Listen to the Data: Using Search to Understand Your Market

Too often, marketers think of search engine marketing as a one-way street, believing that merchandising and overall marketing strategy should direct search efforts…period. While this direction is essential to search success, the one-way street view is short-sighted, because search data can provide many unique insights on consumer behavior that cannot be found elsewhere.

Marketers should tap the extensive data available to them, including data from their own search programs as well as a host of data sources independent of any specific campaign, to refine merchandising strategy, enhance overall marketing initiatives, and drive more sales and profit.

Search data can serve as a barometer to help you gauge consumers’ perceptions of a brand or a particular product or product line, enabling you to
• plan for and improve their own search campaigns
• increase effectiveness of offline and other online marketing and promotions • refine merchandising, media buying, and other strategies

Often marketers are shocked to find that some of the most basic assumptions they had made about their customers are not completely true. Merchants selling swimsuits or prom dresses, for example, sometimes suspect computer error when they see spikes in search volume on related terms in what they would consider to be the off season. Far from computer error, consumers often seek out products and services at times that merchants would not expect. Vacationers might seek swimwear in December, for instance. And in an example frequently highlighted by Bill Tancer of Hitwise, “prom dress” gets tremendous search activity not just in the weeks preceding prom season but even in January, when teen and fashion magazines begin generating interest in them.

Search data can be a tremendous help in better understanding these issues. The data can also help you gauge the effectiveness of your offline promotions. Analyzing variations of branded search terms, for example, sets the stage for an apples-to-apples comparison when determining the effectiveness of various promotions, and it can also provide a wealth of other consumer behavior insights when done effectively.

Within your own search programs, you should measure such variables as the volume of branded search queries over time and associated fluctuations, demographics of searchers, and the quality of search queries. Overlaying a calendar of marketing initiatives can clarify the effects of offline or other online promotional efforts and assess resulting boosts during periods of peak marketing activity.

Third-party search data can help you understand consumer language patterns, thought patterns, and paths through the purchase process, among other helpful insights. You can create a short list of critical brand keywords, identify a sample of users who searched on these terms, and trace their steps backward and forward to determine what led to that critical brand keyword search and what followed.

Suppose a Bose reseller wanted to reach consumers earlier in the purchase process to increase awareness that it sells this particular brand and to gain a leg up on competitors. By following the above process, the reseller’s marketing team could better understand behavior, uncover opportunities to engage consumers earlier, and increase the effectiveness of its search program. Similar analyses can help you shape merchandising strategy and overall marketing planning to better connect with consumers.

A better understanding of consumers’ word choices and language patterns is often one of the most beneficial insights gleaned from reviewing search data. Marketers who intimately understand how consumers think about their products can show up in many more sets of relevant search results–and as we’ve discussed before, showing up is the most important element of success in search.

A simple example focuses on an underachieving laptop marketer that doesn’t understand that some consumers consider that product to be a “notebook.” Consumers visiting Yahoo! searched on the term “laptop” 1.8 million times in July. The term “notebook computer” generated 829,464 searches in the same timeframe. Adding this secondary term could have captured 46% more search traffic in July for this product line. Marketers must understand consumer language patterns and word choice in order to show up more often in appropriate search results and to position their brands to succeed.

Many data sources can help you gain insights and view the true value of search engine marketing by looking at more than the last click. They can allow you to determine how consumers
• move through the purchase process, building up to that last click
• think about products and services
• associate multiple branded terms

Data from your own search programs, Google Trends, Yahoo! Buzz, MSN’s adLabs, Hitwise, comScore, and other sources can help you better understand consumer behavior and brand perceptions. Those who take this initiative will find valuable and reliable consumer behavior insights.

Cam Balzer is director of search strategy for Performics, the Chicago-based performance marketing division of DoubleClick, and a monthly contributor to CHIEF MARKETER. Contact him at [email protected].