by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, (January 05, 2018)

Most people center their New Year’s resolution on major life-changing goals. Be a better person. Work out five days per week. Eliminate sugar. When it comes to search marketing, resolutions among analysts, marketers and agency executives centered on data and spending more time and resources on search.

Search Marketing Daily reached out to some of the top brands, analysts and agencies to ask about their resolutions to help marketers make their own.

Here’s what they had to say.

Erin Everhart, brand marketer and media strategies at The Home Depot: I resolve in 2018 to better integrate search with other paid media and marketing initiatives. Search can be pretty segregated within companies, especially when it comes to SEO. If you ask five brands where they put their SEO team in their organization you will get five different answers, because it’s really a little bit of everything: marketing, PR, IT, ecommerce, and more. We’ve been preaching about breaking down silos for years now. While it’s not something that will get solved completely in 2018, you’ll be able to accomplish a lot more of the visibility you give search with complementing channels like social media, TV, and even email.

Jonathan Kagan, senior director of search and biddable media at MARC USA Results:Digital: I resolve to help brands understand data. Granular cutting of data should be everyone’s top priority. It will give advertisers a better sense of who to advertise to, when they should do it, and how they should do it. It saves money.

Clayton McLaughlin, senior vice president and managing director at Ecselis, a Havas Media company: I have three resolutions for 2018 related to search. The first: I resolve to convince the powers that be at the engines to allow advanced data layering on top of keyword targeting and retargeting. Data on top of intent is the Holy Grail. Closed, walled gardens hinder good advertising. We’ve made strides, but we need to improve as an industry. Second, I resolve to shift the conversation from voice search to visual search. It’s poised for more immediate monetization and isn’t yet a buzzword. Ask Pinterest, eBay and Amazon. Third, convince consumers that good targeting isn’t creepy.

Steve Gibson, vice president group director at Canvas Worldwide: I resolve to express the value of paid search to my team, my agency and my clients. Most search marketers do an excellent job getting great results, but many of us are not great at merchandising those results. What we do creates more than just data and slides. What we do creates a story. A story about connection, about discovery. We get to show the challenges, the victories and the defeats. Most importantly, we must show what we have learned and express the value of those learnings.

Michael Hemsey, executive vice president of Merkle Loyalty Solutions: I resolve in 2018 to stress the importance of data and to help marketers understand how the numbers will improve on the success of their campaigns. You have great promotions and technology integrated in real-time. It’s based on segments. You have the currency setup for loyalty programs. Life is good. But it all comes down to the data and analytics.

Gordon Borrell, founder of analyst firm Borrell Associates resolves in 2018 to stop ignoring search marketing and to offer greater insights on who is using it, why they continue to use it, and where it’s headed, saying: We frankly lost focus in 2017 due to the hype around social media, which seems to be the main competition to search engine marketing. Search is a $19 billion local advertising segment, which makes it larger than TV, radio, or newspaper, or outdoor ad spending. We need more insight into this important and effective segment, and I’ve resolved to offer it in 2018, so stay tuned.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily