We had the opportunity to speak with Derek Chew, the founder and CEO of Fullmoon Digital, who discussed his motivation for starting the business, his predictions for the advertising budgets for 2023, the types of search engine marketing he believes will be successful in that year, the impact pay-per-click ad platforms will have in the run-up to the new year, and his specific advice for companies looking to maximize their digital marketing budgets.
Derek Chew is the Founder & CEO of Fullmoon Digital, a former early Yahoo! employee (where he cut his teeth in digital marketing), is one of the few 100% independent digital marketing agencies in the United States. The firm is cross-functional with deep experience in SEO, digital strategy, programmatic, analytics, performance marketing, paid media, social advertising, and creative. They push the envelope of what is possible in terms of marketing and technology, all the while providing best-in-class digital marketing service to their “pack” of clients. For more information, please visit www.fullmoondigital.com.
What inspired you to start Fullmoon Digital? What do you hope to accomplish through your work?
Fullmoon Digital is my second company. The first one was a 2-man SEO company I started with a friend in 2002, which lasted for about one year. Even though I am passionate about marketing, I realized that I did not possess all the necessary skills to build an agency and needed more experience before trying again. I become a career marketer, with the goal of learning as much as I can to be a well-rounded marketing professional. Over the next years, I worked for brands and companies like Yahoo!, LegalZoom, 7 For All Mankind, True Religion, Organic.com, and many more. It took many years to fine-tune my skills, but in 2017 was when it all came together.
My wife, Geanina, played an important role in the birth of Fullmoon Digital. She had always asked me why I wouldn’t start a digital agency. Admittedly, I was afraid to fail again. But she doesn’t give up easily, which was a good thing for me. Finally, in August of 2017, while we were hanging out in our backyard, I decided to give it another shot and go all in this time. Of course, we needed to find a name for this new agency. I went through the cliché digital agency names but none of them clicked. We looked up at the night sky, saw a full moon, and the rest was history.
Since the beginning, my mission is to bring good people together to make their mark by doing great work. One thing I am passionate about is finding ways to give back to communities in meaningful ways. Starting in 2023, we will be joining hundreds of other companies as a member of 1% for the Planet. I’m excited that Fullmoon Digital is in a position to start doing its part in tackling environmental issues.
What do you think about the new forecast for 2023 advertising budgets, which states that expenditure on advertisements is anticipated to decline by as much as 6%?
2023 will be a challenging year for many businesses as the economy continues to be fluid and unpredictable. I’m not clairvoyant but there are indicators that things will reset and level off in the next 12 to 18 months.
If we learn from the past, then businesses and brands that have the budgets should be taking advantage of competitive pullback and lean in. What I’ve seen too often is the idea of “keeping a reserve” in uncertain times. Sure, that’s a sound financial adage, but history proves that businesses that took a leap and continued advertising wisely have better chances to dominate their industry during a recovery. Whether it’s a Fullmoon client or not, I urge businesses to rethink their advertising strategies, work with your agency to find pockets of opportunity, and double down with a complete commitment to winning hearts and minds.
I can tell you that 90% of Fullmoon’s client budgets are increasing in 2023, perhaps not as aggressively as we want to but it’s a healthy indicator for our clients. Street talk about reduced budgets is not a global phenomenon and I really wish that digital marketers and industry leaders do not over-sensationalize the topic. There are still untapped opportunities and as a digital agency, our responsibility is to find those and create a plan for our clients to strategically attack it.
What sort of search engine marketing do you think will be successful in 2023? Furthermore, how would this benefit digital marketing agencies?
This is a timely question as we’re seeing significant changes with analytics, cookie tracking, privacy laws, and advertising platforms. There is also so much advertising software to choose from – it’s getting more crowded than ever. With PPC cost increasing every year, agencies must learn to balance their earned, owned, and paid media strategies. If your business is over-reliant on a single channel, you need to take a closer look and evaluate your distribution. Marketing agencies that are integrated with its clients will stand a better chance of being successful in 2023 and beyond.
As algorithms and platforms get more advanced with AI assistance and more intelligent targeting, we’re going to see a shift in what it means to be a search engine marketer. Search advertising platforms are pushing hard for automation from campaign setup and smart bidding to efficiency optimization and targeting. We’re going to notice a shift in the talent pool. Because there’s less need for marketers to understand the intricacies and nuances of the search engine marketing platforms, marketers in the next generation will lose key skills with the over-reliance on automation, albeit, forced by the platforms. To make a difference and be successful, marketing agencies must focus on the quality of work and creativity of assets like videos, images, and content.
At Fullmoon Digital, we work very closely with our client partners to dig deeper into their marketing channels. We spend time understanding our client’s business from inventory management and margins to advertising budgets and cross-channel strategies. When clients are willing to share information, it makes the job of marketing agencies a lot more effective, more flexibility with creativity, and come up with ideas that challenge the status quo.
What impact do you think pay-per-click ad platforms will have ahead of the new year? Will that turn out to be beneficial for them?
Automation is an area in that PPC platforms are headed. It’s fair to say that in the next few years, as the field of AI expands, we will see more automated features introduced into the platforms. Automation puts more control back in the hands of the PPC platforms while making it easier for businesses to advertise. But this means marketers will have less direct control over what can and cannot be done with the PPC platforms. For example, Google Ads’ new Performance Max campaign is a good example. There’s a high level of automation from machine learning, and process automation, and less manual work for basic settings. With the rollout of Performance Max, Google Ads also took away the ability for marketers to add negative keywords (you have to reach out to a rep for help), limited analysis of source data (hopefully we see more transparency in the future), and a lower level of control.
At Fullmoon Digital, we realize that PPC platforms will continue to be an essential advertising channel for businesses in the years to come. The changes that are here and the ones yet to come can be a double-edged sword for the industry. On one hand, automation lowers the barrier to entry. On the other, it makes it less attractive to advanced marketing agencies who want more control over their client’s campaigns. Having been involved with the PPC industry since the early days (before Google Ads), I am excited to see how PPC platforms continue to evolve their features and what marketing agencies are doing to stay relevant in the coming years.
What specific suggestions do you have for the businesses that will help them make the most of their budgets for digital marketing? Businesses that understand where PPC falls into their media mix will succeed in acquiring customers at an efficient cost. It is relatively simple to spend advertising dollars, and marketing agencies know this. What will really make a huge difference for any business is focusing on elements that can cause meaningful shifts in core metrics. Three things businesses should pay close attention to commit resources and time on – improve site conversion rate, first-party data collection, and creative-to-audience mapping. The results will be cumulative and expectations must be reasonable if businesses want to win in the long game.
