Would you rather hunt for customers, or be seen right where they are hunting for you? By now you have probably heard of search marketing, or search engine marketing (SEM). SEM is the ongoing strategic process of making your business visible to your target audiences where they are searching for your products and services online. A lot of emphasis has been put on search engine optimization (SEO), the goal of which is to get your website listed on page one of Google, Yahoo and Bing for the main keywords people type into the search engines when searching for your products and services. Pay-per-click (PPC), whereby a business pays a search engine when its PPC ad (located above and to the right of organic results in Google) is clicked, is also very popular. While rating high on the search engines is very important, and a well-executed PPC may produce results, there are several other emerging trends in the way people are searching for businesses that you need to be aware of.
Besides traditional searches, more and more people are searching with their mobile devices and via social media. According to a September 10 report by TMP Directional Marketing and 15Miles, Bridging the Gap, From Search to Sales, "Seventy percent of mobile users utilize their device for searches once a week or more. Sixty-four percent use social media for searches once a week or more. The report says that, "Both platforms outperformed search engines (61 percent) and local-search sites (49 percent). Print [directory] users are the least engaged with the medium; only 27 percent use it once a week or more."
Consumers and businesses are searching across a variety of channels, including search engines, mobile searches (including phone directory apps Google Maps, and others), Facebook and Twitter search apps, and emerging channels. These search entities are focusing on local search, as most consumers buy within 15-miles of their location, and most searchers go offline once they find what they are looking for and pick up the phone or visit the storefront; in addition, most people who are searching with a mobile device are searching for the location of a specific local business.
While a national search engine presence (both "organic" results and pay-per-click) is important for some businesses—especially those doing business at a national level—the importance of a presence on local search cannot be under-emphasized; even big corporation are investing in local search. Local search results can take many forms: visibility on organic search results, targeted pay-per-click campaigns, and listings on Google Maps and Mapquest are a few examples. From the report:
"Non-search engines are outperforming search engines in terms of growth. Among search engines, Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and Microsoft (i.e., MSN, Bing) are on the rise, with the most notable changes from Microsoft (up 77 percent). AOL is the only general-search site studied that experienced a decrease in usage (down 14 percent). Non-search engines demonstrated strong year-over-year search growth, fueled mainly by Facebook (up 210 percent) and Amazon (up 46 percent). These numbers prove that local search has become the industry’s focus, as major players have all turned their attention to enhancing their local products: Bing Maps, Google Maps and Places, and more. Undoubtedly, the local-search market share has been altered. Even non-search engines, such as social networks coupled with mobile penetration, continued their push into the local-search landscape, particularly with the launch of Facebook Places and Twitter Places. Expect more platforms to enhance their local solutions in the coming year, painting a bright future for online and mobile search and an uncertain forecast for traditional channels."
The key takeaways from all this? "Develop your search presence across various online platforms, from general search to social media. Failure to do so could result in missing a major segment of your target consumers. Obviously, data supports the fact that consumers are searching with added frequency, but being unable to find you when (and where) it matters most could spell additional sales for your competition." Also, be sure that you have a robust local search plan, executed across multiple online channels. If you have any budget left over, you can advertise in the print directories for the dwindling number of people who still use them.
Kelly Walker, M.S., is Partner and Brand Communications Director for Incyte Marketing.
Visit www.incytemarketing.com for more information on this and other relevant topics.
