Posted by Tanya Vaughan, Global SEO Program Manager, HP.com

After a few schedule changes and coordination efforts, I am finally coming through with the interview with HP’s internal Global Paid Search Marketing Manager, Ryan Drey.

Here’s his mug so you can picture him while reading his witty, yet thoughtful, responses.

Tanya: Ryan, Let's start with the easy one.  What is your current title?

Ryan: Manager, Global Search
Brand Marketing

Tanya: What is HP’s overall budget for search? Just kidding – don’t answer that!

Ryan: 400 Million Rubels

Tanya: Wow. That’s a lot of Rubels. About how many people would you estimate manage paid search campaigns at HP?

Ryan: Worldwide I am in contact with about 30 different individuals that manage search for HP. The number of dedicated resources varies by business group though.

Tanya: How does your role differ from these other roles?

Ryan: The main difference is that my activities are not limited to the goals of a single business group. It’s my job to head off potential business group conflict and to address strategic issues that affect HP as a whole.

Tanya: You and I have similar roles in that we are charged with the overall governance of different search programs at HP. What is your advice for someone in a role like this to influence and ensure the extended paid search marketing teams adhere to the governance model when they don’t report directly to you?

Ryan: It is a challenge to have a centralized marketing in a decentralized marketing structure. I manage virtual teams and listen to the needs of each team and add value where I can. I am fortunate to work with teams that really dedicated teams that are eager to test, learn and share. When people want to communicate, it makes my job much easier. Essentially, my key function is to keep information flowing across regions and business groups.

Tanya: What are the responsibilities that fall under you that impact the rest of the paid search marketing community?

Ryan: I take on any issues that affect the company as a whole. I lead discussions on our search strategic framework, agency reviews and best practices. In addition I help implement better analytic tools to further optimize our campaigns and make those tools available to internal marketing teams and our agencies. In regions that have few resources I fund and manage paid search campaigns that support local initiatives. Beyond that I hold monthly global update meetings that help keep everyone informed on anything search related.

Tanya: Do you manage any search campaigns or is your role limited to coordination, communication, governance and strategy?

Ryan: I do manage some search campaigns. We try to integrate our paid search with our public relations teams and I manage those campaigns, but I also co-manage campaigns that support regional initiatives.

Tanya: I face this challenge with SEO and assume you do on the paid side as well but how do you balance conflicting requests from different segments or business divisions of HP? For example, when different groups each want their specific page to show up at the top of HP search results for a particular keyword query?

Ryan: As a whole, our search managers communicate well, and that helps to avoid most conflicts. Small budgets also can help different teams coexist in some cases. We do have a framework for dealing with conflict rather than a strict hierarchy that helps resolve conflicting requests. We evaluate objectives, total coverage, and timing. In most cases we are able to find an equitable solution. I am more of an arbitrator than a strict judge in these cases.

Tanya: To what extent are the paid search marketing campaigns managed in house?

Ryan: Again, our approach varies by the needs of each business group, but in general our agencies manage the day-to-day implementation and optimization of the campaigns and internally we manage strategy. We definitely rely on our agencies for strategic input, but the main decisions are made by each marketing team.

Tanya: How do you educate and encourage integration with the other marketing programs to ensure they integrate paid search into their overall marketing mix?

Ryan: Integration has been a key goal for us since we started doing paid search, and it remains an ongoing challenge. Like many large companies, we have several agencies concentrating on different marketing tactics and we want those agency partners to work as closely together as possible. It’s really the same basic approach of fostering clear and constant communication across teams so that we can take advantage of marketing opportunities in a timely way.

Tanya: Do you consider SEO or on-site search to be important marketing vehicles in addition to paid search? (Ok, I might be leading the witness a little here!)

Ryan: I still have no clue what you SEO guys do. I keep reading this blog hoping to learn something on the subject. Yes, definitely. It’s common mistake to focus only on the paid search. It’s easy to focus on where the big marketing dollars are and of course natural search rarely has a big spend associated with it because it should be built into the workflow. But that’s exactly why it needs attention. Some reports show that over 70% of search clicks are on natural results, and those clicks are essentially free once you have visibility. That’s too large an audience ignore.

