Marketing Week Profiles: bigmouthmedia

●●● Who we are… Founded in 1997, bigmouthmedia is a leading digital marketing agency with over 200 staff across 13 offices, in eight countries on three continents. For a decade we’ve been a leading influence in search marketing, and have built a portfolio of integrated or standalone digital marketing products so that our clients can get the maximum benefit from the discipline. We’re an award-winning, multilingual agency with fire in our belly and a track record of digital marketing through search, online media planning, affiliate marketing, social media and brand monitoring that places us at the forefront of the industry.

●●● What we do… Through a variety of fully integrated digital marketing channels, our job is to develop, achieve and track the client’s target result; whether that be sales, enquiries, brand exposure, brand buzz, demographic expansion, user engagement, relationship marketing and/or user reach. We go the extra mile for our clients.

●●● Who we work with… Bigmouthmedia services over 200 big-brand customers including: Adidas, MTV, Hilton, British Airways, AOL, Austrian Airlines, Tesco, Aer Lingus, BP Castrol, Barclays, Conrad International, Dorling Kindersley, Early Learning Centre, easyCar, Fasthosts, Jumeirah, Mexx, Kodak, Canon, NCP, Samsung, Starbucks, Top Shop and Top Man, the Financial Times, Debenhams, Which?, Lacoste, Euler Hermes and Wall Street Institute, Pitney Bowes, Ernest Jones, Harley Medical Group, Jaques Vert, Littlewoods Stores and Opodo.

●●● Why work with us…? Because integration, and multi-channel strategy are key in digital marketing, and, in short, we provide multi-channel synergies to target the right user at the right time with the right message to achieve the client’s end objective. Add to that our proven track record, our bespoke clientcentred approach, 200-plus talented staff, specific centres of excellence, ability to handle complex campaigns in over 20 languages, and you know we’re the perfect partner for a robust, effective, digital marketing campaign. In short, we provide multichannel synergies to target the right user at the right time with the right message to achieve the client’s objectives.

●●● What we did for Hilton
Travel is huge business online, with gross booking value in the UK for 2007 on course to exceed £11bn, and travel bookings across Europe increasing by 27% year on year. As a leader in the field, it is imperative for Hilton to lead the way in digital marketing strategy and innovation.

●●● The brief and objective
In autumn 2006 bigmouthmedia developed a ground-breaking search engine management (SEM) strategy for Hilton, aimed at establishing the hotel as the leader in its field within the online sector, and in response to stiff competition in the online travel market and rising CPCs.The campaign had three key objectives: to leverage the Hilton brand by ensuring that it appeared 100% of the time for related searches; to boost its market share and return on investment (ROI) in an increasingly competitive market ; and to localise the Hilton search offering through new and existing channels in order to make its product more targeted and to capture people at different stages of the buying process.

●●● Execution
A restructure of the accounts took place to develop a separate keyword campaign and individual bid strategy for each of the 250 hotel properties. This enabled bigmouthmedia and Hilton to have maximum control at a local level, and to take advantage of local events and other opportunities. In addition, Hilton was also the first hotel chain to be put live on Google Local Business ads Beta programme.

Ad copy was individualised and changed to include a strong call to action and other messages including “best rates online at the official Hilton websites”. By the end of April 2007 (a period of just four months), the volume sales from the bigmouthmedia paid search campaign was higher than the whole of 2006. By the end of July 2007 (a six-month period), the sales volume is already larger than 2004, 2005 and 2006 combined.

During this period of sales growth, ROI has grown to 24:1, more than doubling from 11:1 the previous year. Conversion rates on the site from paid search traffic also increased to 3.97% from 2.04% in 2006.

●●● Results
Results for the first month smashed through Hilton’s targets, not only meeting its cost per action (CPA) but also yielding an ROI of 75:1 in January 2007 for Google Local Business – even higher than that of its paid search activity. Now that it has had the opportunity to test local business ads, bigmouthmedia and the Hilton search marketing team can confidently tell the rest of the business: “We brought you £75 for every £1 you invested.”

bigmouthmedia
51 Timberbush
Edinburgh
EH6 6QH

● Managing Director, Lyndsay Menzies
● Head of Sales Operations, Simon Heyes
● T: 0845 130 0022
● E: hello@bigmouthmedia.com
● W: www.bigmouthmedia.com