UK Search Awards 2019 - Book of the Night by Don't Panic Events

THANKS TO OUR EVENT SPONSORS

RELIVE THE SEARCH PARTY THE BREWERY, LONDON | 19 NOVEMBER 2019 Welcome to the UK Search Awards Book of the Night 2019. Inside you will find details of all our finalists plus a showcase of this year’s winning work. Since its launch, the UK Search Awards has celebrated the very best in SEO, PPC and content marketing across the UK, and recognised and rewarded the individuals, companies and organisations that are transforming the Search industry. Entry quality was extremely high and our thanks go out to our judging panel who had the unenviable task of shortlisting and choosing this year’s winners. I’d also like to thank our sponsors and supporters for adding their weight and considerable influence on a competition that continues to reflect the talent, expertise and continuing growth of the industry. If you were there on the night, you will have celebrated, laughed along with our host, Jon Culshaw, and mingled with the best in Search – not to mention danced the night away! So, our final thanks and huge congratulations goes to all the winners and everyone who made the shortlist. It’s a real achievement and I hope you enjoyed the evening. Nicky Wake Don’t Panic MD & Creator of Search Awards

BEST USE OF SEARCH RETAIL/eCOMMERCE (SEO) FINALISTS Absolute Digital Media & WPC Decking Benefit & Merkle Crafted & Frugi Croud & OKA Evolved Search & River Island MediaVision & Boux Avenue Reflect Digital & Ace Sheds Re:signal & ASICS Europe Semetrical & Crown Pavilions

The judges liked how this e approach with a good use o Great work that went on

WINNER: Crafted & Frugi

entry took a comprehensive of multiple elements of SEO. to deliver strong results.

SUMMARY Frugi are one of the UK’s leading clothing companies, based in Cornwall, they pride themselves on creating ethical and organic products. Certified with both the GOTS and the Soil Association, all their packaging is biodegradable and their outwear range is made entirely from 100% recycled post-consumer materials (over 500,000 plastic bottles). Unveiled in 2019, Frugi launched a brand new Spring Summer collection called the ‘Summer of Scillyness’. The colours, motifs and imagery of this collection were inspired by a trip to the beautiful Isles of Scilly. Crafted have loved working with Frugi who share the same approach in building an environmentally friendly company with a focus on charitable work. Crafted delivered outstanding results against the core objectives which contributed towards the ‘Summer of Scillyness’ becoming one of Frugi’s most successful collection launches to date.

BEST USE OF SEARCH RETAIL/eCOMMERCE (PPC) FINALISTS Custard Digital Uncut & Hiyacar Epiphany & Euro Car Parts Epiphany & Furniture Choice Epiphany & Pandora ForwardPMX Impression & Parker Brand Jaywing Intelligence & Dominoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s MediaVision & Missoma Three & Mindshare

The judges were impressed w of the three audience groups to incredible results being a

WINNER: MediaVision & Missoma

with MediaVision’s clear grasp s for this campaign, which led achieved across the board.

SUMMARY MediaVision took over all of Missoma’s paid media channels (search, display and social) from a well-known global agency in November 2018. With Black Friday fast approaching and huge revenue targets to achieve, we knew an effective strategy and immediate action would be critical to achieve results. The results were remarkable: • + 1,101% increase in new customers vs the same period last year; • + 619% increase in non-brand transactions vs the same period last year; • + 467% increase in non-brand revenue vs the same period last year; • + 76% increase in the non-brand conversion rate vs the same period last year; • + 214% above our overall Paid Media target revenue; • + 113% overall increase in revenue across all channels (YoY).

BEST USE OF SEARCH FINANCE (SEO) FINALISTS Absolute Digital Media & Uncle Buck Better Agency & loveit coverit with AXA Click Consult & Chill Insurance Digitaloft & Veygo Evolved Search Refinitiv Re:signal & WorldRemit Screaming Frog & Moneybarn Verve Search & GoCompare WeBuyAnyHome.Com

The judges loved the simple p this campaign - brilliant exec

WINNER: Screaming Frog & Moneybarn

premise of storytelling within cution and impressive results!

SUMMARY Our campaign and work with Moneybarn over the last 12 months has helped to drive tremendous business growth for the company. We had a clear strategy to invest in telling stories which reinforced Moneybarn as a company who are passionate about cars and finance, and who want a better quality of life for people on the road across the UK. We created these stories with a series of mini content marketing and digital PR campaigns throughout the year, which have delivered over 300 links and counting from some of the most reputable and relevant publications in the UK. Our campaign was successful by utilising data in a number of interesting ways, such as scraping Spotify playlists, making government FOI requests or aggregating existing datasets to create multiple unique data hooks. This link acquisition work has helped to improve Moneybarnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s organic visibility significantly, with the company now ranking in the top 3 positions for virtually all target keywords. These ranking improvements have helped to deliver a 53% increase in organic traffic YoY, and an 81% increase in finance applications YoY.

BEST USE OF SEARCH FINANCE (PPC) FINALISTS ASSISTED. & LifeSearch AV Browne & Hughes Insurance Brainlabs & AllClear Core Optimisation & NM Money GoCompare MediaCom & Petplan MediaCom North & CarFinance 247 MediaCom North & Hitachi Reprise & LV=

The judges were impressed AV Browne & Hughes Insura the 'local' insurer push and that ‘localising’ marketing c

WINNER: AV Browne & Hughes Insurance

d with the clear brand vision ance had. It was great to see d they liked how it showed can really help drive sales.

