Starting From Search

Goodbye Yellow Book, Hello Search

Rhetorical question: When you need to find the phone number of the pizza shop down the street, what do you do? Grab the phone book, or hit a search engine? Personally, I pop open my laptop before I even decide what toppings I want. In fact, that is what a majority of searchers do.

According to new data released by Kelsey Research, 54% of search engine users have completely substituted a search engine for a phonebook.

With local search being the fastest growing area in search marketing, I’m not at all surprised by this stat. In fact, I tried to remember the last time I used a phone book and I drew a blank.

Are you still relying on your local yellow book to find new customers? They're not looking for you there. Even if you are just a small stationary store.

Technorati Tags: search, local search, yellow pages

Yahoo! to Release Redesigned Advertising Interface in Q3

This morning Yahoo! announced that it will release the much anticipated redesign of their advertising console in Q3 of this year.

The changes will include a more intuitive control panel, with a user-tested navigation. It is also aimed at helping advertisers to easily understand campaign results.

Also expected is better targeting for local search, so pay-per-click ads can be focused on more specific areas.

Ads will be activated in 30 minutes or less, instead of the occasional 3-day long wait that some advertisers currently experience.

There will be better forecasting to help advertisers get a better idea of what their campaigns may really cost. This is a welcome change since I have seen estimates prove to be highly inaccurate. Yahoo did not say how they will make it more accurate, but I will be eager to see how this works in practice.

Goal-based campaign optimization will also be added as a feature. Click price can be automatically adjusted based on cost-per-acquisition.

Yahoo will also be implementing what they call the Visible Quality Index. With this, ads will be scored based on quality, bid price and other variables. This score will be visible to advertisers, and will eventually determine how pay-per-click ads are ranked. Advertisers will not be able to buy the top spot solely on bid price anymore.

All these changes are welcome additions to Yahoo’s search marketing tools. After seeing another Yahoo product -- the email beta -- they appear to have really figured out how to provide powerful, yet simple tools.

Search Driving In-Store Traffic

Recent research by iProspect and JupiterResearch discovered that almost two-thirds of Web users take advantage of general search engines to research products. But what was really telling about this research is that it showed almost half of all Web users then follow their online product research with a purchase – at a brick-and-mortar store.

I touched on this notion several months ago in an entry about local search [article link: Local Search], and honestly, it’s not surprising to me to see this notion re-established in newer research findings.

I have always believed that search marketing is a channel of marketing that should fit it in with a whole, complete marketing strategy.

With any channel, the goal is often a conversion that takes place outside that channel. When an ad is placed on a billboard, the hope is not to drive traffic to the billboard but to build in-store traffic or maybe generate a phone call.

The expectation for search should be no different. While it should drive traffic to your site, it can also effectively drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar stores.

Just as your corporate brochure should have a similar look & feel as your annual report, shouldn’t look distinctively different from your web site, and should have the same tone as your radio spot, your search marketing should not be considered to be separate from any part of your customer communication.

Search Engine Use Increasing Exponentially. Are You Taking Advantage?

Last week Nielsen//NetRatings announced the search market has grown 55% in the last year.

The Kelsey Group is predicting local search will increase 30.5% over the next four years.

Today, Nielsen//NetRatings reported that Google and Yahoo sponsored link impressions have increased 16% in the last six months. In January alone, Google and Yahoo served almost 65 billion sponsored links!

Yet with all this rabid growth in the search channel, many companies are still not investing in this method of reaching customers, new or old. Likewise, there are also plenty of interactive agencies that fail to implement anything other than the simplest of search techniques for their clients.

The marketing "sweet spot" is reaching someone with your message when they want to buy products in your niche. That is exactly what search marketing does on a daily basis – presenting results (messages) to potential customers (searchers) right at the time they are looking for the information.

Search marketing has long past its tipping point. It is here and it is going to stay. It won’t be long before more people are going to experience your brand and products through a search engine results page than a TV commercial. Why not reach them at the moment they are looking for what you offer? If you are working with an interactive agency, ask them if they can deliver competent optimization as part of the project.

I will give a tip of the hat to the Ford Motor Company, though. They recently reported they have sold more than 250,000 vehicles through FordDirect internet referrals. The oldest car maker in the world is using a new channel of marketing to sell an old technology (cars) to an audience that is growing more reliant on search.

Pontiac, on the other hand, got it all wrong.

Local Search

Local search is becoming the new hot thing in the search world. Especially with statistics from iMedia showing that as many as 70% to 90% of those with the intent to purchase in a brick and mortar store start their research online.

That means the guy down the street from your store could start his research at the engine level and then walk down the street to buy from you. But how do you make sure he does? How do you make sure he knows you sell what he’s looking for?

In actuality, those questions surpass search and touch on many areas or marketing, but I’ll focus on a few tips that will help you get started into the area of local search.

The first and simplest way to get started is to make sure your street address is on your web site. Do you have an “About” section? Be sure your full address and phone number are listed there. This is, of course, assuming your site is properly optimized and that a search engine spider would be able to access that page, and thusly index the address.

But if you sell products and you want to be sure your address is on each product page, then placing your address in a footer is a good idea. A good footer should also have a link to a complete site map. Adding a line that contains your address won’t take up that much room.

You could also add in a more substantial address presence on a product page. For example, if you had a product page for orange widgets, you could include something like, “Come see this product in our store at…” as part of the description.

But what if you have more than one store? Local search is still for you and can provide you with plenty of sales.