When people are thinking about buying something, they often search for information or opinions to guide their choice. This is more common for categories with high ticket prices or ones that consumers find interesting. If someone already has a brand in mind, they may search for it directly. According to research I conducted in 2015, in conjunction with Omaid Hiwaizi from visual search experts Blippar, about one in ten of all searches are related to shopping. This amounts to billions of searches every year. Marketers need to determine how to leverage search for the benefit of their brand.
When people make shopping-related searches, they use various platforms including search engines, online marketplaces, department stores and supermarkets. Major search platforms in 2023 include Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon, eBay, Taobao and Tmall (popular in China), Rakuten (popular in Japan), Flipkart (popular in India), and Mercados Libre (popular in Latin America). PAID SEARCH Marketers can pay to have their brand appear at the top of the search engine results pages ('SERPs’) when people search for chosen terms, or 'keywords’. This is known as search advertising, paid search, or sponsored search. It is an example of intent-based targeting. It works well for categories where people research and/or make their purchase online. Advertisers usually choose keywords that indicate that the person searching is interested in buying the category. Paying for your ads to appear at the top of search results when people search for your brand name may be worthwhile if you are a small business. After all, your competitors may have paid so that their ads appear whenever people search for your brand. However, well known brands won’t need to pay for advertising to appear when people put their name into a search because they are likely to organically feature high up in search results. In March 2012, eBay conducted an experiment to test the theory. According to the Harvard Business Review (2013), the company stopped paying for search ads containing the word 'eBay’ on Yahoo and Bing search engines but continued to on Google. They found that sales coming via Yahoo and Bing were unaffected. Instead of clicking on paid links, consumers used the organic search listing slightly lower down the page. At the time of writing, the world’s leading search engine, Google, offers 22 different ways to promote your brand. Here are three widely used formats. The cost of search advertising depends on: - how many other companies are bidding on the same keywords - how effective your ad will be at getting people to click on it (estimated by Google’s AI) - how engaging and user-friendly your website is (based on usage statistics) Google wants to ensure its users find what they’re looking for, so it charges less for advertising that consumers find relevant and leads to positive experiences. This means that having a well-targeted search ad and a compelling website reduces your media costs. According to Google’s AI, the most effective ads have these characteristics: - Feature the brand/product name to trigger the brand’s mental associations - Include the keyword in the text, so that people can quickly see that the ad is relevant - Summarize what the product is/does and what sets it apart, ideally via a catchy phrase - Provide a compelling reason to click ('call to action’) - Only attract clicks from people for whom the brand is relevant The UK insurance price comparison site CompareTheMarket.com came up with an ingenious way to leverage search whilst minimising spend. They created a fictional website, CompareTheMeerkat.com, and created a tongue-and-cheek campaign to promote it. This resulted in people making searches containing the word 'meerkat’, a search term that is 100 times cheaper than the word 'market’. Of course, the CompareTheMeerkat.com website quickly re-directed people to CompareTheMarket.com, but the trick allowed the company to make enormous savings. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Search engine optimization, or SEO, involves making changes to your website so that it appears higher up on the results page(s) when people search for something related to your brand. These changes also reduce the cost of search advertising because search engines want their users to be directed to relevant sites with a good user experience. SEO changes might include: - Using keywords throughout your site (i.e., the terms people use most often when making searches related to your category) - Ensuring your site is appealing, clear, and easy for visitors to navigate. The goal is to reduce your site’s 'bounce rate’ - the proportion of people who enter the site and then exit it without any interaction - Having a logical structure that makes it easy for search engine 'bots’ to analyse and categorize the content. Giving each page a name that describes its contents and including title tags, meta descriptions, headings and internal links can all help. - Asking partner organizations to include links to your site. This increases your site’s credibility in the eyes of the search engine’s algorithm, especially if your partners’ sites have a large audience. Paid search advertising is a great way to activate brand memories and remind people about your brand at a time when they are thinking about buying the category. It is particularly valuable for brands that are widely bought online because the ads can provide a link that allows people to buy the brand within a few clicks. However, search ads are not well-suited to brand building since they are mainly text-based and offer little opportunity to build strong memories around the brand. |