As more and more marketing dollars shift online, search is commanding ever closer scrutiny, and required to deliver ever stronger ROI. Simon van Wyk talks to Gour Lentell, SVP Global Strategic Alliances for 24/7 Real Media on the evolution of search as a critical component in any marketing campaign.
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Simon van Wyk takes a look at the emerging opportunities in local search
Research from Nielsen//NetRatings and WebVisible that came out over a year ago called “I Clicked, I Contacted, I Transacted” showed that 70 percent of U.S. internet users have used a search engine to find a local service vendor.
Up until recently, helping to find local businesses was of course the tightly held territory of the Yellow Pages. Increasingly however, people intuitively use search instead of either the print or online version of Yellow Pages.
Indeed last year, TMP Directional Marketing commissioned a study with comScore Inc. to understand consumers’ attitudes and behaviour toward offline and online local media sources when looking to make an upcoming purchasing decision.
According to the study, on results of 3,000 survey respondents, one out of three consumers still regarded the printed yellow pages as their preferred source for local information, but the internet in general was cited as the most prominent source referenced by over 60% of participants.
Interestingly eMarketer estimates that by 2011, 51.3 percent of U.S. local online spending will go to paid search, compared with 43.1 percent today.
6 in 10 local business searchers went online first
And according to eMarketer, 6 in 10 local business searchers went online first. With Google serving about 4 billion searches in April 2007 or over 50% of the market share.
Of course, the biggest hurdle in realising the potential of local search is the content. And the future of local search has to involve creating content that isn’t currently online. Basic business listings need to be expanded and enhanced.
Indeed one of the most important trends in local search is the use of user reviews - and with good reason. People like the opinions of their peers especially when they’re looking to hire a tradesperson or when they want to eat out. What someone has to say about a restaurant’s ambience carries a lot of weight. Customer satisfaction ratings and reviews will help quality-focused businesses differentiate themselves from their competition and increase their visibility in their local area.
And as local businesses start to build more content with low cost video and podcasts, so the local search experience will become more compelling.
On Yahoo! Local Search in the US, you can sort the local search results on the basis of user reviews. In fact sharing your opinions about businesses couldn’t be easier.
Just a couple of months ago, Google started to allow users to add reviews to any business or location listed on Google Maps, thus providing the framework for a truly rich local search experience. More than just enhancing the information in a local listing, reviews are highly persuasive.
Local search experience will become more compelling
Indeed, user generated reviews, local search and social networking seem to be a match made in heaven.
US sites like Yelp, Sydney’s RaveAboutIt and the UK’s TrustedPlaces to name but three are attracting big crowds - indicating that the social networking/local search combination is helping to engage users around local content.
These sites give everyone the opportunity to review anything they like which has to be a good thing for both consumers and local businesses alike. And as Internet access becomes ubiquitous through wireless devices, the opportunity for local search with user reviews working together with mobile is very exciting, and potentially incredibly powerful.
Unsurprisingly, small businesses that are reluctant to dip their toes in the online marketing waters will miss out on significant business opportunities. Take the plumber who continues to pay for a listing in the local Yellow Pages and runs classified ads in the local newspaper, who is missing out on potential customers who, like most of the population, use online search first.
Wouldn’t our plumber better use his dollars online by targeting his region at a micro-local level – and I’m talking about distinct neighbourhoods, not towns in the region? A customer undertaking a local search using Yellow Pages or a search engine may turn up plumbers in a 50km radius. A customer performing a micro-local search will find just those plumbers in their neighbourhood.
And of course if our plumber’s listing is enriched with user reviews endorsing his level of professionalism etc - there’s more of a chance that the search process will drive real leads and the ultimate transactions.
Big opportunity
In theory it’s a no brainer, but I think what’s clear is that there is a big job to do first in educating small businesses as to the opportunities, possibilities and ROI of online marketing.
Another element of local search that I find fascinating is how social networks are naturally delivering the local search function with of unfettered recommendations to boot.
As a case in point, I recently needed to have some cupboards built at home. The company I used last time were flat out with orders and said they couldn’t promise delivery any earlier than 12 weeks. Now, I know these guys are good, but I really didn’t want to wait for three months. So, to find alternative suppliers, my first instinct was to ask my friends on Facebook. And three hearty recommendations, from people I trust came flying through. I contacted all three, got them to quote, and selected one to do the job which was completed in less than six weeks. And it’s perfect.
