Leading international healthcare provider, Bupa, has selected bigmouthmedia, Europe’s largest and most experienced digital marketing agency, to lead its search marketing strategy.

The new deal will see bigmouthmedia take on a major search engine optimisation programme which will involve Bupa’s key UK websites. The project, which will be the company’s most extensive digital marketing campaign so far to date, and is designed to deliver significant growth to the international healthcare provider over the next three years.

“We’re delighted to be working with a brand of Bupa’s quality. Having worked side-by-side to create an ambitious search marketing strategy, we’re now looking forward to getting our teeth into what promises to be a particularly exciting project,” said Scott Boocock, major account director at bigmouthmedia.

David Lengen, head of digital communications at Bupa added, “Search is an essential element of Bupa’s strategy to becoming recognised as a global healthcare leader. Bigmouthmedia will help us to position the brand f r o m being purely about health insurance into the broader health and wellbeing sphere, where so much of Bupa’s expertise lies.”

With its team of over 200 online professionals and experts across the fields of SEO, PPC, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, display advertising, online pr and copywriting along with an existing client base which includes many major household brand names, bigmouthmedia is ideally positioned to take on and help drive this exciting project to increase Bupa’s online presence to become a global leader in healthcare and wellbeing.

A bigmouthmedia survey has revealed that more than three quarters of the UK’s big brands do not understand the value of a visitor via mobile compared to other digital channels

The research, which polled the views of key decision makers at a raft of leading UK companies, shows that despite a significant 89.2% of respondents sharing the belief that mobile marketing will become increasingly important over the next 12 months, very few have fully embraced the channel. Reflecting the uncertainty with which many businesses regard the emerging the field, 70.3% of those surveyed currently don’t have any engagement with mobile marketing at all.

“We are at a critical point in the evolution of mobile marketing. A growing group of organisations are starting to derive competitive advantage from their early mover status in the channel, yet the vast majority of companies have yet to gauge the impact it is likely to have on their business,” said Simon Heyes, Head of International Sales Operations at Bigmouthmedia.

“There are no benefits to be derived from being slow on the uptake. With the mobile channel set to become increasingly influential over the next few years, companies need to move now, engage with the medium and start building the campaigns that are going to keep them ahead of the game.”

Despite an apparent lack of engagement with the channel the research revealed a keen awareness of the potential advantages, with 75.7% of respondents citing increased brand awareness as the main benefit of undertaking mobile marketing, and 67.6% believing increased customer engagement to also be a major benefit. Over 60% also believed that increased traffic, leads and sales were also a major driver.

Bigmouthmedia’s survey – conducted amongst a large group of large and medium sized enterprises – showed that just 5.4% companies describe themselves as being “heavily involved” in mobile marketing at the current time. Another statistic to emerge is that while they considered the channel increasingly influential, 75% of the respondents claimed not to know the relative value of a visitor from mobile compared to other channels.

“What is clear from our research is that while the vast majority of businesses accept that mobile is going to become a critical part of the marketing mix, there is a great deal of uncertainty over how to approach the channel, and in particular how to get buy in from the wider organisation. Companies know they need to get on board the mobile bandwagon, but a lack of clear understanding is holding many back from exploiting its potential,” said Heyes.