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A look back at Benchmark Search Conference 2016

Jan 13th, 2017

The second of Click Consult’s Benchmark Conferences, 2016 saw attendees double in number and some fantastic guest speakers – here are Click Founder and CEO Matt Bullas’ reflections on each talk

Speakers

Engines of change – reflections on James Murray’s Benchmark ’16 talk ‘The Future of Search Decoded’

In the first of a series of analyses from the Benchmark Search Conference 2016, we look at Microsoft’s James Murray as he discusses what lies in store for search in the future

Murray proved to be quite the opener for this year’s conference, setting the bar extremely high for all those who followed. His talk, really, can be divided into two sections – the first two thirds were made up of some fantastic insight into possible future developments, while the final third treated us to some jaw dropping demonstrations of current software.

Thinking outside of the box took on a literal meaning, with Murray’s talk detailing the inevitable move away from the traditional search box toward an integrated world where our AI PAs are our gateway to information. From Cortana to SIRI and all in between, these electronic assistants are facilitating a move toward an increasing reliance on voice search in addition to rapidly becoming capable of inference.

Weather searches, for example, are shown over the last three decades, with lists of forecast sites representing the ‘90’s search term ‘weather’, an in-SERPs forecast for the ‘00’s for a search ‘london weather’, while the response to a voice search ‘do I need an umbrella tomorrow’ shows a location specific weather report for the following day. The difference is one most of us have lived through – and it is probably the incremental nature of technological advances that robs us of the wonder except in retrospect – the journey from what is clearly a total reliance on keywords to such a high degree of specificity from inference is astonishing, yet taken entirely for granted.

It is no wonder, however, that such dedication is being devoted to the ability to infer the intentions of consumers. Quoting an internet trends report, Murray relayed that a predicted 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. For obvious reasons, therefore, the advice Murray offered to search marketers today was:

Use broad match for your keyword targeting
Add question keywords
Consider your prepositions

All of this is, of course, to further help to capture the intention signals of natural language searches. As natural language searches increase and the longtail becomes more and more important, everything from paid search to landing page copy will need to change along with it.

The final third showed some of the current recognition abilities of AI – with the first of two case studies detailing Murray’s own struggles with Mandarin translation for a wedding speech and comparing it with the real time translation abilities of the Skype application. While Murray strived for three months to master his speech as a sign of respect to his wife’s Mandarin speaking parents, Skype can now conduct a live translation of conversations in a host of different languages.

This has some striking implications on a linguistic level – regarding the stability of native languages, possibly counteracting a widely predicted move toward the evolution of various hybrid languages (such as Spanglish) as instantaneous translation becomes standard. However, it also paves the way for a more organic approach to multinational and multi-lingual search as, with increasing proficiency in translation from AIs, comes an opening up of the web to nationalities and language speakers beyond those for whom content is initially written or produced.

Following this was possibly the most inspirational moment of the conference, as the interpretative power of AI was shown acting as a new sensory input for the blind, with ‘captionbot.ai’ increasingly capable of describing its surroundings to a blind user. As these abilities grow (and Murray assured us there is a Microsoft team briefed with categorising and describing everything [no pressure]), the possibilities for AR and VR are limitless – not to mention the possibilities for advanced local advertising as AI begins to offer a ‘recommended’ list based on recognised daily activities with feedback from wearables and various lifestyle aps.

It was great to see Murray return for his second Benchmark talk, and also to see such a high standard set, with this first talk, for the rest of the conference.

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Data-driven decisions – looking back at Alan Reeves’ Benchmark ’16 talk

On a day with a wealth of fantastic speakers, it was fantastic to see Click Consult’s Director of Search Alan Reeves more than holding his own on stage

The title of Alan’s talk may well have raised a few eyebrows when it appeared in the pre-conference program – as a member of the Click Consult management team, it would be understandable if some of the delegates assumed the talk would be little more than an advert for outsourcing the search marketing needs of any brand. However, Alan was a fantastic example of Click Consult’s approach – his talk data-driven and balanced.

In addition to putting together a really useful spreadsheet to assist brands in their decision making, Alan presented some fantastic arguments both for and against both in-house and out-sourced search marketing in a manner both unbiased and clear.

To begin with, Alan set out the reasoning behind the spreadsheet’s calculations and segmentation and some basic assumptions that he made during its compilation – that:

There would be no half measures from either agency or in-house department.
That an agency has greater scale than an average in-house team.
Success is equally achievable for both methods.
That the spreadsheet’s reach includes only SEO.

