Two thirds of all online searches are the result of offline media including TV, newspaper, magazines, word of mouth, radio, direct mail.
Of those who searched for a product or company 39% ended up buying from the brand that motivated their search (via). What happened to the other 61% and how do you keep your share (and steal some of your competitors)? How do you use those search trends to improve both your online and traditional media placement? How do you make sure your online and traditional efforts are cohesively working together?
Well I’d love to say follow a few simple steps and you’re golden, it’s not that easy. As web is almost all in real time these days, you have to consistently monitor, adjust and analyze. These are the top five things I would recommend –
A study by AdWeek and Harris Interactive provides some interesting stats on which medium ads are most ignored.
At first glance its easy to assume that this means that internet banner ads are most ignored and television ads are the most effective. But the study fails to take into account several important factors.
1) Most people fail to recognize what is actually advertising online. When I teach clients and co-workers about search engine marketing, most people are surprised to learn that the sponsored links section at the top and right hand sidebar on search ads are paid ads. There are countless studies about visitors not realizing when they’re on a blog vs. a website. I’m sure a lot of people in this survey couldn’t accurately pick out all the ads on a website, but I’m sure they all recognize commercials on TV and radio.
2) ROI is king right now. Most people might say TV is an effective way to reach them, but who really watches a TV spot and immediately goes out to buy that item. On the advertiser side TV is an excellent reach medium but you can’t really measure and you can’t really target.
3) Mass reach and online ads serve different functions. TV and radio are to get the message out to everyone, if sales occur because of it, fantastic. But these days most people go online to find out more information and shop competitors. TV, radio and newspaper are step 1; online advertising is closer to the end of the funnel (even for offline channels).
I hate reports that just spew out numbers and stats without context. You can read more here.
I am totally impressed with Bing, Microsoft’s attempt to get back into the search game, and its not just because of the plethora of results of my vanity search – I finally beat out the Erin Norton who makes jewelry.
Bing’s spin is that its a “Decision Engine” so they’ve organized and categorized the results to help you make decisions. I highly recommend testing out an image search (limitless scroll bar!), a restaurant search (check out the left hand options!) and a travel search (they graph out ticket prices!). For some more capabilities check out this video -
However, I’m really very disappointed by the display ads. These are just crap – so far I’ve only seen them on tech heavy/early adopter web sites – show me some flights to SFO, comparison shopping a new tech gadget an image search for some nerdy movie if you’re going with the early adopters.
Creepy guy in mirror, woman giving me evil eye surrounded by photos and crappy stock “I can do it” photo = what is this ad for again? Erectile dysfunction? Anti-depressants? It’s so generic, no defined personality and totally lame.
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