As CTO of Pi Datametrics, Jon is passionate about the future of search technology and in particular, personalisation and semantic search, which is changing both the way we search, the way we interact with search engines, and the subsequent outcome of a search.
Jon is an accomplished speaker and well known within the digital marketing industry. When not speaking he has helped major FTSE100 companies augment their digital strategies and increase their online performance.
Introduction
Hi, I’m Jon Earnshaw from Pi Datametrics, and this is our Tech Talk.
Pi Datametrics software enables you to understand and visualise online commercial opportunities, as well as potential, against the backdrop of your entire market landscape. The insight revealed by the platform is as at home in the boardroom as it is with the search team.
Pi Platform is your go-to software for tactical wins and risk mitigation, while Pi Market Intelligence enables you to build strategy with value-led search opportunities.
I’m the Chief Product Evangelist at Pi and as one of the founders, I’ve been here since the very start.
My role involves listening to our customers; understanding the challenges they face and working with the Product team to ensure that Pi helps them to meet those challenges.
I also spend a lot of time staying close to all the latest search engine algorithm updates, as well as analysing the constantly changing search results landscape, to understand the best ways to respond to these dynamics.
So what problem do we solve?
Right now, the ability for your business to grow its online Share of Voice and to be consistently visible at the top of the search engine results is not only more important than ever, but without the right level of intelligence and insight, it’s practically impossible.
So, what’s preventing you?
It could be that you haven’t got your content strategy right. This can result in significant lost revenue.
It could be that Google’s algorithms are negatively impacting your performance
Perhaps competitors are simply outperforming you and you can’t understand why?
Or you may not have the granular understanding of the search landscape and all its new features to really get inside the minds of your customers to understand what they’re looking for.
Whatever it is that’s preventing you from achieving your targets, these are just some of the problems that Pi helps you solve.
Example
Let me show you an example. We’re looking at several challenges here. It’s predicted that global content marketing spend is set to reach $300bn by 2021.
And the problem is that so much of this spend, particularly when it comes to online content, is being wasted, and as a result businesses simply don’t perform as well as they might.
If we look at these top performers in ‘Womenswear’, our data reveals that those businesses sitting below the fold are currently missing out on over $4m per week.
Looking more closely, on the left here we can see from one of those highlighted businesses the significant opportunity that’s currently being missed. And over 70% of this is due to cannibalisation – something that’s easy to fix.
On the right, those same businesses are seeing huge rises and falls in share of voice, thanks to Google’s algorithm updates.
Without the right data, you’re simply not in control of your performance.
OK it’s time to talk about our technology
Pi Datametrics, has been designed from the ground up to help solve the problems that result in such missed opportunities.
At Pi we talk about value.
Search data is no longer confined to the realms of the SEO team. It’s far too valuable and insightful for that.
We’re democratising search data so that it can be used throughout the business, from the strategic to the technical.
We’re supporting big business decisions with SEO software that spans all search dimensions.
Take Pi Market Intelligence. This showcases every single competitor for any consumer search you can think of – not just those already on your radar – giving you the most comprehensive pool of consumer insight on the market.
From content strategy to business-wide trading, Market Intelligence enables you to inform the whole company with performance, share of voice and profit-led trend insights.
You can also instantly and clearly visualise revenue opportunities, category by category.
Let’s take a closer look at our business
At Pi Datametrics we have a team of 60. While the software itself is only six years old, we’ve actually been collecting search data for well over 15 years now, giving us one of the largest and most comprehensive datasets on the market. We work with over 50 major brands, have offices over the world, and have over three and a half thousand active users.
So, what type of customers does our tech serve?
A wide range of companies use Pi’s technology in multiple ways to inform their business decisions.
This includes Tesco, The Telegraph, IG Group, Vodafone, Harrods, Lululemon and many others.
We have big businesses using Pi as a damage mitigation tool by supporting complex global website migrations.
We have others using the insight to size-up competitors as well as new opportunities in new markets.
On the tactical level, we have publishers using Pi on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis to better understand the search landscape and the intent of their readers.
Those same customers use Pi to make super well-informed decisions on content strategy, as well as page-level and site-wide contextual optimisation.
We have high street retailers using the platform to significantly improve the performance of their online content & products, through the automated discovery and prevention of content conflict.
This alone puts them at a significant advantage over their competitors.
And we have major parent brands monitoring and comparing the commercial visibility of their entire online ecosystem.
So, how do we solve the problems our customers most commonly face?
As we explored earlier, one of the biggest problems that constantly results in missed revenue opportunities, is content cannibalisation – or internal conflict.
The first step that most people struggle with is knowing they’re suffering from it in the first place.
The simple truth is that businesses are spending billions every year on online content, but much of that money is being wasted because it is not being consumed.
And the reason it’s not being consumed is because current approaches to content publication and curation simply aren’t working.
If you’re not using search data to inform content strategy, then there’s a good chance that you’re throwing money away.