SUMMARY AV Browne is a locally owned Belfast agency, formed in 1926. Our durability and success has come from always embracing the new and constantly evolving, to ensure our clients always receive the most effective and audience-engaging communications solutions for their business challenges. We delivered a hugely effective PPC campaign for Hughes Insurance this year, a local Northern Irish insurance broker who compete against some of the largest insurance institutions in the world as well as price comparison websites (PCW’s) like Compare the Market and GoCompare who generate over 300 times more monthly website visitors than Hughes on average (7.9 million vs. 24 thousand in the UK). This strategy was led by Paid Search, through which we brought the Hughes brand to life at a scale previously unimaginable through manual intervention. We are delighted to be recognised for both the AVB and Hughes’ teams’ joint dedication, our collective and constant endeavour for excellence in our work, with effectiveness as our benchmark.

BEST USE OF SEARCH TRAVEL / LEISURE (SEO) FINALISTS Blueclaw & Royal Caribbean Cdweb & Azonzo iCrossing Passion Digital Screaming Frog & Stasher Semetrical & Golf Travel Centre Stickyeyes & Hertz Europe StrategiQ & Jacada Threepipe & Keith Prowse Virgin Holidays & ForwardPMX Wavemaker North & TPE

The judges really enjoyed this en of inclusions from tech to conte All campaigns to en

WINNER: Stickyeyes & Hertz Europe

ntry, commenting on the breadth ent to strong SEO and creative. ngage and inspire!

SUMMARY For Hertz, we have put together a modern, creative and technically sound SEO strategy. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just about creative campaigns or SEO, content or technicals, but using best-in-class, forward-thinking solutions to brings all of these components together for a long-lasting and sustainable approach to the business. And the results speak for themselves: 31% increase in revenue, 26% increase in traffic and 22% increase in reservations, on average, across 6 key European territories.

BEST USE OF SEARCH TRAVEL / LEISURE (PPC) FINALISTS Clicky & Toad Hall Cottages Core Optimisation & St James Hotel Mayfair Exodus Travels & Ingenuity Digital Harvest Digital & Sziget Infinity & Blue Bay Travel Initiative MENA lastminute.com Loud Mouth Media & Titanic Belfast Mabo & Bannatyneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Merkle & Emirates

The judges were impressed with th included factors such as travel cos Harvest Digital showed great au

WINNER: Harvest Digital & Sziget

he thinking around targeting, which sts and targeting markets smartly. udience awareness in this entry.

SUMMARY Based in Budapest in Hungary, Sziget is one of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest music festivals. The last event, held in August 2019, attracted 530,000 visitors. Harvest manages all paid digital media for Sziget, including paid search across all European territories. Our goal is simply to generate the maximum revenue from all kinds of ticket sales. In 2019, we drove 64,000 incremental ticket sales to the festival. We reduced CPA by 40% YoY and achieved some breath-taking ROAS figures in some markets â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for instance, in France and Italy we generated 70 Euros of revenue for each Euro of search spend. The results were fantastic, but they were achieved on relatively modest budgets which had to be carefully managed across all the key European markets. We got these great results by matching creative to location, shifting strategies as we got closer to the date of the festival, and playing careful heed to the day of month that salaries are paid in different European markets.

BEST SEARCH MARKETING EDUCATION / TRAINING COURSE FINALISTS THE JUDGES DID NOT RELEASE A SHORTLIST FOR THIS CATEGORY

An all round brilliant entry. Deli and something the team behind t

WINNER: Performics & Elsevier

ivered to the highest standards the work should be very proud of.

SUMMARY Performics is continuously looking for innovative ways to tailor digital strategies to our clients, and for Elsevier this is no exception. In Q1 2019, Performics UK onboarded Elsevier as a new client for all digital strategy and activation activities. Among the key challenges of this new collaboration, a critical need to support Elsevier in their digital transformation to a global information analytics business and to improve digital skills across all marketers. Live Academy has been designed to meet those objectives. Entirely customized to Elsevierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business, and incorporated into their marketing career framework, this full curriculum combines a wide range of learning approaches to maximise knowledge acquisition. It is an honour to receive this award from the UK Search Awards. As important, it is a validation of our shared premise that a tailored learning and development program, alongside an effective client partnership, can ensure that strategy is absorbed early and often and guarantee marketers at all levels see the value of a digital partnership.

BEST USE OF SEARCH GAMING FINALISTS Better Collective & GrandNational.org.uk Evolved Search & Tombola iProspect & BetVictor The Media Image & Grosvenor twentysix & Free Super Tips Whites Agency & Sporticos

The judges said that they could see campaigns. Great use of insights by

WINNER: iProspect & BetVictor

e clear proof of the successof these y the team led to really great results.

SUMMARY BetVictor’s customers are on the lookout for ‘best in the market’ insight. Using our PVOS tool, we identified that there were opportunities to drive SEO performance and provide ‘best in market’ insight. This was achieved by simultaneously increasing our coverage on betting markets through the optimisation and creation of new pages, as well as having data driven insightful campaigns to drive authority to our key pages. With this innovative SEO approach, we managed to improve the customer experience by optimising pages to their intent and increase new customers by 48%, outperforming ALL other customer acquisition channels. Whilst the commercial results from the ongoing SEO activation are a fantastic reward by themselves, to see the hard work of both agency (iProspect) and client (BetVictor) recognised by the judges of the UK Search Awards is incredible.

BEST USE OF SEARCH THIRD SECTOR FINALISTS Anything is Possible & Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Crafted & University of Suffolk Delete & Leeds Beckett University Generate UK & PACT Passion Digital & National Trust Platypus Digital & Mental Health Foundation Sleeping Giant Media & The Aspinall Foundation Torchbox & Breast Cancer Care

The judges were impressed task in hand, defined SMART of budget versus fees, led

WINNER: Delete & Leeds Beckett University

d that even with a difficult objectives and an equal split to a successful campaign.

