Local Search

Local searches, for the most part, are conducted by consumers on the local or directory (yellow pages) sections of leading search sites. According to comScore, Google captures the largest share of local searches (30%), followed by Yahoo! (29%) and Microsoft (12%). In an related study, comScore said that most people doing local search (59%) are searching for recreational activities such as a restaurant or a cinema, theme park or other attraction. Another large segment (41%) seek information on local services, including car rentals, dry cleaners and lawyers. Searchers are looking for the basics: 52% said they searched specifically for a business phone number or address.

A report called "Why Search Matters to Local Business" from WebVisible demonstrates the growing significance of search engines in meeting consumer's need to find a local businesses. The survey of 2,000 Internet users conducted by WebVisible and Nielsen//NetRatings, revealed that search engines are used by 73% of consumers when seeking local products and services -- more than any other media type. By comparison, traditional advertising sources are becoming used less frequently. According to the report, usage is as follows:

• Internet search engines 73%
• Yellow pages telephone directories 65%
• Internet yellow pages 50%
• Local newspapers 44%
• White pages telephone directories 33%
• Television 29%
• Direct mail 20%
• Consumer review Web sites 18%
• Radio 15%

When There Were Brands...

Following up on my post on building constituents as opposed to customer bases - please read the post below from Modern Marketing. Follow the links just to see the damage that we can do to our brands if we do not create relationships that our constituents value.

I have been in the market for a new kitchen for sometime and as a result, quite randomly, found myself in a Moben salesroom and booked up for a consultation. The Moben rep duly arrived and was very good, explaining everything we needed. In short we were sold and even cancelled other consultations. However, I then mentioned our intended purchase to friends and family and got some concerned looks. Unusually for me I hadn't checked the company online but then did so. I found a series of horror stories - including this particularly graphic one. Order cancelled. Moben's tight marketing programme including a shop in a nice part of town, lovely website, super salesman and beautiful literature had been made entirely redundant by my 10 second search. Call it death by Google Index.

Coupon Mashing

Google maps has had a coupon feature for something over a year when the search giant combined Google Maps with Valpak.com's local merchants. Customers can download and print coupons to be redeemed at a store location or local business. Some recent activity (i.e. Google registering of coupon-specific domain names) may be indicative of a re-focusing on this activity. Transfer the same logic to the mobile version of Google maps and things become interesting...

Media & Technology

Deloitte’s Media & Entertainment practice has just released the results of its first comprehensive media consumption survey, providing a generational "reality check" on how American consumers between 13 and 75 years of age are using media and technology today — and what they want in the future.


The whole report is interesting (found here), some of the particularly fun marketing/advertising tidbits are:

• 76% of all consumers find Internet ads more intrusive than print ads, and 64% pay more attention to print ads than those online.


• 28% of all consumers would pay for online content to avoid seeing ads.


• While offline advertising is effective in driving web traffic, 84% of all consumers visit a website after finding it through a search engine and 82% do so because of a personal recommendation.


• 87% of all consumers continually frequent the same websites, but 56% are constantly in search of something new.

Where To Spend

According to a recent study from Burst Media, more than three-quarters of Internet users in the United States turn to the web for health information.

• The web leads other sources – including healthcare professionals – by a wide margin as the primary source for household healthcare information.
• Women search more frequently than men for healthcare information online – and turn to a greater variety of online resources.

Of this audience, more than one-third researched health topics online before visiting a medical professional. After a medical appointment, 43.5% of respondents went online to learn more.

The conclusion drawn is that as pharmaceutical companies launch products aimed at specific medical conditions, more of their ad spend should go to the web both in terms of search marketing and in ensuring that they have a meaningful and engaging presence.

Microsoft Search

Microsoft has released a new search service - Tafiti is powered by Silverlight, Microsoft's answer to flash. It's beautiful interface also has some cool features such as saving and tagging searches. The "shelf" on Tafiti allows you to drag search results that you want to save for later. Other features include a secondary filter (to refine searches) and different display formatting for results from the Web, books, news sites, and RSS feeds.

A New Search Interface

Do we really need one - or is the stripped down search box that Google provides the absolute best answer? There are a couple of different ways of skinning the search cat and one that I particularly like is Quintura... Quintura has a visual search capability which reminds me of the Visual Thesaurus of many years ago (Which, in my humble opinion was an example of Web 2.0 way before its time). I like the combination of searching and browsing that the cloud interface encourages...

Marketers Slow To Adopt New Paths

A study by Forrester Research (Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2007) has again pointed to a reluctance to innovate in marketing departments. The research finds that while email, banners and search are still a firm favourite, and blogs, podcasts, RSS, social networks, and online video are making inroads -mobile and in-game marketing are left on the side of the road. The most significant gains have been made in the social media space. In 2006 less than 13 % of marketers were experimenting with blog advertising and around 10 % with RSS, while the 2007 report found; "Today, 40 percent of marketers are using or piloting RSS while 34 percent use or are piloting blogs".