He then proceeded to make some excellent points, ranging from the need for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely (SMART) objectives to the possible negative consequences of relying too heavily on the HiPPO.

While the talk offers some fantastic, actionable advice for any brand considering their options and whether or not to outsource its SEO or develop an in-house team, it also raises some great questions about the need to allow data to inform all aspects of a business plan. While it is certainly easier in most cases to farm work out to an agency (from a purely practical perspective), Alan’s talk endeavours to convey the risks and rewards implicit in each decision taken regarding a brand’s approach to SEO, but also how different the situation will be for them all.

Agency vs. In-House – How To Strike The Perfect Balance | Benchmark Search Conference 2016 from Click Consult

The best decisions, as Click often proclaims, are those that are based on the complete picture (or at least as much of it as one can possibly gather), and therefore ensuring that each decision is weighed carefully against the brand’s ultimate objectives is the best way to make the right choice.

Alan’s talk completed a hat-trick of returning speakers opening the Benchmark Search Conference’s second year, and was able to showcase Click Consult’s commitment to knowledge sharing and transparency in a way the company can be proud of.

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Make it mobile – a look at Nick Wilsdon’s Benchmark ’16 talk

In this second in a series of analyses, we take a closer look at Vodafone’s Nick Wilsdon as he discusses mobile opportunities for 2016 at the Benchmark Search Conference

Wilsdon, as Vodafone’s SEO lead across 23 markets and 438 million mobile customers, knows a bit about mobile SEO and it was fantastic to welcome him back to Benchmark for another truly interesting talk. As you would expect, given his position and background, Wilsdon’s talk was weighted heavily in the favour of mobile as the future of the online experience. What may have surprised people there, however, is how well and convincingly he makes the case that other brands should follow suit with their priorities.

That is not to say he was exclusively, or unrelentingly, positive in his discussion of mobile. What makes Wilson such a good speaker is his identification of weak areas and his ability to offer solutions. While pointing out that only 7% of mobile users convert on a mobile device, for example, he asserts that the 50% that go on to convert on the same site using a different device do so due to a failure by brands to adequately cater to the needs of mobile users.

To demonstrate the truth of this, Wilsdon is able to provide evidence from an application he worked on – that of Dominos Pizza. When the app was launched in 2012, the chart shows, orders through the app equated to 1% of all orders, however in only four years that has risen to 50% which, for a brand the size of Dominos, represents an enormous sum earned via the app.

Wilsdon then builds his vision for the future of mobile on Google’s framework for mobile ‘Accelerate, Engage, Convert, Retain’, but mostly the talk can be summed up in the phrase ‘make it mobile’. The search marketing industry has long led the push toward a better online mobile experience, and it needs to continue to do so by keeping up with the technology available.

In this regard, search marketing has a fantastic head start over traditional marketing. The move to mobile devices is unlikely to take the industry by surprise in the same way that the move online did traditional marketing agencies. Provided, that is, that we are not left behind by technological advances.

While AMP1 (the first iteration of Accelerated Mobile Pages) is not suitable for use with the majority of eCommerce sites, AMP2 is just around the corner and preperations can and should be made. 92% of people that fail an initial authentication prompt will not try again, so efforts to make authentication easy must be made. Https enables push notifications which, as Wilsdon points out, are opened 38% of the time and result in 9 times more recovered carts than average.

The take-home message from this talk is that the future, whether we are prepared for it or not, will take place on mobile devices. Therefore, it will clearly pay for brands to be at the leading edge of the development of the mobile experience.

This has interesting implications for how we interact with brands and how we spend our money. With the opportunity for dynamic linking permitting the bypass of various app stores or Google’s Play Store and, therefore, for the app experience to quickly become universal, authentication via our mobile providers will become far simpler and far quicker and, as such, the rise of payment methods such as the Vodafone wallet will become increasingly prevalent.

With payment already possible in physical stores with a swipe of a mobile, think how much more could be achieved were we to make purchases through our mobile devices as simple as these transactions – as Amazon and Dominos have. How much better could our conversion rates become if we were able to permit the 7% of consumers currently converting on a mobile device to be joined not only by the 50% that are forced to move to another device but also the 24% that seek out a site with a better mobile experience?