SUMMARY Universities are large and complex institutions with incredibly diverse audience segments. Because of this, many within this sector have now taken advantage of the need to attract students in a more effective way, with it is fast becoming a highly competitive marketplace. Leeds Beckett University recognised that a competitive advantage could be carved out by offering a superior user experience across their search marketing channels, and tasked Delete to take their online campaigns to the next level - with mobile engagement a top priority. The success of any digital marketing campaign relies on understanding your clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s target audience(s) and goals. We were able to clearly identify not only who we were targeting, but determine where undiscovered prospective students were, both physically and digitally, and made sure Leeds Beckett was visible in these spaces in highly creative and effective ways that drove people to act. We found innovative ways to reach prospective students at a fraction of previous costs, and Leeds Beckett couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be happier with our campaign performance.

BEST USE OF SEARCH B2B FINALISTS Digital Clarity & Bentley SYNCHRO Evolved Search Finally & Kingsbury MediaVision & Bidwells MediaVision & Instant Office MRS Digital & FMP Global Refinitiv Reflect Digital & Hospitality Finder Saint-Gobain Semetrical & Arkadin

The judges were impres and Hospitality Finderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clea what needed to be done and w Ambitious objectives were m

WINNER: Reflect Digital & Hospitality Finder

ssed with Reflect Digital ar plan of action, highlighting what was ultimately achieved. met, which was great to see.

SUMMARY Hospitality Finder is an independent hospitality company, providing exclusive VIP packages at leading sports and entertainment venues across the world. They are official hospitality suppliers to major British sporting events including Wimbledon, The Six Nations, The FA Cup Final and Cheltenham Festival - and also offer VIP access to international events like the French Open tennis and golfâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s US Masters. The combination of machine learning, data enhancements, position 0 strategy and effective link acquisition all worked to improve search engine visibility to drive more clicks to the site, helping deliver an increase in quality traffic and enquiries from search to events sitewide. Ultimately this campaign delivered huge ROI which is continuing to grow month on month. Reflect Digital has made a real business impact and has helped Hospitality Finder to grow more profitably than ever before.

BEST USE OF SEARCH B2C FINALISTS Brainlabs & Pitchup Digitaloft & The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance Digitaloft & Veygo Evolved Search ForwardPMX MediaCom North & Plumbs MediaVision & Boux Avenue MediaVision & Fixter MediaVision & Missoma Samsung & Starcom

The judges noted that Medi a very strong strategy and w Great results which showed

WINNER: MediaCom North & Plumbs

iaCom North & Plumbs had with clear objectives in mind. d exceptional performance!

SUMMARY Plumbs is a family business, specialising in sofa covers and reupholstery. With only two physical locations in the UK, the challenge was to establish them locally and nationally. Mega brands including eBay and Ikea dominated head terms in the sofa cover keyword market. Furthermore, both the Plumbs brand and the site were neither as large or as powerful as the big hitters. To overcome this, we ensured ensure all elements of the site and SEO were optimised to compete with the competitors. We also successfully crafted an on-page and off-page localised strategy to achieve our targets. Plumbs are delighted with these dramatic results, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thanks to our close collaboration with the client, a historic and in-depth awareness of their demographic, and fundamental understanding of SEO best practices that we have managed to dramatically turnaround an underperforming website.

BEST USE OF SEARCH HEALTH FINALISTS Absolute Digital Media & Longevita Hair Transplant AGY47 & IAS Medical Impression & Feel Good Contacts PlatformGSK & Sensodyne Life Sciences by Stickyeyes & TEVA Verve Search & Babylon Health Zeo Agency & Acibadem Health Group

Zeo had a strong strateg It was great to read how th hard to achieve such

WINNER: Zeo Agency & Acibadem Health Group

gy and smart objectives. he team worked extremely h impressive results.

SUMMARY Acibadem Healthcare Group provides healthcare services with its 22 hospitals, 15 outpatient clinics, and nearly 22.500 employees including 3.500 doctors and 4.000 nurses in 4 countries. The SEO collaboration between Zeo Agency & Acibadem started back in 2018. The main goals of the project were to increase the organic traffic and SEO visibility in the important health keywords, and to catch up with the competitors. The main strategy was creating 10x content from the existing content scattered around the subfolderlevel micro sites that had different designs and information architectures each. In the first six months of our collaboration, the Medic Update happened and the project evolved into a Medic Update Recovery project. After a while, we suggested a brand new design that is consistent and compatible with E-A-T guidelines. Despite all the obstacles due to the site migration, we managed to increase the SEO visibility by 10 times and organic traffic by 80% - as well as closing the gap with the nearest competitor.

BEST USE OF SEARCH REAL ESTATE & PROPERTY FINALISTS Avatar Creative & Millgate Chillibyte & WeBuyAnyHome.com MediaVision & Bidwells MediaVision & Douglas & Gordan MediaVision & Instant Offices Passion Digital & Homewise Space & Time Media & Linden Homes Space & Time Media & CALA Homes Space & Time Media & Jones Homes North West

The judges were taken aback wit They were particularly impressed per region which made for

WINNER: MediaVision & Instant Offices

th the level of detail in this entry. d with the good results breakdown r a more compelling case.

SUMMARY Delivering an additional 47% in enquiry growth is no small feat when you’ve already delivered over 600% growth for a brand and achieved 95% visibility around key phrases on page one of the search results, but when Instant Offices challenged us to take them to the next level, that’s exactly what we did. To meet the brief, we knew we would have to deliver high-quality traffic to improve conversion rate, and a granular, multi-layered approach helped us uncover new opportunities. The results were stellar: • +62% increase in Enquiries; • +70% increase in Deals; • +71% increase in Revenue; • +21% increase in Traffic YoY.

