Friday, May 7, 2010 Search, Surf, & Social...you have all heard me say it! But what does it really mean. This Week lets talk about SEARCH as it pertains to the internet of course.
Searching in reference to the internet is a person sitting down to a computer with the intention of fulfilling a need, want or desire. The person has already decided to buy. Surfing is a person online browsing and taking in content of interest. Socializing is chatting, writing reviews, participating in forums, blogging, and what ever new came out today that we have even heard of yet. What we as business owners and marketers need to ask ourselves is if the consumer is searching WHEN are they going to buy and From WHOM are they going to buy. If they are surfing, are you in front of that consumer with your message and value proposition? And Finally, if they are socializing we need to be sure we are controlling our on-line reputation. What are consumers saying about you? Do you have bad reviews? Do you have good reviews?
There is a buying cycle we all go through each and every time we purchase something. Awareness, Consideration, Purchase. Imagine it as a funnel wider at the top and more narrow at the bottom. There is an average time line from the point we are aware of a product or service to "when" we buy and it is different for each item we purchase. What is the timeline from the point a consumer is aware they need, want or desire your products or services?
Example: I notice my tires on my car sound more loud, then it seems my car is riding just a bit more rough, then one day I notice the tread on my tires are wearing down and soon I may need tires. Okay STOP! Do I go buy new tires today? Tomorrow? A week from now or when I get a flat? A tire guy could probably tell you the average time-line or should figure it out if they don't know. But, the fact is that I am aware that I have just become "in the market" or entered the AWARENESS phase of the buying cycle. Marketing to a consumer in the Awareness Phase of the buying cycle is more subliminal, marketing to them online during this phase you would turn to display advertising. Later that night, or a few days later, or even a week later I am on-line "SURFING" and see an ad. Not a text ad, but a banner ad or also referred to as a display ad. The ad is either a simple branding ad...Like the Goodyear Logo with a cute baby sitting in the center of a tire, or the ad is for a local tire dealer talking about their everyday competitive pricing like Griffin Tire Pros or Highway Tire, or the ad has a powerful offer to incent me to buy now. All the described ads are good, but don't expect a lot of phone calls, emails, or forms from this type of advertising. The goal is to create a digital handshake or a click in layman's terms. However, can increase the likelihood of the surfer to click and buy from you during the purchase phase. Actually, most search campaigns will see about a 20% lift in clicks when also running a display campaign after about 2-3 months of adding the display campaign.
So lets take a look into the CONSIDERATION phase. Consideration, they have already become aware of a need, want, or desire and they are researching the product or service. Lets stick with the same example: Now I am online and I am online surfing and click on the display ad with the cute baby sitting in the center of the tire, and I am reading content in reference to tires and maybe even look into those new ones with spokes, or I did not like my last set of tires and thought they were loud...so I go to a search engine and type in "low noise and vibration tires" and read some articles on that. Meanwhile, I see an ad for a local tire dealer, or click on that dealers sponsored link and browse their site for more information. I don't call, email or even submit a form because I am not ready to buy yet. But, I clicked, I looked around, and became familiar with that dealers image, and value proposition. I am in the market. If the site indented me to call sooner I might. This is where the advertiser can influence the buying cycle speeding up the process and pushing me into the purchase or buying phase. Think about that! What are you dong to Vincent a consumer to do business with you. Does it cost more to discount a product or service or not make a sale?
Okay, the PURCHASE phase. I drove on my tires too long and now I have no choice but to get new tires. I turn to a search engine of choice. A little more than 1/3 of local searches are performed on Goggle, a little less that 1/3 on Yahoo, and the rest spread over "the rest" Bing, AOL, Etc. The purchasing phase of the buying cycle is the most exciting, and the most competitive. Exciting because the customer is already looking for you. Its the most competitive because this is the phase most business owners focus their budget on or only have enough budget to focus on which makes perfect Seance if you have a limited budget. Its pretty simple, you have a few choices here. (1)Don't do it, not the smartest choice, but is still a choice. (2) Do it yourself while also trying to run your business and bid blindly on keywords that might drive a lot of clicks but not phone calls, emails, or forms because you have no way of knowing what keywords are "working" or not. (3)Hire someone and do it "in-house" same problems as doing it yourself in addition to additional payroll, taxes, etc. or (4) hire a company to manage it for you. Well, you know which one I would put my next pay check on. Hire a company to do it for you! And not a company who is going to manually manage the campaign. Also, hire a company that also offers additional services that can integrate with your PPC campaign. Consider if the company is scalable and is forward thinking in bringing new product offering to you to keep your business on the cutting edge of technology and advancing with it instead of getting left behind.