Nick Wilsdon was both the second speaker on the day, and the second of our returning speakers from last year’s Benchmark Search Conference. His knowledge of the mobile industry and passion for mobile search is not only apparent during his highly engaging talks, but also extremely infectious – there will have, no doubt, been a number of converts to the mobile cause following his time on the stage.

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Hamstrung SEO: Why trust is vital – a look back at Rob Hughes’ Benchmark ’16 talk

Rob Hughes’ Benchmark talk really cut to the heart of one of SEO’s major modern problems – trust and how to earn it when predecessors or other agencies have lost it

We were really pleased to welcome Rob Hughes to the Benchmark stage this year, a man with a wealth of experience both at agencies and, more recently, client side. As he informed a packed hall at this year’s conference, he has spent the last 18 months at JD Williams – a fashion retailer with a 140 year history and a series of websites each around 20 years old.

The position Hughes found himself in will be familiar to any SEO professional arriving at a brand with a long standing internal SEO department – there was a legacy of burned bridges, broken promises and trust issues extending back decades, all of which had ‘hamstrung’ the SEO practices of the brand. It is also a situation many agencies will find themselves in when taking on a client with one or more failed agency relationships in the past.

In this regard, the condition of JD Williams eCommerce sites serve as a particularly satisfying metaphor – operating with in excess of six different CMSs and, on average around 20 years old, the sites, as Hughes stated, were becoming more sticking plaster than website – this reflects the position many agencies or newly arrived in-house professionals will recognise, in that there are a lot of semi-finished or failed processes, content or practices which linger from legacy relationships and which must be addressed before progress can be made, but there are also trust issues that have arisen which can cause problems with implementing necessary changes.

The key to addressing these trust issues, Hughes states, is to implement five things to rebuild burned bridges. These are:

Process
Technology
Integration
Celebration
Communication

It’s a list that forms an integral part of what we do here at Click Consult, I’m pleased to say. Though Hughes rightly states the necessity of dynamic processes (capable of altering as and when required), the need for a process – especially when rebuilding trust between departments or between agency and brand is intrinsic, as a formalised process allows all parties to know where they are at any time. The same is true of technology and integration (or as Hughes refers to it later ‘joined up thinking’), by ensuring the right technologies are used and used by all who are a part of the process, and by ensuring that all parts of the process are included in decision making (integration), there is a demystification of the process which enables trust to grow at all stages without the potential obfuscatory nature of working in silos.

Celebration and communication here are really to strings of the same bow – while it may not be necessary to have formal reporting daily or even weekly what is necessary is to celebrate and communicate the wins. Again, it is only through transparency that trust can be earned and the hamstrung nature of SEO can be overcome in these situations. By including the appropriate people and departments at all stages, the way things work can easily be seen as well as the progress toward what is, whether in an in-house department or external agency, the same goal – success for the brand.

High staff turnover within departments and a minority of unscrupulous agencies have created a trust deficit for those unfortunate brands that have dealt with these issues, and it can impede the future SEO performance of any company if this deficit is not redressed. Therefore, as Hughes’ talk so accurately conveys, trust is the best way to avoid being hamstrung in your SEO practices.

It was great for us at Click Consult to hear such an interesting and honest talk from such an experienced client-side professional, and I’m sure there will have been many in the room that welcomed Hughes’ candour as issues like this can all too often be brushed to one side or ignored, yet are present in many brands across the vast majority of industries. The talk represented another great step forward in addressing the issues the SEO industry has at present, and as a company that prides itself on ethical, transparent practices, we were really pleased to play host to such a talk.

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The psychology behind content – psychoanalysing Bas van den Beld’s ’16 Benchmark talk

Bas van den Beld is one of Europe’s most sought after speakers on search marketing and his talk – ranging from Game of Social Thrones to the Kanisza Triangle via Donald Trump – was ample evidence as to why

The amount of psychology involved in search marketing is often overlooked – though it is generally accepted in traditional media, the relative youth of the digital sphere is often confused with a relative simplicity of technique. In actual fact, guiding choices online is as difficult a prospect as in any other medium and, as a result, just as complex. Bas van den Beld’s talk not only makes this clear but provided some fantastic metaphors, advice and descriptions in addition.

The talk began with a framing simile – Bas had been planning a holiday and had been looking to buy a back pack, his trouble finding the right backpack for the journey, however, he rightly compares to general consumer intention. He was confronted with 100+ million results for the term ‘best bag to travel with’ and, despite a real and immediate desire to purchase, he says, the choice was actually making purchase more difficult.

