Collin Colburn

Pick a sport. Any sport. You are now tasked with managing that team’s success. Sounds pretty fun, right? Apply this to managing a company’s search engine optimization, and it quickly turns into a cumbersome task. You know the desired outcome and KPIs you’d like to achieve, but numerous obstacles can stand in the way of […]

The holiday season is upon us once again. For many in the retail and consumer goods industries, this is the most crucial time of the year. Bonuses are made or lost during the holiday season as some toys, electronics, and clothing items become the hit of the season and others fall flat. We know customers […]

Who’d have thought that in 2018 we would be publishing a Forrester Wave™ evaluation on SEO platforms? Honestly, even I’m a bit surprised. We published this Wave because we have seen a rising number of inquiries from Forrester’s clients about SEO and how to improve their websites for searchers. A pivotal part to any enterprise […]

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in place since May 25. Marketers in all areas of the world have been abuzz about GDPR’s impact and what they need to be doing about it. Forrester published a podcast on it before the regulation went into effect that you can listen to here. […]

Susan Bidel, Joe Stanhope, Tina Moffett, and I were able to attend Google Marketing Live this week in San Jose. There were many announcements and changes made to Google’s platforms and products. Possibly the most significant — an announcement that was made over a week ago — was the retirement of the AdWords and DoubleClick brands in […]

Yesterday (Thursday, April 26), Amazon released its Q1 2018 financial results. Amazon knocked it out of the park! In fact, Jim Cramer on CNBC called it “the best quarter I’ve ever seen from a company.” I would argue that it’s the best quarter ever because of a little-known business Amazon has: advertising. In fact, Amazon […]

Amazon is seemingly part of every sector of the economy – and that now includes advertising. We fielded many questions from clients about Amazon ads during 2017 and by year’s end, we were curious about how significant its advertising business had become. Since Amazon doesn’t break out its revenues from advertising (although it’s been estimated […]

Fess up: you don’t know how your customers or prospects originally find your brand/products. I posed this simple question on my blog several months ago: How Do Your Customers Search And Find? It should be a simple question to answer, but it isn’t. That’s because customers use many resources to discover and research a brand […]

There are less than two days to take our Search And Digital Marketing Survey – if you have not already taken 15 minutes to answer it, please do. The survey will close by end of business on Friday January 19. Anyone working in marketing – whether at a brand, agency, vendor, consultancy – can take […]

I am pleased to announce that Forrester and SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) are partnering to field a Search And Digital Marketing Survey to understand search marketing and other digital marketing initiatives. Search marketing has become more complex than ever before, and 2017 was no different. This survey will look into the challenges, tasks, […]

I am pleased to announce that the new Forrester Wave: Search Marketing Agencies, Q4 2017 report is now live! This report looked at the 12 most significant search marketing agencies in today’s market. This year’s Wave evaluation uncovered a market in which four agencies — Performics, Merkle, 360i, and iProspect — emerged as Leaders. Five […]

Search marketing has gone through lots of changes over the past several years. The most significant of those changes is the way that customers search for information, brands, and products — from primarily using Google on desktop computers to using any source or website on any device. But most marketers have not evolved their search […]

Let’s face it: voice search is incredibly over-hyped today. Any conference, webinar, or article around the future of search marketing will talk about voice search. Many are predicting voice search will account for 50% of all searches by 2020. And kids are even using intelligent agents (IAs) like Google Assistant to help them do their […]

I took a trip this past weekend and realized that part of my travel was a good reminder of how to think of the overall customer journey. So I thought I’d take the time to tell you all one example I had from this weekend as a consumer out in the wild. My fiance and […]

Two significant things happened yesterday: Google released its Q2 earnings and yours truly was on Bloomberg to talk about it. Obviously, one of those events is much more important than the other. 😉 While Forrester analysts are not financial analysts, and cannot comment on financial or stock performance, we can comment on the strategy or […]

Co-authored with Christian Splaine, Research Associate on Forrester's B2C Marketing Team Earlier in the year, we came out with our State Of Search Marketing, 2017 report. The takeaway? Search marketing is only getting more complex and harder to navigate. And so far that has played out to be true. In fact, we here at Forrester have […]

I, along with Susan Bidel and Richard Joyce, got to attend Google Marketing Next 2017 this week. It was a great opportunity to see firsthand the new advances Google is making for this year, and to speak with Google product managers directly. While there were no announcements that were earth shattering, there were a few […]

If you've been following Forrester's search marketing research over the past few years, you'd know that we talk a lot about search marketing evolving to a broader discovery marketing strategy. As a refresher: a discovery marketer creates programs that help users find your brand in their preferred medium and during their moment of need. Some […]

Just like a US President gives Congress information on the "state of our union", Forrester has just released a state of the union on the search marketing world. But instead of constant interruptions for applause or the opposition's response to the state of the union, let's cut to the chase. The state of search marketing […]