BEST USE OF SEARCH FMCG FINALISTS Benefit & Merkle PlatformGSK & Sensodyne s360 & Arla Foods Diageo & iProspect

With only a minimal budget Arla Foo great content for Arlaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cheese bran the results showed them to be

WINNER: s360 & Arla Foods

ods and s360 managed to generate nd and in only a short space of time dominating the search results.

SUMMARY From 0 to 15.000+ monthly visitors from SEO in only 6 months is something you don’t see every day. Especially for a small budget of €23.500. On this minimal budget Arla Foods and s360 managed to create a content universe for Arla’s cheese brand Castello and after just 6 months the content universe is dominating the search results in both UK and USA. The Castello content universe is called “A World of Cheese” and covers all interesting information around different types of cheese. The overall SEO presence of castellocheese.com improved by more than 700% in just 4 months. 85% of the 50 best positions in Google is now from this new content universe. Over the next 5 years, we expect more than 1.000.000 highly relevant visitors to the website on an investment lower than €25.000. We are honoured to be the recipient of the ‘Best Use of Search – FMCG’ award. The award is a great acknowledgement of our work and a symbol of an excellent cooperation between s360 and Arla Foods.

BEST LOCAL CAMPAIGN FINALISTS AV Browne & Hughes Insurance BP & Uberall Click Consult & Liverpool ONE Clicky Media & Animal Trust Climb Online & Dorsett Hotels MediaVision & Fresh Student Living MediaVision & Instant Offices Mediaworks & Emirates Saintâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Gobain TMI & UNCLE.co.uk

The judges said that this wa It was very impressive how despite having less b

WINNER: AV Browne & Hughes Insurance

as a brilliant local campaign. w results were still achieved budget year on year.

SUMMARY AV Browne is a locally owned Belfast agency, formed in 1926. Our durability and success has come from always embracing the new and constantly evolving, to ensure our clients always receive the most effective and audience-engaging communications solutions for their business challenges. We delivered a hugely effective PPC campaign for Hughes Insurance this year, a local Northern Irish insurance broker who compete against some of the largest insurance institutions in the world as well as price comparison websites (PCWâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s) like Compare the Market and GoCompare who generate over 300 times more monthly website visitors than Hughes on average (7.9 million vs. 24 thousand in the UK). This strategy was led by Paid Search, through which we brought the Hughes brand to life at a scale previously unimaginable through manual intervention. We are delighted to be recognised for both the AVB and Hughesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; teamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; joint dedication, our collective and constant endeavour for excellence in our work, with effectiveness as our benchmark.

BEST LOW BUDGET CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Digitas UK & Cadbury Gifts Direct ForwardPMX & Homecentre MediaCom Worldwide & ThisWorks Metrichub Digital & Chatham Shoes Netmatter & Brindisa novel & OOSC Clothing Screaming Frog & The Solar Centre SEO Works & Shop4Fasteners StrategiQ & Waller Transport Venture Stream & Aquacadabra Zeo Agency & iyzico

The judges noted that this entry ha summary that showcased everyth activity to results. It had really g engaging content as link bait an

WINNER: Screaming Frog & The Solar Centre

ad a succinct and powerful opening hing from objectives, competition, good use of simple, creative and nd they just loved this campaign!

SUMMARY The Solar Centre is a B2C e-commerce business selling a range of solar lighting products. The aim of this campaign was to build authoritative backlinks to their website, improving their organic visibility and brand awareness. The Solar Centre only sell a relatively niche product offering of solar lighting, making it difficult to build natural backlinks which arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t through product placement. As such, we knew we needed to produce something that would be link-worthy, newsworthy and have that all-important hook. We ultimately decided on a Christmas themed campaign, producing a set of 3 puzzles where festive words were hidden amongst tangled fairy lights. Alongside this, we also conducted a small survey asking people to time how long it took them to complete each puzzle, giving us an additional hook. The campaign resulted in 45 pieces of coverage, the majority with links. This has helped to increase The Solar Centreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s organic visibility by 51% YoY, and has established them as the most visible independent brand in the solar lighting space.

BEST INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Click Consult & Liverpool ONE Harvest Digital & Sziget Festival iCrossing & Visit Wales Impression & Envirobuild iProspect & Marcus by Goldman Sachs JD Pipes & Selesti MediaCom Worldwide & PlayStation MediaVision & Boux Avenue Reprise & LV= The Travel Chapter

The judges were impressed with collaboration. A great idea, whi

WINNER: Reprise & LV=

h the good use of cross agency ich ran across lots of channels.

SUMMARY In recognition of the growing trend towards consumers buying electric cars, LV= launched a new car insurance product specifically designed for pure electric vehicles (EVs). In a prime example of cross-network integration, Reprise, Initiative, Stickyeyes and Cadreon worked together to achieve amazing results for LV=, increasing electric car quotes by 138% and EV proportion of motor sales by 70%. In an effort to position LV= as a thought leader in the EV space, we developed a range of content and tools in partnership with Next Green Car to answer consumersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; most common questions and concerns. We then produced a number of engaging videos across a multitude of channels, surpassing targets against them all. We are incredibly proud of our work with LV= as it not only showcases how we can work together as an integrated unit, but it represents our entire agencyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environmental passion and aligns with our values of working towards a sustainable future or all. So, why not start with electrifying the insurance market?