This is, as the title of his talk suggested, not just applicable to eCommerce of course and the excessive choice is equally applicable to content marketing. What the talk argues is that sometimes less is actually more – provided this less is of a higher quality. Referring to Hootsuite’s ‘Game of Social Thrones’ Youtube video (listed in a Click Consult blog a while ago as one of the best examples of content marketing), Bas makes a fantastic argument for personalisation – for finding ‘shared values’.

Bas fantastically conveys the importance of contextualising content for the target market, and – as the maps he shares do with countries – placing your consumer at the heart of your content. This can be done in a number of ways – whether by finding common ground or common enemies, consumers want to recognise themselves in content, for content to have meaning for them.

The implications of this may appear obvious to anyone well versed in content marketing strategy, but one element of the talk which should certainly be more widely implemented is the view that each piece of content should be weighed in terms of trust. People, as Bas points out, make decisions based on past experience and trust, though hard won, is easily lost (as Rob Hughes pointed out in a previous talk) and content which does not reinforce the trust that consumers place in you can actually be counterproductive.

The talk, when viewed as part of the conference as a whole, is an incredibly timely one. While other speakers have shown us what is forthcoming with mobile and other digital technologies, one thing which will remain constant (though perhaps in differing forms) is the practice of content marketing. It is increasingly the case, as we at Click have stated previously, that consumers want relationships with the brands they buy from, and while the content we offer them may change as VR and AR become more widespread, what will not is the consumer’s desire to feel part of the experience, valued and catered for by the content.

This all feeds in to the underlying message of the talk – which we, as an industry, need to make it easy for the consumer to make the purchase. The more useful we can make our content the more relevant we can make it and the less we need to produce. The less confusing it is for the consumer to find what they are looking for, the less time a consumer has to search, the quicker they are able to buy and the sooner we can build a lasting relationship with them that will be important to both parties for years to come.

Bas van den Beld was another returnee to Benchmark stage and anyone who watches the presentation will be able to see why we were delighted he accepted the invitation to speak again. A thoroughly engaging speaker and consummate expert in his field, the talk was among my personal favourites – not least because it had a happy ending. They did, at last, find the right bag.

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Relationship Mastery – a friendly look at Lukasz Zelezney’s Benchmark ’16 talk ‘Social Media for Commerce’

Zelezny is not only a master of relationship management and social leveraging, he’s also a man with tremendous energy and enthusiasm – by the end of his talk it was impossible not to see the link between the two attributes

Sprinting out of the blocks for his first Benchmark talk, Zelezny launched straight into a captivating half hour dissection and discussion of how to best use social media for the purpose of brand building. Anyone familiar with his social media presence will be aware of how active he is across platforms, but here we got to see the planning behind the impressive presence he maintains.

Initially he details the seven varieties of social media persona he uses – and how to engage them. From the ‘quiet follower’, tempted in by polls, quizzes, visual content and strong calls to action (CTAs) to the loyal fan whom, Zelezny says, should be recognised, rewarded with gifts and mentions in order to maintain the most positive persona relationship as he sees it, there is a discussion that artfully leads into his own tactics for brand promotion:

Engaging big fishes
Data utilisation
Clever scheduling
Finding and sharing interesting and relevant topics
Engaging with headlines
Engaging with thumbnails
Amplify
Paper.li
Brand tracking
Track results

The most important thing to take from this, however, is how un-cynical Zelezny is with his social interactions. He discusses the possibilities of using conversations with large brands to promote himself through retweets or responses that the brand’s followers can see, he talks about using trending hashtags in the same way, but what you come away with – which isn’t stated explicitly – is the impression that this works, at least in part, because of how genuine these interactions are.

He doesn’t post pictures of his minion accompanied train journey simply for retweets but because he thought it was funny, he tells Franky & Benny’s that he loves their scrambled eggs because he actually loves their scrambled eggs. Though the tips he shares are certainly capable of improving the social presence of brands and publishers, what will push these results further is harnessing the innate enthusiasm and interests of the brand’s employees and founders to do so.

It cannot be denied, however, that there is a lot of data-analysis and solid data-driven thinking behind his organisation. Pointing out scheduling tools and social analysis tools, Zelezny also makes a fantastic case for listening to audience signals and tailoring output to responses, as well as looking to engage the audience with each aspect of content from the header image on, he also advocates the use of various aggregators which enable him not only to share his own content, but also to help him find valuable content to share with his followers.