We solve that problem – and that’s one of many – through the identification of quick-win revenue opportunities currently missed. Pi makes it super easy to identify these opportunities, fix the basic issues causing them and prevent them from happening in the first place.
USP – So What’s different about our tech? What gives us the edge?
One of the most powerful features of the Pi Platform is its global competitor data.
What this means is that you have the ability to analyse your performance alongside every other rival across the entire search landscape.
Pi provides one of the largest scopes of competitor data on the market.
Unlike other solutions which often require you to name your known competitors, Pi Market Intelligence will reveal to you who your true competitors are, across the entire search landscape.
From content strategy to business-wide trading, you can inform the whole company with visualisations of commercial performance, share of voice opportunity and profit-led trend insights.
On a more granular level, Pi is one of the only platforms out there to track in four different time frequencies. That’s:
Every two hours – for when you need to monitor a rapidly changing search landscape, such as during a new product launch
Daily – essential if your SEO team wants to stay ahead of the game
And weekly or monthly – to help you report on your objectives.
Finally, Pi tracks every feature that appears in the search landscape, from video and images through to PAA and Answer cards – which is invaluable when it comes to planning your content strategy.
Demo
OK – it’s time for a demo
A good place to begin is at the MI level where you can see your SoV over time.
Scrolling down, you can visualise the market leaders and where you sit, quickly exploring performance versus your competitors, category by category.
Next we reveal revenue opportunity – again it’s super easy to drill-down to the subcategory level to reveal the value of content sitting just below page one.
In this chart you can see the impact that a recent Google algorithm update has had on your competitors – both positive and negative.
Here, the automated conflict detector report reveals a significant revenue opportunity.
Next we’ve identified the content sitting on pages two and three of Google – the search volumes are huge.
This chart further reveals the problem – multiple URL changes for big money terms. Google is confused.
Finally we can save as an actionable insight to be shared with the team.
Many of the key features that our customers use are accessible from this tool stack. Let’s take a look at some of the more unique ones.
This SERP Radar provides an unrivalled view of the SERP landscape from a feature perspective – showing what’s important, category by category. In this case that’s ‘Video’ and ‘Answer Card’ content.
The unique SERP Matrix view really helps you to understand customer intent on a keyword by keyword basis – ensuring you produce the right type of content.
Finally the SERP Explorer Table helps you understand how your content performs from a feature perspective.
This level of insight is critical and will save a lot of wasted effort and money
Customer success stories
We help a lot of customers to significantly improve their online performance.
One that springs to mind has integrated the platform into their daily workflow, using it to inform tactical and strategic decisions on content as well as optimisation.
Being able to get a better understanding of customer intent in real-time, and react with the right type of content at the right time in a way that avoids conflict in the first place has enabled them to achieve 80% YoY improvements in performance.
So what’s the expected impact on a typical customer?
The first thing that you’re immediately going to benefit from is a clear understanding of what your organic share of voice is, and who your competitors really are. Often this comes as a surprise as they’re not always who you think.
Next, you’re going to reveal your immediate revenue opportunities and discover the content – wherever it exists within your online ecosystem – that is not performing as well as it might be. And there could be any number of reasons for this.
You’ll be able to immediately reveal and share insights with relevant teams within the business – highlighting what’s not working so well and providing intelligence based recommendations to improve performance.
You’re likely to see improvements in Share of Voice, traffic and revenue in a very short space of time.
Any limitations/ quirks to your tech?
I often get asked if there are any integration limitations or areas we do not specialise in
As we’re a cloud based solution, straight out of the box, there’s absolutely no integration required. All you need is access to a web browser.
As well as an API that all our customers have access to, we have Pi Sync.
This is an add-on product that allows for teams to move their Pi data to a data warehouse, allowing you to integrate with other data, and from there – analyse, transform, and visualise.
Its goal is to be one less obstacle to achieve a marketing reporting stack that includes all channel data.
Where do you sit in the Martech stack?
Ok, so where do we sit in the Martech stack? Let’s take a look…
Pi Datametrics is a consumer search intelligence tool that fits into the ‘Content and Experience’ part of your MarTech Stack.
Often, Pi will be part of your SEO or Marketing budget, however Pi’s intelligence has the power to inform strategy across the business, in teams far beyond search.
For example, Mergers and Acquisitions teams may use Pi’s vast competitor data to identify new partnerships, while Merchandising teams might study Pi Market Intelligence consumer trend insights to know when to invest in certain stock.
What is your pricing, onboarding and timing of adoption?
The pricing model is very simple. It’s based on a license fee and an amount dependent upon the number of queries made. For this you get unlimited domain tracking and unlimited user licenses.
In-app reporting, onboarding and training are included at no extra cost.
When it comes to onboarding you’re typically looking at a four week timeline.
Week one is all about preparation, including account configuration and a kick-off meeting.
Week two is all about training – tailored to your use case, designed to get you up and running and discovering and saving insights as quickly as possible.
In Week three there will normally be a checkpoint meeting along with follow up training sessions.
In Week four an onboarding review will take place, again with any follow up training sessions as required.
Thanks for watching!