MOST INNOVATIVE CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Genie Goals & Karl Lagerfeld Geronigo & Impression GoCompare & Microsoft Audience Network Journey Further & Sky KattÃ© & Co & Park Cameras Liberty & Label Source MediaVision & Boux Avenue Merkle & NOW TV Merkle & Twitter Virgin Holidays & ForwardPMX

Operating within a tricky climate, Fo a great strategy to drive brand awa by the focus on data and the c

WINNER: Virgin Holidays & ForwardPMX

orwardPMX and Virgin Holidays built areness. The judges were impressed creativity within this campaign.

SUMMARY With the difficulty of navigating seasonality, and the current geopolitical climate brewing a storm, ForwardPMX and Virgin Holidays had to build a first-of-its-kind strategy to turbocharge brand awareness. Coined ‘The Trending Travel Guide’, the project leveraged our industry-leading approach to data and creative to build an ever-evolving, interactive content campaign. The guide collates social media post volumes and ranks popular attractions based on millions of opinions, which is automatically refreshed daily. Additional content was produced by the ForwardPMX content teams, i.e. we interviewed Jon McBride, a former NASA astronaut who participates in the ‘Lunch with an Astronaut’ programme at the Kennedy Space Centre. The combined use of data and authentic content creation delivered a powerful solution to help bookers quickly identify where and why they should visit. It also led to Virgin Holidays connecting other departments for the first time, with the CRM and social teams implementing it in their 2019 strategy.

BEST PPC CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Circus PPC & Miele Epiphany & Pandora iProspect & Saga Mabo & Bannatyneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mabo & UK Tactical Merkle & NOW TV Merkle & Twitter Merkle & National Accident Helpline Receptional & Bill Plant Driving School Three & Mindshare

The judges said that it was helped fend off brand bid drove better than ant

WINNER: iProspect & Saga

s great how this campaign dding wars and ultimately ticipated efficiencies.

SUMMARY Despite high Quality Scores, Saga’s insurance paid search campaigns had seen costs increase YOY for brand-based keywords (e.g. “saga health insurance”), due to increased competition in the market from pure-play, aggregators and comparison engines. Every campaign produced for Saga also had high wastage potential due to barriers on who can purchase a Saga product. As this already-restricted customer base moved towards generic keywords, it became a strategic imperative to invest as much as possible in these terms. These three items – increased costs, move to generics and potential for waste – demanded a solution. Saga’s target was a 15% CPC reduction without sacrificing optimal average ad position. A common way to tackle efficiency and precision in search is through automation. However, when iProspect explored Google’s built-in automated bidding functionalities we quickly discovered this was backfiring, and in fact inflating CPCs. We clearly needed to find another way. So, we built one.

BEST SEO CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Click Consult & Liverpool ONE Digitaloft & Veygo Evolved Search & Money Guru Jamjar.com & Impression MediaVision & Instant Offices Re:signal & ASICS Europe Re:signal & WorldRemit Screaming Frog & Moneybarn twentysix & Free Super Tips Zeo Agency & Akakce

The judges were very impresse objectives. A clear breakdown of helped judges understand jus

WINNER: Re:signal & WorldRemit

ed with this entry and its smart the target audience and strategy st how great the results were.

SUMMARY Re:signal and WorldRemit have a fantastic working relationship, based on trust, teamwork, communication and results. WorldRemit have been a client for over 2 years and through the consistent delivery of high-quality work and achieving great results our relationship is stronger than ever. We are very much an extension of their internal marketing team and as such we have a collaborative approach to working, using consultancy time to work from their offices, allowing us to retain those key client relationships. From September 2018 to September 2019, our focused and targeted approach allowed us to increase organic sessions to 5,713,154 in 2018/19, from 3,725,164 Organic Sessions in 2017/18. This was a YoY increase of 53.4%.

BEST USE OF CONTENT MARKETING FINALISTS Digitaloft & The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance Digitaloft & Veygo Evolved Search Evolved Search & Money Guru Evolved Search & Tombola iProspect & The Body Shop MediaVision & Instant Offices s360 & Arla Foods Screaming Frog & Stasher Virgin Holidays & ForwardPMX

A clear understanding of the campaign was so successful bo all whilst operating in a h

WINNER: Evolved Search & Money Guru

e target customer is why this oth in terms of SEO and content, highly regulated market.

SUMMARY Newcastle-based Search specialist agency Evolved Search launched an investigative content piece entitled â&#x20AC;&#x153;How Much is Your Data Worth?â&#x20AC;?, a look at the trading of personal data on the dark web, for our client Money Guru. Money Guru is a fresh and innovative price comparison site, looking to increase market share and authority in the price comparison space. Their target customer is predominantly younger and very digitally-savvy, so this content piece was designed to resonate specifically with this group. The results have been phenomenal and smashed targets set by Money Guru, with over 701 pieces of online coverage, and steep increases in organic traffic, organic conversions and organic visibility and an appearance on Fox News in the US, along with hundreds of other Tier 1 placements on The Daily Mail, Independent, Metro, Yahoo and more. We believe this campaign shows a creative, best-in -class, ethical approach to content-led SEO, which has achieved outstanding results for the client, and it shows that you can be creative and engaging - even in Financial Services!

BEST USE OF PR IN A SEARCH CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Better Agency & loveit coverit with AXA Digitaloft & The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance Digitaloft & Veygo Evolved Search & Money Guru Koozai LG & Stickyeyes MediaVision & Boux Avenue Performance Communications & What Car? twentysix & Free Super Tips Wavemaker North & Swinton Insurance

Awareness of the market and a drove great results. A camp fans and the media

WINNER: twentysix & Free Super Tips

a strong hook for the campaign paign that both the football clearly bought into.