Again, though, Zelezny places his followers at the heart of his content production and distribution – finding and creating content of genuine value to his followers, engaging with them in comment sections and reaching out to publishers whose work he has enjoyed or who have enjoyed his own. Overall, this was an education not just in social media management, and how to build a brand’s presence, but also in harnessing the interests and affections of brands and channelling them into the process to help raise awareness and build relationships.

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Activating your dual powered marketing with Act-On’s Kevin Bobowski

Following a pause, I finally find myself with a small amount of time to acknowledge and celebrate this year’s Benchmark Search Conference talks

We are firm believers in the practices of inbound and outbound marketing here at Click Consult – and the figures in Bobowski’s first few slides explain why.

Having flown in for the conference from Portland Oregon, Act-On’s head of marketing Kevin Bobowski began his talk with a brief overview of marketing automation, and how B2B purchase methods have changed – with research conducted online far in advance of any conversation with a sales rep.

He framed the growing importance of inbound marketing with a description of the buyer’s cycle and sales cycle which, running parallel, have elevated the necessity for a quality inbound marketing strategy because, while sales cycles may be shortening, this is due to a lengthening buyer’s cycle – a cycle increasing because of extensive preliminary research process by decision makers.

Inbound, he argues, is about delivering a great consumer experience through lead nurturing. In fact, as one of his statistics (from Demand Gen Report) states: ‘50% of leads are qualified, but are not yet ready to buy’, while the second statistic from the slide (from Forrester Research) shows that ‘[c]ompanies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost.’

This can, he says, lead to a lead focused culture which he advises can be combatted by ‘putting the “B” back into B2B marketing’. By selling and talking to businesses rather than leads, we can deliver a better overall experience.

This is where outbound enters the talk, with its ability to enable better opportunities for nurturing leads (or businesses) through to their eventual conversion. With further statistics, Bobowski highlights that brands which operate a 50/50 approach to inbound and outbound marketing can expect to perform better.

While there are misconceptions about their potential attributable revenue is fairly equal with inbound and outbound at 41% and 43% respectively (Demand Metric Research Report).

All of this can be framed by a simple equation – that of Lifetime Value (LTV) over Cost of Acquisition. He offers an ideal of 3x as a value of this, suggesting that figures below this require a better understanding of the numbers entered.

Lifetime value, for example, can at least partially be put down to attempting to sell to the wrong audience, while cost of acquisition can be reduced using better focused, better targeted inbound and outbound content.

It’s a method we are familiar with at Click Consult, where data drives our efforts, but one which is yet to fully permeate the search marketing industry as a whole. While there are indisputably trends in marketing (and probably more so in search marketing), the next big thing cannot become the primary focus of a marketing strategy – which should always be a well-integrated mixture of all available tools working together.

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Power of Audience – Matt Bullas takes another look at the Benchmark talk from Google’s Shane Cahill

We no longer go online, we live online, says Google’s Shane Cahill, and that’s why audience targeting has become the key to successful digital marketing

Click Consult has made no secret of the fact that it believes the future of search lies in successful implementation of audience targeting and personalisation (you may have seen, for example, our recent Drum supplement), and Shane Cahill’s talk goes some way to explaining why every marketing department and agency will soon feel the same.

Despite finding himself in the pre-lunch slot, Shane delivered a talk that none of the gathered delegates could begrudge staying for – filled with facts and figures from the big data age that will have had anyone present without a plan for targeting and personalisation sure to make one.

Personalisation is possible predominately because of the amount of available data – which, were the 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data we produce collectively each day converted into books, would result in two stacks capable of reaching the moon – which has permitted insights such as the following:

40% of all baby product purchasers live in households without children.
Only 31% of mobile searchers for video games are men aged between 18 and 34.

It is insights like these, counterintuitive to many, which demonstrate the errors it is possible to make in search marketing when we choose instinct over data, and reveal clear gaps in the marketing of products which can be capitalised upon by employing data driven marketing strategies.

Cahill then offered some tips on how to ensure brands will get the most out of their targeting (through Google, of course).

