Searching for Search at Ad:Tech: NetProfit - May. 27, 2004
Searching for Search at Ad:Tech: NetProfit - May. 27, 2004: "Two things were consistently missed, however, that I believe are vital. First, none mentioned organic search and its importance until after I mentioned it in my presentation. Secondly, they fell into the trap that almost all search marketers do. They were thinking straight lines to conversion, and people tend to search in circles."For most consumers, search is a circular funnel. We start with broad, generic phrases, and narrow down our search focus as we go. And as we do so, we interact with the search results we see and can be led in totally new directions based on those results. Most often, this all happens in one single search session. So to say that broad phrases don’t convert is wrong. They represent the beginning of a process that can eventually lead to a conversion, but ROI tracking only captures the end of the process, not the beginning.
Case study:Cruising on Search
We had a young female who was looking for information about a cruise. She started with the vague notion that she wanted to go to the Caribbean, but actually began her search process by just searching for “cruises”. When asked why, she said she wanted to keep her options open and just wanted to see what came up. What did come up were listings for major cruise lines, including Princess in a prominent organic position (she tended to look at organic listings first). She knew the brand and saw by the listing text that they offered cruises to the Caribbean. She didn’t actually click through to any site.
Her next search was for “Caribbean cruises”. Again, Princess’s site was prominently placed in the top organic listings. This time, she did click through to Princess and did some investigation of the Caribbean itineraries. One option that caught her eye was the Panama Canal Cruise. At this point, it was a few clicks on the back button to get back to the search engine results page.
From here, she searched for “Caribbean Cruise Reviews”. She wanted to get some objective third opinions. She found a site that offered this as the number one organic listing and read some encouraging reviews of Princess Cruises. At this point, she again backed up to the search engine results page and launched a new search for “princess panama canal cruises”. When asked why she did this, rather than just go directly to the Princess site and navigate to the appropriate page, she said she thought using the search engine to get there would just be faster and easier. She did find the page she wanted, and clicked through the listing to the site. This time, she spent a fair amount of time reading about the cruise and the ports of call. She was ready to convert, but she wouldn’t do it online. She would print off the page and take it to her local travel agent, because she wanted to finalize the purchase with a face to face interaction. When she got there, she would ask for more information about Princess Cruises through the Panama Canal.
Was this a successful search interaction for Princess? Absolutely. But what if we didn’t have the advantage of watching the searcher during the search process? From the ROI metrics used by most search marketers, this would have been a dismal failure. They would have never realized that their brand was introduced in the search for “cruises”. They would have recorded no conversions for the searches for either “Caribbean cruises” or “princess panama canal cruises”. It would have been recorded as a lost opportunity.
posted by Jen @ 7:15 AM
<< Home