fit the technology around the agency's processes. It's a method we take and we're equally as proud of it as some of our rivals who base their model entirely on automation. For us, our software is of course paramount, but it's the combination with expert account management that we believe is important for our clients.
From a conceptual point of view, we know how paid search campaigns need to be run. If we refer to our campaign management flowchart, which we call the Metrics Tree, we know which metrics we can affect and how to do so to optimise each individual campaign.
Once this is established, we need to find a way to assess which keywords need to be prioritised and then determine a system providing all the metrics relating to these keywords, with trends and previous changes taken into account.
We don't believe a software platform alone would be able to underpin a campaign in the same way a combination of humans and technology can. By choosing a method that moves away from total automation, we come up with the process, and a method to deal with this process. This is unlike many agencies which take a third-party tool, or occasionally their own bespoke platform, and build their management processes around it.
We do it the other way round. We get an account manager to make the changes that need to be made -- for example: changing bids; amending ad copy; altering the content on the campaign site; constant keyword mining. Our system has been built to help the account manager make informed decisions and allows them to incorporate technology in order to facilitate the process. All that said, if there is a nuance in the programming that needs to be altered to suit a particular client, because we own all the code and work on agile methodology, we could make changes to our software fairly quickly.
Technology is important as it bridges the gap between humans and the online interface. It helps present information at the right time in the process. But ultimately, we believe technology should be built around the campaign and the campaign workflow management process -- not the other way around.
Rob Pierre, managing director, Jellyfish.