Using my social network to find quality trades professionals was a very natural thing to do. After all, we trust our friends’ opinions more don’t we??
Of course this scenario is highly random for small businesses, but there are opportunities for companies to usefully tap into the local nature of Facebook, to build their businesses and the power of the network.
Simon van Wyk predicts one of the biggest trends in 2008 will be brands creating content and not ads.
One of the biggest things that we’re going to see in 2008 is this much written about, much discussed and much anticipated shift of advertising budgets from traditional advertising to online marketing in all its many forms.
The time is right, and it’s not just the signs of the oncoming recession in the US. Marketers are growing in confidence online. They are beginning to understand that it’s not just about transferring the principles of traditional marketing to the web. Sure, a few years ago, online marketing was restricted to email and banner sizes or whether sites would take pop-up ads. But so much has changed. And marketers can finally move beyond traditional advertising conventions in order to capitalise on digital marketing opportunities.
And that’s precisely what Nike achieved in 2007 with its evolution of Nike+ - using the power of the web with the idea of community to deliver a highly engaging experience. They provided motivational goals and progress tracking, virtual racing and global community comparison tools - effectively satisfying a broad target market and giving them something that they truly value.
Connecting with consumers
In doing so, they took the Nike+ product experience far beyond just a running shoe or an iPod.
Of course they still spend money on traditional media, but they’re spending more and more in ways that don’t interrupt their consumers, rather they provide useful content and applications to provide real value.
The success of Nike+ has not gone unnoticed how could it as a Cannes Cyber Lion Grand Prix winner in the “innovative ideas” category? And we’re starting to see this thinking starting to shape global marketing budgets. Moving away from traditional interruption advertising and embracing the idea of developing content to provide value.
A story in the New York Times last year claimed that “Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That’s down from 55 percent 10 years ago, according to the trade publication Advertising Age.”
That’s a staggering number just 33 per cent of its advertising budget on traditional media particularly for a company that has made some of the biggest, glossiest, most entertaining ads ever. But as Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management is quoted as saying in the same New York Times story: “We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive. We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”
What a quote. And if media companies and traditional advertising agencies don’t get it now I don’t think they ever will.
Moving beyond traditional advertising
There’s a big price to pay for not keeping up with the tastes and needs of customers, but innovative consumer brand marketers who do move beyond traditional advertising and actively engage with their customers – will ensure not only the overall health of their brand but the of their business. And this may mean creating content rather than relying simply on advertising during commercial breaks.
This thinking certainly seems to be behind the Adidas OriginalsFestival, which was launched in Australia in December last year and runs through to the end of February 08. The OriginalsFestival is an online game which, within your preset $100K budget, lets you dream up your own music festival, book the venue and secure the headline acts and supporting bands. Then you’ve got to promote the whole shebang with the single goal of attracting the greatest attendance (the most number of visits) to win the grand prize of a trip for 2 to the Berlin Festival 2008.
Of course attracting the biggest crowd attendance means designing a stand-out poster and promoting the event big time which means that game players will be hitting their email, blogs, Myspace and Facebook pages to generate word of mouth and drive traffic to their events. The concept seems to be a spot on way to engage the youth market and it will be interesting to see what kind of numbers this game draws and the attendance numbers of the most successful festival.
In another example of a big brand developing content, last year Toyota launched Little Deviant to promote its compact Scion xD in the US. In this game, the user takes on the persona of the monster xD, who wages war against the conformist Sheeple. While the game isn’t quite everyone’s cup of tea, nor is it meant to be, it’s clear that little old ladies aren’t the Scion xD’s target audience, but the site has proved to be a hit with the xD’s target audience of young, urban consumers who thrive and it builds in enough car references in the games to get both brand messages and product features across to its audience.
I think these examples show that global brands are starting to consider how to make their brand relevant in the social media age, so that consumers actively engage with them and happily share that brand message. Sure, it’s not as easy as working out a traditional media buy but it’s going to be far more interesting. And this year we will see more and more brands turning to content development to excite, entertain and engage.
After all, as Seth Godin says, “The truism of the web: people talking about you is far more effective than talking about yourself”.