SUMMARY Free Super Tips challenged us to come up with a creative PR campaign that would increase share of voice and improve search rankings in the run up to the Premier League – an incredibly important time for the brand. The half-time pie has become somewhat of a ritual for many football fans, so we came up with the idea of offering one lucky football foodie the chance of a lifetime to become an official ‘Pie Taster’. Two weeks later, the campaign was live and delivering incredible results. Through a combination of quick thinking, creativity and a smart outreach strategy, we’d delivered a campaign that was not only attractive to pie-loving football fanatics, but the media too. The campaign was extremely successful and achieved national, international and regional coverage. It also earned upwards of 100 high-quality links and helped Free Super Tips regain the #1 spot for vital football searches including “football tips”.

BEST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN A SEARCH CAMPAIGN FINALISTS Torchbox & Breast Cancer Care Marin Software & Kiwi.com MediaCom Worldwide & ThisWorks

Torchbox have a strong commit results for the nonprofit sector of the audience which drove a campaign to the right people

WINNER: Torchbox & Breast Cancer Care

tment to producing outstanding and had a clear understanding awareness of the fundraising via the appropriate channels.

SUMMARY Breast Cancer Care is a UK charity providing care, support and information to anyone affected by breast cancer, since 1973. With their community of nurses and volunteers they have responded to 5.8 million support requests in the last year alone. Fundraising activities, such as Afternoon Tea, are imperative for the organisation to be able to continue providing their outstanding level of service. Since Torchboxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inception in 2000 we have been committed to working in partnership with organisations that are making the world a better place. Charities that do amazing, life-saving work, all day, every day. Working with Breast Cancer Care to promote their annual Afternoon Tea fundraising campaign, successfully raising more than any other year previously, and smashing income targets by 30% - exemplifies everything that Torchbox is about as an organisation. Winning this award would be amazing recognition for Breast Cancer Care and the fantastic work that they do, as well as for the Torchbox team and their commitment to producing outstanding results for the nonprofit sector.

BEST USE OF DATA FINALISTS ASDA George iProspect & Mira Showers iProspect & SafeStyle Jaywing Intelligence & Dominoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mabo & LittleLife MediaCom Worldwide & PlayStation Mediaworks & Where The Trade Buys Merkle & Twitter Samsung UK & Starcom Spark Foundry powered by Performics & RateGain with Europcar Whites Agency & Sporticos

The judges noted that Merkle and in a really dynamic way to create in innovative tools being deve

WINNER: Merkle & Twitter

d Twitter used the available data an engaging feed, which resulted eloped and fantastic results.

SUMMARY Twitter is a unique platform to discover whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening in real-time around the world. To bring this to our search campaigns, we built Magpie, a bespoke automation tool. Magpie performs textual analysis of public Tweet data, automatically creating ads and keywords for brand-safe trending topics. The aim of our search campaigns is to drive users to high quality content on Twitter, aiming to increase user engagement both in-app and on-site at the lowest cost per engaged user possible, our main KPI. However, with no consistent historical data and spend fluctuating heavily based on the trending topics for any given day, manual optimisation proved difficult. Thus, we needed to create a custom bidding algorithm using signals outside of Google Ads. Our solution, Hummingbird, takes the output of Magpieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tweet analysis and sets bids based on historical performance data of trends with similar categorisation & sentiment combinations. Since launching Hummingbird, the performance of our search marketing activity improved considerably, increasing engagement rate by 278% and reducing cost per engaged user by 70%.

BEST SOFTWARE INNOVATION FINALISTS Adzooma DeepCrawl Kenshoo Ecommerce Majestic Marin Software OnCrawl Rankings Productsup Ruler Analytics SEMrush SEOmonitor Shoptimised

The judges said that this is a management tool, adjusted A great way to bring optimisation have done well to identify a s

WINNER: Shoptimised

comprehensive product feed to the needs of the market. n to shopping feeds, Shoptimised significant gap in the market.

SUMMARY Shoptimised is the UK’s fastest-growing Product Feed Optimisation tool on the market today, providing retailers, agencies and affiliate networks with a trusted, proven method of improving ROI and ROAS on their Google Shopping budgets. Shoptimised was created after founders John Cave and John Oram spotted a gap in the market for effective Product Feed Management and Optimisation. As seasoned Paid Marketing professionals themselves, they found there was no supplier in the market who could provide a solution to the ever-changing scope of Paid Ads in order to provide relevant results and maximise returns from Ad Spend. So they created one themselves. The business has enjoyed significant successes since forming in Spring 2018, including: • Optimising over 17M+ products every day; • P artnered with 165+ Agencies in 13 different countries and working with 300+ Retailers; • N amed in the North East Tech 50, a list celebrating the best Tech/Software businesses in the region.

BEST SEO SOFTWARE SUITE FINALISTS Botify Conductor FandangoSEO OnCrawl Ryte SEMrush Stickyeyes

The judges said that SEMrush a this is a really excellent tool with It was a truly outstanding e liked the integratio

WINNER: SEMrush

are a clear leader in the industry, ease of use and many strengths. entry and they particularly on with DataStudio.

SUMMARY SEMrush is a leading digital marketing toolkit for SEO, PPC and content marketing professionals worldwide. SEMrush ensures marketing teams always have time for creativity and experiments while we take care of data. It is the only software which enables marketing professionals to build, manage, and measure campaigns across all channels to improve their online visibility. We develop our tools for marketing professionals together with them. All updates are discussed and tested by users before they are deployed. We constantly improve our software so our users would have all the data needed to win today, tomorrow and understand what made them win yesterday. We do all in our power to provide the best customer experience, education and support. This award is a recognition of our customer-centric approach and an enormous motivation for the team.

