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Melissa Burgess
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Melissa Burgess is Director of Business Development at IMPAQT. She manages all aspects of Business Development activities ranging from partnership development to direct sales initiatives for corporate brand marketers. As a recognized expert in Search Marketing, Melissa has helped develop and execute search strategies for clients in the Retail, Pharmaceutical and CPG industries. You can contact Melissa at Melissa.Burgess@impaqt.com.

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“Chicken Little” Heads to Search

Written on
March 9th 2006
Author
by Melissa Burgess  |
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“The sky is falling, the sky is falling.” It seems that since a nascent article cropped up last week about one firm’s decline in Search spending, many people are jumping to conclusions that the Search sky is falling, when this is any where remotely close to the case. Let’s run through a few projections and stats from a wide variety of sources:

- Online search in the U.S. increased 39% in January to 5.7 billion searches conducted, up from 4.1 billion searches in the year-earlier period, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
-$5 billion was spent on Search in 2005, with projections up to $10 billion by 2009 (eMarketer)
-Over the next five years, Piper Jaffray estimates the paid search industry to grow at a 37-percent CAGR [compound annual growth rate] to more than $33 billion in 2010.

While the numbers may be conflicting across these sources, there is little room for doubt that this industry is at all stagnant. In fact, no other industry has such staggering growth projections such as Search; as noted in today’s eMarketer report.

With steps being taken by the major players such as Google, Yahoo and AOL to integrate video and rich media into Search, forecasts will more than likely be adjusted to account for this growing niche in Search. By the way, has anyone been on the HBO site lately? You can actually click on map that shows you all the action from Season 5 of the Sopranos, mapped to location with a link to view the video. Brilliant marketing tactic for the final season, and yep, you guessed it, a synergistic integration of the Google Maps feature coupled with Soprano’s video clips (http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/map/).

Depending on whose numbers you listen to, there were somewhere between 5,500 — 6,500 attendees at last week’s Search Engine Strategies Conference in NYC. The exhibit hall was packed with attendees yearning to learn more about Search, or looking to outsource because they’ve hit a point in which they can’t scale their campaigns. Marketers are hungry to grow their business, and they know for a fact that Search is the place to turn.

Geez…I remember the days when we had to fight our way to the Interactive table just to describe what the heck Search Engine Optimization was. And to be honest, in some cases, we still do.

A dwindling industry?
Nope, no way. I would say, however, that we are a more mature, methodical, statistical and metrics driven industry. Accountability is key here folks, and with that comes a precise planning, mapping, and strategic role that we are all held responsible for due to the fact that you can track down to the minutia. Search works, and we’re spending more, but we’re spending more in the RIGHT places.

Advanced analytics allow smart Search Marketers the ability to track down to the keyword level to allow for sophisticated bidding strategies to have a tighter control over budget, ad placement, network distribution, demographic targeting, creative, and landing page testing.

All of these tactics and strategies provide a breeding ground for incremental spending due to the fact that you can spend more to get in front of the right visitor. And most marketers are willing to assign dollar values to each target audience for their products and services, based on click to conversion metrics for their pre-defined market.

Why is Search Increasing?
So if we’re saying that Search isn’t on the decline, then just exactly why is it increasing? Well, as mentioned above, Search Marketers that have backgrounds in data mining and analytics are one step ahead in the building, mapping, and planning higher-performing Search campaigns for their clients. For example, analyzing keyword, click and conversion stats based on past data allows our company to build a predictive model to forecast budget to ROI, and shift funds to those Search campaigns that performed at their peak last season to ensure that those ads are “always on.”

Additionally, the search engines themselves have found ways to improve their products made available to marketers that not only cover the direct marketing aspect of Search, but also to provide Brand Marketers with opportunities to generate awareness, interest, and purchase. Contextual advertising, while still in its infancy, is offered on most major engines as an additional platform to engage visitors as they read content that is related to a particular brand, product, or category.

Other uses for Search?
Search isn’t only for direct marketing, and many brand marketers have certainly taken notice. For most of our CPG clients, we plan the year in advance based on various promotions, product launches, couponing, sales, offline advertising, and local support through Search Marketing. Piggy-backing off of their more traditional methods of advertising, we find that market saturation at every level, even in the Search results, provides for consistent messaging, awareness and recognition across all levels.

Is your brand under attack? Consider this classic, recent example: I just moved to NYC a few weeks back and was looking for furniture. Naturally, I turned to my trusty search engine, Google, and typed in “Macys furniture,” just to see what they offered. Low and behold, there were two negative complaints about Macy’s furniture in positions #2 and #4. Guess where I DIDN’T buy my furniture?

Every brand needs to be on the defensive, especially within the search results. More on this topic to come.

At the end of the day, Search has become synonymous with everyday life. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard the word Google used as a noun, adjective, and verb in pop culture; on the radio, in TV shows and in movies. Whether you search via your PC, laptop, PDA, or cell phone, Search is engrained in our behaviors. The growth rate of Paid Search adoption might slow down, but we certainly are no where close to throwing in the towel!



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