Due to the sore lack of knowledge on search engine marketing (SEM) among businesses and the public alike, Tan and his colleagues had to call up companies one by one. In the initial years, they had to clarify that search engine names were "Google" and "Yahoo!", not "Goggles" or other variations�, and how search engines and SEM work. The effort put into educating the small-medium enterprises eventually bagged them the Google Agency of the Year for SME Market Education award in 2008.
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Figure 3They were also named the Top Search Partner for Yahoo! Southeast Asia for two years consecutively in 2006 and 2007. PurpleClick also gained more attention when Tan was named Asia's Top 25 Best Young Entrepreneurs by BusinessWeek in 2008.
2009 was a year of awards and accolades as they won many prestigious local and global awards. The greatest recognition of PurpleClick's expertise in the SEM industry was given when they emerged top winner in both the Search Marketing Agency (Local) and Top 3 Search Marketing Agency (Global) by Marketing Magazine in 2009 and 2010. Other awards include the Best Digital Campaign - SEM/SEO (Silver) and Best Campaign Strategy - Customer Acquisition (Silver) by dm360 Awards, Emerging Enterprise Award by The Business Time and OCBC, Brand Leadership Award by World Brand Congress and the Entrepreneur of the Year (...