BEST PPC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE SUITE FINALISTS Adzooma Brainlabs Kenshoo Search Marin Software Optmyzr Search Ads 360 Spaceboost Squared.io

The judges loved how the feature s and how great support is provided written with a lot of impressive de of performance driven by the tool

WINNER: Optmyzr

set keeps being added to regularly d to customers. The entry was well etails. There were solid examples l and a clear overview of budgets.

SUMMARY Optmyzr is a turnkey PPC management suite designed for PPC pros (mid-level to expert). It can be implemented in minutes to help transform paid search campaigns almost immediately. Optmyzr draws on innovative WYSIWYG layered scripts, replacing bloated mainstream API-based competitors for a fraction of the cost. It handles API suite essentials and breaks longstanding barriers in PPC automation. From 2018 to 2019, the company invested heavily ($1.9 million 2018/19) to expand service offerings, empowering PPC professionals to maximize the innovative automations from Google and Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads). Notable innovations of the past year include: • L aunch of Campaign Automator, a standalone solution that automates management and creation of inventory-based campaigns; • I ntegration of Shopping Ads management for Microsoft Advertising; • J ust released - integration of Amazon search ad functionality.

BEST SEARCH SOFTWARE TOOL FINALISTS AccuRanker Botify DeepCrawl ForwardPMX Little Warden OnCrawl PPC Protect Rytes SEMrush Squared.io

The customer focussed approa this tool outstanding and the team Great support is offered and t for their custome

WINNER: SEMrush

ach of SEMrush is what makes m should be commended for this. the relentless drive to improve rs is outstanding.

BEST IN-HOUSE TEAM FINALISTS Better Collective Deliveroo GoCompare HomeToGo lastminute.com Learning Pool Refinitiv Digital Marketing

The judges were impressed with with the challenges they had fa picture of how these challe

WINNER: HomeToGo

h how well HomeToGo had dealt aced and how they painted the enges had been overcome.

SUMMARY HomeToGo is the world’s largest holiday rental search engine. We help people find their perfect holiday rental at the best price by comparing more than 16 million offers from 600 providers, including Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, and more (just like KAYAK for holiday rentals). In 18 months, HomeToGo has become the leading holiday rental metasearch engine globally. We produced over 100 data-driven content campaigns in 2018, which resulted in 1,704 new referring domains linking to HomeToGo. Our highly effective on- and off-page SEO strategy has been featured on Sistrix’s blog and recognised by other awards including the Drum Awards and the Search Engine Land Awards (two years in a row). To win the UK Search Awards, one of the UK’s bestknown SEO and marketing awards, is a particularly meaningful recognition of our team’s hard work and and the outstanding performance of our UK domain.

BEST SMALL PPC AGENCY FINALISTS Adido Cedarwood Digital Circus PPC Agency Fluid Digital Loud Mouth Media Platypus Digital Relevance Semetrical Torchbox

The judges were impressed with t growth and achievements. Fluid Dig and decision making and deliver whilst making some pretty sig

WINNER: Fluid Digital

he level of detail around business gital have demonstrated great vision red some really nice client work gnificant operational changes.

SUMMARY Fluid Digital has had an exciting year, with our repositioning towards an ecommerce growth agency, the growth and expansion in the team, the finalisation of the move into Manchester city centre, strong client retention and new client wins across high-growth ecommerce retailers. The agency is one of the largest independent Magento and ecommerce agencies in the North, as a direct result from the investment in the team and dedication to ecommerce success across paid search, conversion and usability, and Magento ecommerce. We have seen incredible growth and success within our paid search campaigns and performance marketing division as a whole, despite competitive market conditions. For us to win this award would be a reinforcement of the personalised and detailed approach we take to paid search, and would establish us as a solid choice of agency for businesses that seek that hard-to-find mixture of knowledge, availability, efficiency and care for campaigns.

BEST LARGE PPC AGENCY FINALISTS Brainlabs Crafted ForwardPMX Genie Goals Impression Mabo The Media Image

Brainlabs had strong client ret showed a great sense of hum is growing and doing all the rig

WINNER: Brainlabs

tention, growth and their entry mour. A strong agency, which ght things in the marketplace.

SUMMARY In 2012, Brainlabsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; founder, Dan Gilbert, began his mission to change digital advertising for the better. He built our foundations on a combination of brainpower, technological prowess, and marketing knowledge to make digital marketing a more rigorous, data-driven pursuit. We hired a boatload of boffins to apply scientific thinking to marketing and produce original technology. In doing so, we created a gamechanging approach to Paid Search. In seven short years weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve gone from one man in an attic to a 250-strong organisation straddling two continents. In line with the changing media landscape, we now offer Display, Social, Analytics and CRO services. We also operate as a bespoke tech provider and consultancy; while our agency offering remains as strong as ever, tweaks to our business model over the years have seen us bring Brainlabber smarts beyond Brainlabs walls. Winning this award is a great opportunity for us and our clients to celebrate our ongoing contribution to the industry, our proved adaptability over the course of our growth and, of course, our proven dedication to PPC excellence.

BEST SMALL SEO AGENCY FINALISTS Altitude Internet Cedarwood Digital Chillibyte Digitaloft Honcho MRS Digital Relevance Re:signal Semetrical The Organic Agency

The judges were blown away strong results, covered a cros and an agency that in

WINNER: Semetrical

y by this entry which showed ss-section of SEO specialities nvests in technology.

SUMMARY It’s been 12 months of significant growth for Semetrical both financially and culturally. We’ve hired nine new staff members along the way due to our growth and have reached 25 full time employees. We have achieved impressive SEO results due to our highly data-driven approach to SEO which has driven our growth. We’ve recently undertaken a major brand development project of self-discovery, with all staff involved. Our visual brand identity has evolved and we’re extremely proud. Semetrical have nurtured our talented staff to numerous internal promotions, too. This has been anchored in our new training program where we aspire to help our staff actively progress their career ambitions. This is the last year we can enter the “Best Small SEO Agency” award category, and it a great privilege to win such a prestigious honour on our final swan song as small agency before we navigate the larger agency world!

