With crisis comms and campaign pivots galore, 2020 has been a turbulent time for plenty of marketing professionals. That’s why the Ignite team is so grateful to be awarded Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative for SEM, granted by none other than Search Engine Land.
The Search Engine Land Awards List is Powerful
Search Engine Land (SEL) is an authoritative platform for digital marketing professionals of every kind. They offer a ton of resources on SEO, SEM (or paid marketing for search engines), local and retail, Google and Bing, social media and more.
SEL’s founders are big names in the marketing industry. Danny Sullivan is a journalist by trade, but a media genius in every aspect. He currently works as a public liaison for search at Google and co-founded Third Door Media, SEL’s parent company. Chris Sherman is another founding editor at SEL. He’s VP of Third Door Media, in addition to serving as chair of Marketing Land conferences.
In short, SEL is a team worth trusting.
So what’s up with the Search Engine Land Awards list?
Every year, SEL determines winners for its 15 unique categories. This year, they also integrated a quartet of winners they called the Search Marketers of the Year for 2020.
Judges for the SEL awards list include:
- Kelly Cooper, Director of Growth Marketing at Moz
- Ginny Marvin, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land
- Mike Henderson, CMO of Surety Bonds
- Matt Van Wagner, Paid Search Session Coordinator of Search Marketing Expo and President of Find Me Faster
- and more
All in all, SEL’s awards list serves to shed light on the organizations that are doing the marketing thing right, whatever their “thing” may be. Sponsored by Microsoft, you can’t help but give this list a good glance to see who’s making a difference in the world of digital marketing.
What It Means to Be an SEM Leader, According to Search Engine Land
Your 2020 Search Engine Land Awards winner for Best B2B Initiative – SEM is @IgniteV! For a full list of winners, please check out: https://t.co/Iph71fDHo2 pic.twitter.com/wq3nK1d5gL
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) October 19, 2020
According to SEL, search engine marketing (or SEM) is “the process of gaining website traffic by purchasing ads on search engines.”
For this year’s awards, they reserved a number of categories for SEM, one of which just so happened to reference B2B initiatives. SEL laid out the criteria for their Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – SEM award loud and clear. Here’s what they said:
“Recognizes successful efforts by internal teams, agencies or consultants running paid search campaigns across one or more search-based advertising platforms, demonstrating continuous improvement and a positive return on investment.
Entrants must demonstrate success in paid search advertising efforts to improve visibility within paid results to drive sales, generate leads and/or convert new customers on major search platforms.”
At their core, these criteria rest on the premise that an agency (or other type of marketing business) has initiated paid search engine advertising campaigns that proved themselves to be successful.
One important piece of information that SEL added to the criteria was the focus on “search advertising for a B2B audience.” For them, this distinction helped clarify who was more successful in a nuanced category.
All entrants had to provide an executive summary of industry challenged, goals and business objectives. They also needed to share key performance indicators (KPIs) they achieved through campaign implementation.
The entrants had to summarize all their paid search tactics as well as any PPC best practices they employed. Finally, they needed to share what ad platforms and third-party tools they used to help them achieve their successful results.
With all this criteria in mind, you can imagine that the competition was steep — after all, Ignite Visibility is far from the only business doing well in a volatile era. However, SEL decided that Ignite Visibility’s B2B SEM initiative was one worth celebrating.
As the biggest Ignite Visibility fan there is, I can’t help but agree (I may be biased, but it’s true).
Details On the Ignite Visibility SEM Initiative
So, what are the details on the Ignite Visibility SEM initiative?
Well, take a peek at our pay-per-click (PPC) management and you’ll see that Ignite takes a holistic approach to all things SEM. We keep the pillars of paid media in mind with everything we do, including our time as a premium Google partner in a special pilot program. No matter the goal, our best-in-class strategies always reign.
This award from SEL is the most recent in a long line of recognitions for our work in PPC. We’ve consistently been named a top PPC company throughout the nation and across industries. We’re responsible for more than $50 million in paid media advertising — so you can imagine just how full our hands are. Regardless, every client receives the same attention to detail, because our success lies in the details.
And remember how ROI is a big piece of SEL’s criteria for the category? We’re 100% focused on ROI, so it’s only natural.
More Well-Deserved Winners from Search Engine Land
Ignite Visibility isn’t the only winner on the SEL awards list. We’re surrounded by a ton of other marketing professionals, including four Search Marketers of the Year for 2020:
- Ashleigh Shapiro
- Michael King
- Colleen Harris
- Lisa Little
These marketers — plus the Ignite Visibility team and more — are a solid representation of how marketing professionals are doing good in a difficult time.
No one said it’d be easy, but we definitely knew it’d be worth all the effort.
Ignite Visibility Aims to Be a Full-on Resource for Marketers Trying to Make It
If The Hunger Games taught us anything, it’s that we fare better in life when we function as a collective unit.
That’s one of the reasons why Ignite offers so many resources for others to use. This includes our webinars, which have really ramped up since the start of the pandemic. Some of our most recent webinars include:
- How businesses are dealing with the coronavirus webinar
- Three pillars of paid media webinar
- How to rank #1 in 2021 webinar
This is in addition to our blogs, podcast episodes and YouTube lessons — among others. But the point is this: as a leading B2B marketing agency in SEM (and beyond), we are bearing the responsibility of lifting others up.
At Ignite, we vie for the visibility of others, not just ourselves. That’s where the real fun lies.
Ignite’s Own Awards Lift Even More Marketers Up
At Ignite Visibility, we held our own marketing awards to showcase marketing professionals who took on their responsibilities courageously during trying times. A few of those stories stood out the most:
- Michelle Gnome, president and founder of the African-American Marketing Association, who helps lift up the Black marketing community
- Sophie Bowman, PR & Branding Manager with Hypeglo Ltd. and Brand Branding PR LLC., who made do with minimal budget and helped small business clients go viral.
- Julio Viskovich, founder of NexLevel Sales, who built his own software that exports LinkedIn contacts and targets email addresses.
You can find our full list of courageous marketing leaders here.
Our Search Engine Land Award Comes After Another Cool Recognition
In September, Ignite Visibility was selected as one of the best places to work in San Diego. The award comes from the San Diego Business Journal, a respectable business news and information platform for the region.
Here’s what Krish Coughran, COO at Ignite, has to say about this recognition:
“Of all the awards we have won at Ignite this honor is always the most gratifying. We strive daily to create an environment where every Igniter is valued and put in a position to thrive. We believe our fundamental responsibility as leaders is to create a transparent and trusting corporate culture that ‘grows people’ in addition to revenue. Our inclusion on this list is a validation of our efforts as we collectively strive to embody our core values in every interaction and inspire through positive reinforcement and clarity.”
With a fully remote working environment, we’re a super flexible workplace that allows for utmost creativity and drive. We’re grateful to be recognized for an intentionally positive environment that we work so very hard to maintain.
Search Engine Land, We Thank You
We’re super thankful to be recognized for our work as a search engine marketer, particularly in the B2B and SEM spaces. These are two very competitive sectors of digital marketing, and there’s plenty of esteemed competition to sift through. For us, this makes the limelight that much sweeter.
With our newest award under our belt — Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative – SEM from Search Engine Land — I can’t think of any reason we shouldn’t celebrate.
In the meantime, the folks at Ignite Visibility will be kicking butt for all of our clients (and having tons of fun doing it). From PPC to SEO and everywhere in between, we wake up every day ready to take on the ever-changing beast of burden that is digital marketing.
