As President of Anvil Media, Inc., Kent Lewis is responsible for managing operations, marketing and business development to achieve the company’s mission: to make every client a testimonial and case study. Lewis founded Anvil Media in 2000 to help clients increase visibility, leads and sales through their Web presence. Current Anvil Media clients include American Red Cross, Cardiac Science, CreditReport.com, InFocus, Kettle Foods, Oregon State University, PC World, Pearson, Planar, ReliableRemodeler.com, Thrifty Airport Parking and TransCore.
1) Tell me about Anvil Media. What is a typical client engagement for you?
Anvil Media is a full-service search engine marketing agency that specializes in both paid (PPC) and organic (SEO) marketing services. Although we were founded in 2000, we started hiring employees in 2004 and are now one of Oregon’s largest SEM agencies. With 50 clients at any given time, we have a mix of ongoing and project-based work. While a standard SEM engagement includes ongoing management of SEO and PPC programs, we do have clients that benefit from the more cost-effective SEM consulting projects. Both special projects and ongoing clients appreciate our social media optimization, online reputation management and SEO PR service offerings, which we’ve been refining over the past few years.
2) What is the best way for somebody to learn Search Marketing?
When I jumped into the world of Internet marketing in 1996, there were very few newsletter or Web site resources, let alone books or classes. I was a self-taught SEM professional, but we’ve been able to develop a training regiment for new hires that lack the necessary SEM experience. Short of talking your way into an SEM agency with no experience, I recommend taking a gradual approach to learning. Start with the free resources like Web sites, newsletters and forums. Move up to books and seminars, then graduate to full coursework. A few of my favorite resources include: clickz.com, dmnews.com, seomoz.org, sempdx.org, sempo.org, searchengineland.com and searchenginewatch.com.
3) How do you define a successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign?
Speaking in generalities, a successful SEM campaign meets the desired objective (awareness, leads or sales are common with our clients). A truly successful campaign integrates existing knowledge, best practices and marketing programs (i.e. press releases, direct mail and advertising campaigns). Based on our experience, the clients with the most successful campaigns simply follow our advice. They ensure our recommendations are implemented from stem to stern, including initial keyword selection, key messages and offers in ad copy, landing page and Web site design and most importantly, conversion tracking. I personally wouldn’t be happy with less than a 400% ROI on any SEM campaign, although we’ve seen 6x that return for some clients.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.