The agencies have a key role to play here in bringing these digital paths to their clients and creating the environments in which small scale test and learn strategies enable marketers to see the benefits of opening conversations with their consumers in more enlightened and interactive ways...

Click To Action

Google have announced a beta release of its Pay-Per-Action product for AdWords. The beta will run only in the US and roll out will take place over the next few weeks. Advertisers can list as many action types as they desire. A description for each action is provided to the publishers as well as an offer of how much they are prepared to pay for each action.
AdSense publishers will be able to opt-in to display PPA ads from Google, they also get to preview the ads, including company name, logo etc, before the ads go live.

This has long been rumored - I will be watching it closely.

Targeting Takes Centre Stage

Two big players in the on-line marketing/search arena announced acquisitions of smaller marketing technology companies to enhance their ability to target their online offers. Fox Interactive Media (a division of News Corp) acquired Strategic Data Corporation with the intention of being able to provide better segmentation of the MySpace data it controls and thus offering better targeting capabilities. In December last year MySpace surpassed Yahoo in visits for the first time becoming the most visited site in the US.
Omniture purchased TouchClarity a behavioural targeting firm. TouchClarity’s technology platform allows advertisers to present relevant offers to site visitors based on their on-site behaviour. Couple that data with the things we already use to target offers – source, location and perhaps keyword and failure to engage (apparently) anonymous visitors with a relevant message, offer or other call to action is no longer an option.

Mobile in Barcelona

Lots of fun stuff going on at the 3GSM get together in Barcelona this week. Much movement around online advertising from Yahoo and moves in mobile search from Microsoft.

Yahoo has begun offering its brand advertising to reach mobile phone users across 19 markets in Western Europe, South Asia and the Americas. The company has signed up major advertisers including Hilton's Embassy Suites, Infiniti, Intel, Nissan, Pepsi and P&G.

By expanding onto mobile phones, Yahoo aims to offer coordinated campaigns that reach both online and mobile audiences, this builds on an exclusive partnership deal it struck in November with Vodafone to provide corporate brand ads in Britain.

In the mobile search space, Microsoft announced Live Search for Windows Mobile and Live Search for Java providing advanced local search and mapping capabilities on a compatible mobile device.

Who's searching for what and where?

As marketers use source (search engine used) as an element of segmentation, I wonder what to make of these top search terms used for 2006 on the 3 leading engines.

Google:
1. Bebo
2. Myspace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

Yahoo:
1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Shakira
4. Jessica Simpson
5. Paris Hilton
6. American Idol
7. Beyonce Knowles
8. Chris Brown
9. Pamela Anderson
10. Lindsay Lohan

AOL:
1. Weather
2. Dictionary
3. Dogs
4. American Idol
5. Maps
6. Cars
7. Games
8. Tattoo
9. Horoscopes
10. Lyrics

Search Marketing & How to Waste Money Doing It.

1. Don’t get to know your visitor….

Use the data you already have and any other nuggets you can glean
Offers should be refined for specific customer segments, such as gender, referral source, keyword, new or return visitor, and any others that we can mine. Create personas to use as a guide. From the anonymous browser, to the identified customer, Artificial Intelligence modules can now detect the most promising prospects from their browsing behavior.

2. Don’t make a direct connection between search terms used and the very first page you show to the visitor…

Create relevant landing pages
For example, if a customer searches for a high yield savings account and click on a link, that link must take you to a page which specifically deals with that subject—not to a generic home page where the customer must find the product herself. With so many choices, customers most often will just move on. The market reality is that there is simply not enough affordable traffic to sustain business growth unless the marketer optimizes the landing page as well as the search terms.

Offers must be relevant based on insights and different scenario testing. Content must be relevant and meaningful. And, design must reflect the needs and expectations of the target audience. We are trying to establish a profitable relationship here and relevance is the father of engagement.

3. Don’t pay attention to the copy of your ad…

Be specific in your copy
Yahoo gives you 190 characters (including spaces) in your text ad. MSN adCenter gives you 140, while Google allows just 70. No pictures, no colors, no company logo... nothing, just a few words. It’s a small canvas, your words are fundamental, be very careful not to waste them on generalities. Studies have shown extraordinary variations in the effectiveness of different copy (see point 5).

4. Don’t measure what matters…

Decide on a short list of key success metrics and measure, measure
The web has a great strength in the availability of performance data – the amount of data available is also a weakness. Some of the leading web metrics packages offer more that 5,000 reports out of the box – you probably need 5. Watching how customers behave on your website, and using the information to drive structural, offer placement or editorial improvements, is integral to increasing conversion.

5. Don’t use what you learn to drive improvement (continuously)…

Test, optimize and test again
Test as many combinations of content variations as you can or want to and track any sequence of conversion behavior. Use A/B split or multivariate test campaigns to meet your conversion goals. According to a Stanford University study the following are the conversion components that should be tested and optimized (there are more): Headline, Offer, Lead, Benefits, Images, Look & Feel.