Starcom Builds 300 Data Points Into Search Discoverability Framework

Mark-Pavia-AStarcom has built a framework to support clients' search engine marketing campaigns based on the ease or the difficulty of finding a brand's products or services from a search on the Web. The "Discoverability" model, based on the simple question "are you easy to find," replaces blank stares from clients who found the process difficult to comprehend.

The model allows Starcom's search team to support varying client strategies. A series of metrics evaluate and provide guidance based on a scale from zero to 100, taking into account the elements in a search campaign, such as when the brand runs on specific keywords, best practices in ad copy, surrounding editorial copy, and landing pages. It also considers the competitors and budgets.

While more than 100 data points power an average conclusion, Starcom has the ability to "consider more than 300 different levers to pull, dial up or down or take in," said Mark Pavia, executive vice president of digital managing director at Starcom. "We realized that if we wanted to convince the C-suite we could have an impact on their business, we had to put it in simple terms."

General Electric and Anheuser-Busch are two companies that recently began using the framework.

Putting a value on each event allows Starcom to better communicate the success and the failure of the campaign, based on a discoverability score, which also helps to somewhat attribute cross-media attribution. It accounts for external media also running, but the agency has yet to apply the score to an attribution layer.

"If we wanted to talk to a client about how to improve their quality score, we would spend 15 minutes explaining the meaning of quality score and all the things that went into it," said Paul Dejarnatt, senior vice president, search director at Starcom. "This way we can talk at a higher level, more universally, and then drill down to the individual elements because it's based on a framework. Now it takes two minutes to get into the discussion."

The data provides insight into points in time that reflect trends. Feeding the system with data and crunching the numbers might take a couple of hours. The score is not designed to make a company look good, but rather provide an accurate read of the search discoverability.

2 comments about "Starcom Builds 300 Data Points Into Search Discoverability Framework".
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  1. Mike Einstein from the Brothers Einstein, March 25, 2013 at 10:17 a.m.

    What a crock of BS. 379 words and "advertising" doesn't appear a single time. This snake oil has "former CMO" written all over it.

  2. Marty Rolnick from The Ideamaker, March 25, 2013 at 10:34 a.m.

    Is there anyone out there who can say with a straight face they actually believe this nonsense? Where has all the common sense gone?

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