BEST LARGE SEO AGENCY FINALISTS Absolute Digital Media Aira Click Consult Crafted Evolved Search ForwardPMX Impression Verve Search

Airaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s entry outlined impress brand awareness as well as ra around culture and trai

WINNER: Aira

sive campaigns that brought ankings. The agencies efforts ining were great to see.

SUMMARY The fact that after four years, we’re entering an award for Best Large SEO Agency is testament to how hard our team have worked and how quickly we’ve grown. After winning Best Small SEO Agency a year ago with under 25 people, we’re now at over 40 and are maintaining amazing results for clients, balance with a strong culture. Our growth hasn’t been without challenges but we’ve addressed all of them head on and will continue to strive to be the best we can, delivering exceptional results for clients and creating an amazing place to work.

BEST SMALL INTEGRATED AGENCY FINALISTS ASSISTED. Common Ground Digital Uncut Keel Over Marketing MediaVision MRS Digital The Audit Lab The Organic Agency Venture Stream

Venture Stream had clear objecti supporting evidence needed to dem strategy and results. A smash

WINNER: Venture Stream

ives across the board and all the monstrate solid examples of work, ing entry with plenty of detail!

SUMMARY Newcastle-based digital and ecommerce marketing agency, Venture Stream, was founded in 2014 by Harvard graduate Victor Morgan. Since it was founded, Venture Stream has grown from a team of two to 25 and from a single client to 64. Venture Stream specialises in offering a wide range of website design and development and digital marketing solutions to clients. However, unlike some digital marketing agencies, Venture Stream always put strategy and consultancy before all other services recommending the solution most appropriate to the clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs and ensure strategy and consultancy is every clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s baseline service. To win this award means that Venture Stream are getting the recognition they deserve for delivering an impressive +700% ROI for paid marketing clients and being recognised as one of the top 100 fastest growing technology companies in the North. In addition, winning such a prestigious award going up against some of the most well known industries in the UK will help Venture Stream stand out to potential clients nationwide.

BEST LARGE INTEGRATED AGENCY FINALISTS Click Consult Evolved Search ForwardPMX Impression iProspect Mediaworks Stickyeyes Group StrategiQ TIPi Group twentysix

Impressive examples from a r the agencies clear focus on it The judges were particularly focus on the well

WINNER: Stickyeyes Group

recent campaign coupled with ts people won the judges over. impressed with the agencies being of its staff.

SUMMARY Since our inception over 20 years ago, Stickyeyes has believed in straight-talking digital marketing. We believe that what matters to our clients is results, and we’ve been delivering those results for a long time. But, to keep delivering on the expectations of our clients, we need to evolve our approach and bring our clients on the journey with us. That’s why we believe in straight-talking digital marketing – because if our clients can’t understand what we are trying to do, blinded by jargon, acronyms and conjecture, it simply doesn’t work. We’ve really focused on ensuring that we are delivering an even more collaborative approach to our services so that they more closely align with our client’s overall strategy and objectives. We’ve provided more industry insight and invested in our people more than ever before. All of this is designed to ensure that we maximise the impact of every single penny that a client invests in digital marketing. It’s an ethos that we believe is leading the way and, above all, it’s an ethos that is delivering on what our clients demand.

YOUNG SEARCH PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR FINALISTS Sharifah Alrabah / Silverbean Laura Brady / Screaming Frog Ellie Entwistle / The Audit Lab Ruth Everett / DeepCrawl Eneli Otsa / Pendragon Tom Pool / Blue Array Molly Pritchard / Mediacom North Matthew Soakell / Mabo Sam Taylor / Evolved Search Sarah Vantellino / Verve Search

Tom is clearly an incredib individual, who has achieved Truly impressive and mos

WINNER: Tom Pool

bly skilled and ambitious a lot in a short space of time. st definitely one to watch!

SUMMARY Tom joined Blue Array as a Level 3 Digital Marketing apprentice in January 2016, with virtually no SEO knowledge or experience. At the time he was the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sole employee, working directly alongside company Founder, Simon Schneiders. In just 12 months, Tom was promoted to Technical SEO Manager, leading the best-in-class technical output that the rapidly growing agency had become renowned for. In September 2019 Tom took on a role as a Technical SEO Director, heading up a team of four to manage the class-leading technical output of an agency of 35+ individuals, as well as run technical SEO training for members of the Blue Array team. Tom has always demonstrated an insatiable desire to constantly learn and develop his knowledge, push boundaries and exceed the expectations of his immediate remit. Still at such a young age, one of the main reasons Tom has been so successful is his ability to take onboard feedback from his managers and peers, and he uses this to boost his learning and make effective adaptations to the way he works.

UK SEARCH PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR

WINNER: Arianne Donoghue SUMMARY As an experienced multi-channel digital marketer specialising in acquisition and growth, Arianne has worked in a variety of agency and in-house roles, giving her experience in managing teams and highly complex campaigns across multiple languages and territories in the retail, finance, travel, B2B and i-gaming verticals. Now part of the team at Epiphany Search, Arianne's past roles include in-house at icelolly.com, Mamas & Papas, Farnell, element14 and Thomas Cook alongside agency roles at Razorfish and Stickyeyes. Alongside her passion for delivering the best results for brands and helping the teams that get us there, Arianne is a regular conference speaker, awards judge and proud member of She Does Digital - a collective aimed at helping to change the gender balance in our industry. She is also a writer and editor for popular site, State of Digital.