Tanya: It’s fairly common for people to confuse arguments for integrating paid search or SEO into their search marketing efforts as an either/or proposition. How do you explain to them that putting forth efforts in both areas makes the most sense and that doing one and not the other is a disservice?

Ryan: That’s a really great question. It’s really easy to get tunnel vision when so many activities are sectioned off as some one else’s responsibility. I am guilty of doing it myself. I think the key is getting our people to think from the customer’s point of view and realize that they may reach our site or store from a variety of ways. We have to anticipate the customer experience and optimize around that. If you only optimize around paid search you are leaving out a huge portion of your audience.

Tanya: How does SEO affect the paid search efforts at HP?

Ryan: Whenever we can rank highly for terms that we’re also bidding on in sponsored search, especially high-volume terms, it sends a message that HP is a leader in the industry. It also acts as a subsidy for the paid campaigns as when the customer chooses to click the organic result we get the benefit of the impression without the cost – enabling our ad dollars to do more.

Tanya: How do you think our Paid Search campaigns can make an impact to further SEO efforts?

Ryan: We can learn a lot from paid search campaigns about customer language and intent and then use that to prioritize SEO efforts.

Tanya: What kind of information could I provide from an SEO front that would aid in better paid search campaign management?

Ryan: I don’t think we need more information as much as we need integration. And in this respect I think our challenges are the same. SEM (Paid, Site, and Natural) has to be included at the strategic level. If we are part of the planning at the very beginning it makes everything else go so much more smoothly.

Tanya: You and I meet on a regular basis (with the on-site search lead, Laura Dansbury) to ensure we’re aligned and can share any thing that might help aid in other search efforts. Are there other ways you see for better integration?

Ryan: Aligning under the same organization could lead to more natural integration, if feasible. Otherwise, a good step toward integration is having shared goals. Aligning with the same measurement goals enables you to impact the nature of regular meetings in that you could manage shared outcomes as opposed to simply providing updates.

Tanya: Do you feel most companies’ higher-level management understand the difference between paid search and organic search and why they are both important?

Ryan: It could be better. I think most everyone has a basic understanding that attention needs to be paid to search. However, management needs to understand the nuances of paid and natural search. Each is changing constantly, and it’s tough for even dedicated search marketers to keep up with best practices. But it’s extremely important senior management understands the benefits of Paid Search and Search Engine Optimization and what it requires to do both well.

We continue to educate, and part of the challenge is making sure that we share the right metrics with management. It’s easy but sometimes misleading to simply show ROI metrics and be done with it. We try to show a well-rounded view of search performance so that search is recognized as a broad-reach medium.

Tanya: You’ve probably heard me stress the importance of stressing which form of search you’re speaking about in any given conversation or communication because of the potential confusion it may cause to the laymen. You’ll notice I always throw in the “paid” qualifier when talking about your program and the reason is that I believe both SEO and on-site search are also marketing and thus part of “search engine marketing” or SEM so I don’t like referring to paid search as such.

Ryan: I agree. It’s important to point out in this forum, because not everyone segments out the different parts of search the way we do. I suspect that in many cases – and often smaller companies – they are pulled together as one function. Pointing out my activities as “paid” is probably the best way to clarify it under the umbrella term of SEM. As you mentioned, we have related but separate teams, but the ultimate goal is that the experience is unified for the customer.

Tanya: What do you think has been the key to the SEO Program and the paid search program being successful in integration?

Ryan: It boils down to a willingness of individuals to work together for a superior outcome. I know that sounds a little high brow, but without our individual business groups continually making the effort to share and listen to each other, there is no way I would be successful at my job.

Thanks for the interview Ryan! I know a lot of large organizations are dealing with how to better integrate search and I think we’ve done a great job at it here at HP. And you’re right; it has to do largely with the individuals with which you integrate. I’m grateful to have such great colleagues who are appreciate the need for cross-search strategy.