The future, he says, will go even further – real-time personalisation. It’s not difficult to see this coming to fruition in the near future. Our footsteps on-line fall heavy and leave many tracks. It is not unreasonable to assume that following an initial cookie placement (or even a visit from a recognised IP address) will automatically generate an experience that will better serve the individual consumer based on their habits both on-site and elsewhere on-line.

As Cahill says, people love personalisation – they love to feel unique (whether that is in the, less than tasteful colour scheme they choose for their shoes – see slide 29 – or simply the products you offer them – as with Amazon), but not simply a target.

It is this last point that is the real take-home from the talk. It is all too easy to think only of the brand, and to seek to maximise revenue with audience targeting and personalisation, yet any effort that fails to take into consideration that each audience member (however well targeted they may be by automation or generalisation) is an individual, will not succeed as well. As such, always remember to keep the consumer at the heart of personalisation practices, and the rewards for the brand will follow.

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Stop thinking start doing – a Benchmark 2016 talk review

Halliday, from Satsuma Loans, was at a bit of a disadvantage (having been tagged for a talk the evening before), so the title of his talk may not come as a surprise – he had little choice

Halliday has been practicing SEO for over a decade – since, he confides, it was as simple as white text on a white background to boost rankings. One of the main things he’s learned in this time, he says, was specifically about getting the most out of a conference.

While the amount of information on offer, especially at The Benchmark Search Conference, was enormous – the important thing was not to return to the office with a list the length of one’s arm which will never see the light of day, but to prioritise a top three.

The reason for this, Halliday posits, is that the process of prioritisation focuses your task list – ensuring that it is only the most vital of the possible options that you are taking back, and therefore increasing the chances of implementation and ROI on the costs of attending conferences.

Regardless of how long the list of important possible improvements is, he says, your actual ‘to do’ list should always remain short. This has vital implications for motivation and morale – as the completion of a short list gives a sense of achievement that will not come from achieving the same number of tasks on a longer list.

By ensuring you are working with small sections of an overarching strategy, you can become more responsive to change, quicker to implement improvements and, overall, better at getting things done.

Essentially this is good advice – and one of the reasons Click Consult operates in workflow periods, with quick wins and easily implemented changes taking precedence within a more complex and thorough overall client strategy.

As I’ve often said, search marketing is one of the most rapidly changing of all industries – and there is, therefore, a real importance that must be placed on the adaptability of a strategy. Working in sections permits the flexibility to adapt and adapt quickly to any changes implemented by Google or other search engines.

While Halliday’s talk may have been hastily cobbled together, the advice of ‘stop thinking and start doing’ is important. Too much time can be spent tinkering with the minutiae of long term strategy while little or nothing is done in the short term. With this in mind, we hope that everyone that attended The Benchmark Search Conference 2016 was able to leave with just such a list of priorities and is now seeing the rewards that come from their implementation.

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Social Media and Targeting: a Public Sector Perspective – a Benchmark Talk Review

Amanda Coleman of Greater Manchester Police shows the effect social media has had even with no budget

While Coleman was out of her element around the facts, figures and consumer interaction best practices of search marketing (she said herself, the ‘customers’ of Greater Manchester Police, are not entirely looking for a personal relationship).

However, what Coleman was able to demonstrate was that, even in such a seemingly disconnected sector, the police deal with many of the same issues surrounding a social media strategy that many SME’s may do.

For example, there are budgetary issues which make social media a fantastic opportunity for building relationships in a community with little initial financial outlay. There are issues with tone of voice – which had to be taught to all officers using social media, and also social media has been allowing them to develop conversations with the people in areas which have historically not communicated with the police.

It also, again as with some brands, social media has proven itself irreplaceable when it comes to crisis management – allowing the fast, clear and concise communication of issues, information and resolutions.

Coleman also spoke of the importance of content targeted specifically at locations, times and demographics in order to achieve better reach and better results – after all, the idea that a message spread further is better is as applicable in law enforcement as it is in any industry.

It is important to see things from other perspectives, yet it was enlightening to see how many of the same issues are present in such a different sector and how the methods (arrived at independently for the most part) developed to handle them have been so similar.

In that vein, the police too are looking to begin using data and targeting to predict user behaviour which will allow them to begin using social media almost as a preventative measure as well as a communication platform.

Click Consult is committed not just to following best practice, but to driving it forward. More on the Benchmark Search Conference can be found here, but you can also help yourself to one of our many eBooks. Alternatively, contact us today to see what an industry leading search agency can do for your brand.