Finally, lets talk very short about Social. As a business you need to go to each search engine type your business name in the search bar and see what comes up. If you have bad reviews, lets talk about it! I have some recommendations on how to overcome them and ultimately get them to at least the second page cause no one looks there! Do you have a Fan Page on Facebook? Are you Tweeting? How about a Blog? I could talk all day about social. But the basics are simple. Control what comes up when someone types in your name in the search bar. You could do as much Display advertising or PPC you want, but if your online reputation is bad....all other efforts will not perform as good as they could!
~Yovonne |
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Article of the Week
Facebook to Add Location This Month, Integrate Brands Later
Marketers Line Up to Try New Updates That Allow Users to Share Their Whereabouts
by Michael Learmonth and Emily Bryson York
Published: May 07, 2010
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Facebook will start allowing users to share their location in status updates, a move that extends the world's largest social network into the physical world, as soon as late May.
The feature will allow Facebook's users, who number nearly a half billion, to automatically share their location along with what they're doing. Marketers, which have taken a keen interest in both Facebook and geo-targeted marketing, will be integrated into the system sometime after.
Ad Age reported Thursday that McDonald's will allow users to share their location when they update their status at the chain's restaurants. People familiar with the project believed McDonald's would be among the first marketers to use the platform, and that McDonald's would be part of the consumer launch. The chain and digital agency Tribal DDB Chicago declined to discuss its plans.
But an executive familiar with Facebook's plans today said McDonald's will be one of many marketers in on the ground floor and will be integrated into the platform sometime after Facebook turns on the feature for consumers.
Marketers such as Pepsi, Starbucks, Bravo and MTV have all experimented with location-based social networks, but mass marketers in general have been stymied by the lack of scale with services such as Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla and MyTown. The biggest of the four, Loopt, has only 3.5 million users, while MyTown has 2 million, Foursquare 1 million and Gowalla less than that.
"Facebook is adding a million users a day -- they are the only ones who could turn on location-based social marketing at scale for large companies," said Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, which builds social applications for brands.
Facebook's new functionality could make checking in at a location as natural as status updates are now for hundreds of millions of Facebook users. While those are numbers that start to matter for mass marketers, the greatest impact of Facebook's new functionality could be for local businesses.
"This will be the biggest thing to happen to local businesses since paid search," said Ian Schafer, CEO of DeepFocus, which launched its own specialty practice to address the market, GEOFocus. "It's a tremendous opportunity to use digital to move people physically."
Facebook declined to give additional details on its plans. "We have been working on a location feature for a while but don't have immediate plans to announce anything," the company said. "We may consider working with marketers to enhance the experience in the future, but have no plans to so do at launch."
It seems likely that the new location-based status updates will be opt-in for users of Facebook's mobile app, which is actively used to access the network by more than 100 million Facebook users. That's a key distinction for some of Facebook's more vocal critics, who recently argued that Facebook's new Open Graph initiative should have been opt-in rather than added automatically for all users.
Open Graph extends Facebook's social connections to third-party sites so that user activities there are visible to a users' friends within Facebook.
Facebook's critics further complain that it has become too complex for users to understand and control which of their activities are shared and which are private. Adding location to status updates is is another powerful feature, but also uses information that most people aren't accustomed to sharing.
Ian Wolfman, CMO of social media agency IMC2, advised consumers to take a look at PleaseRobMe.com, and give serious thoughts to their privacy when they post their location. All the same, he added, the new link between digital and physical worlds will change not only how consumers behave online but how they behave in person. If you know a friend is having a doughnut down the street, you might stop and join them.
Despite any misgivings over privacy, marketers are eager to leverage social connections to drive foot traffic and sales in real-world stores.
"We're always looking for the next big thing that isn't just a passing fad, but a viable wave in consumer behavior," said Chris Fuller, emerging media director at Pizza Hut, which built an ordering platform on Facebook in 2008. "Geolocation services appear to be just that, which is why it's a top priority for us." |
Video Of the Week
Guy with most $$$$ Does  not get the top spot!
Chief Economist of Google, Hal Varian, explains the AdWords Ad Auction and how your max CPC bid and quality score determine how much you pay for a click on Google.com |
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Definition of the Week
Display Advertising: Display advertising involves the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product awareness. |
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