Get More from Search - Trends in Search & Social Media

We know that search is the #1 tool that consumers use when researching products and services but it’s interesting to see that other media continues to facilitate the motivation to search.  

In a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, it was found that consumers are often motivated to search after interacting with other media outlets including magazines (47.2%), reading an article (43.7%), watching television (42.8%) and reading a newspaper (42.3%). Men are more likely than women to start a search after listening to the radio (34.4% vs. 24.9%) while women are more likely to respond to receiving coupons than men (41.8% vs. 29.0%).

Which outlet deserves more attention from your budget? It depends on your audience’s media patterns. Market research and studies will help you drill down the particular areas you need to focus on, but the new purchase pattern of consumers and businesses involves a multiple media approach – and that means that your business must adopt the same pattern for your marketing campaigns.

While many forms of advertising are beneficial, such as product reviews in magazines, radio ads, and relevant TV commercials, it is unlikely that the prospect will act on that information immediately. Over time, repeated exposure or a genuine need will drive your customers to a search engine where they’ll begin their decision-making process in earnest.

While we’ve been reading about this paradigm shift for a few years now, the connection is still far from seamless in the minds of so many marketers. Yet, the new reality is that advertising is a means to drive traffic to your website or to vertical sites that foster the research/purchase cycle - and that actuality can take some getting used to.

Crossing the chasm to capture the purchase cycle interest requires that you always feature online activities (search, website, communities) in the call to action in all ad campaigns. Based on the knowledge that the majority of your customers are going to look in search engines for you or visit your site directly when you’ve caught their attention, then you must gear everything you do toward that behavior.

If you’re running a magazine ad for a new high-tech add-on to an existing product, prominently feature a micro-site for that product. That micro-site can do more for conversions than 1000 full-page ads ever could. It’s about delivering the complete decision-making package to the prospect instantly: text, video demonstrations, customer testimonials, and if applicable, outgoing links to retailers/reviews/social networks that support your product. And don’t stop with creating micro-sites, practice best SEO techniques to get the most relevant content into the search engines ASAP.

Additionally, you should customize the online destination for each campaign for the audience and the product. Sometimes, a favorable product review might be the best landing page for a campaign. Or, if you have an active blog community that engages a loyal readership and creates a transparency with your brand, that might be the best scenario for a buyer demographic that thrives on casual but intelligent repartee. 

Another important realization is that your consumers will communicate with each other after they have purchased your product.

Joe Pilotta, Vice President of BIGresearch says, “Retailers must realize that online communities are now producers and through their stories are able to extend the distribution of traditional media with a trust and truth not even approximated by mass media.”

Word of mouth is a powerful tool and even online consumers are most likely to communicate about a product or service face-to-face (68.9%), but bear in mind that consumers do utilize other methods for communicating their experiences: email (53.1%), telephone (50.9%), and cell phones (30.0%). Young adults are more apt to use new media sources to communicate about products and services they have purchased, including instant messaging (37.5%), text messaging (23.7%), and online communities (20.6%).

In summary, a diverse advertising strategy is important, but it has to: 1) communicate to your audience within the media that they’re most likely to interact with; 2) drive potential customers to the Web where they will search for your brand, make their decisions and communicate with other consumers post-purchase.

Online video is the rising star in the advertising community. Why then do so many large companies continue to advertise with display ads? According to data from TNS Media Intelligence Vonage, AT&T and Dell spent a combined $489 million on display ads in 2006. Display ads hold 21% of the market share with US online advertisers while online video only holds 8% of the market share. That places display ads with triple the amount of market share over online video. This doesn’t mean that marketers are dissing online video, however. While advertising spending for display ads will remain flat over the next few years, online video will steadily increase until by 2011 they will have 17% of the market share for online advertisers.

Companies are finding that the more diversified you make your advertising the more effective your campaign will be. A study was released in December 2006 by comScore Networks that determined that if companies utilize both search and display advertising their campaign will be more engaging and effective than companies that use a single type of advertising campaign. Per the study, online users who were exposed to both display and search advertising increased their page views compared to competing sites by 68% and increased their time on the sites by 66%. Among those exposed also increased their purchases of the advertisers products and services by 244% online and 89% offline when compared to online users with similar behavior who didn’t view the ads.

Diversifying your marketing campaigns take planning, but an engaging multimedia campaign will pay you back with better ROI and make you look like the company rock star. All advertising is important; you just have to research what truly works best for your company and utilize the outlets that best connect with and influence your future customers.