Can a good search presence improve an offline marketing campaign's results? You may be surprised to hear ... ABSOLUTELY! Offline and search campaigns are actually very symbiotic in nature. See the proof abreviated in graphical form below, but also be sure to check out the full study.
The Proof:
Courtesy iProspect
The Cudos:
The study was commissioned by iProspect and was performed by Jupiter Research. It was titled iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study. Check it out! Our industry needs more of these studies performed. Google, Yahoo, ermmm MSN ... please step up!
The Interpretation:
The findings suggest that 37% of online users perform searches as a result of something they saw on television, 36% as a result of word of mouth or friend's recommendations, 30% from magazine and newspaper ads, and much more. This is significant. Essentially it means that employing search in your overall marketing strategy increases the effectiveness of each and every marketing medium used, and not just offline media. That might be worth repeating.
"employing search in your overall marketing strategy increases the effectiveness of each marketing medium used ..."
Hello, agencies ... are you seeing this? Search has a crucial role in the marketing mix of virtually any campaign. Gord Hotchkiss ... maybe this will help convince agencies of the value of search (see Gord's posting on SearchInsider titled Will Agencies Get Search? Don�t Hold Your Breath). In fact, this is such an important point, I'll post later this week on precisely how search fits into the marketing mix.
Other Findings:
Courtesy iProspect
This graph helps to tell us the relative prioritization of terms we should be targeting with search to complement the offline campaign. Its rather obvious, but companies need to ensure they appear for any and all terms relating to their business name(s), product names of products being advertised, and company slogans. As iProspect alludes to in the study ... it also means all companies should prominently displays their domains in their advertising.
Courtesy iProspect
This graph suggests that some media are better at driving sales through search than others. Presumably those media at the top of this chart drive a more qualified user.
All in all, tremendous cudos to our friends at iProspect for performing this study. The industry certainly needs more like this one.
To those of you who do not necessarily buy into the concept that social media can generate significant business (erm Dave (TheGypsy) with his latest volley at Social Studies), consider that Word of Mouth/Friend's References, are often a big part of the social media effort. Ohhh ... and look at those numbers.
In conclusion ... search appears to be the only media that can improve the effectiveness of every other media in the marketing mix. So if you're not engaging in search, you're missing out! What a great space to be in!
Oh, I’m sorry, did you ring? It seems I have some more to consider, as always. I did see the research on WOM being the number one ‘qualifier’ – hadn’t connected the dots as such though.
More fun to follow; you haven’t heard the last of me I tell you!!!
Dave – a.k.a. theGypsy
Thank you Jeff — for the significant commentary you provided on the JupiterResearch study that we at iProspect recent sponsored and published. For us, the key takeaway from its findings is that those individuals, departments and/or agencies that are responsible for offline channels need to work in coordination with those individuals, departments and/or agencies that are responsible for search marketing in order to net the maximum return from ALL channels. Left in isolation, each channel will under-perform those channels which are integrated. For those of your readers who may be interested in any of the other research studies that we published during 2007 and over the last several years, they can feel free to acces, download and share them at no charge (don’t even have to fill out a form) here: http://www.iprospect.com/about/searchenginemarketingwhitepapers.htm
Cheers — Bill
I’m surprised that company slogans feature so lowly on list of things that people search for after an advert.
But there’s a couple of ways of looking at this; are these logos simply not memorable enough, or are they less relevant than keywords?
For people like Nike, Apple and Ford, their names will be huge drivers of organic traffic, I should imagine…
@ theGypsy – and I’ll not give up on convicing you of the value of social media until you concede
@ Bill – no thank you! What a fantastic study, with far reaching implications. I do believe that most in the industry still do not have a good enough conceptual understanding of the role of search in the marketing mix.
@ Wayne – interesting perspective Wayne. I look at this slightly differently, though the truth is almost always somewhere in the middle. My belief is that they resort to searching for slogans only after they fail to recall the company or product name.
No question online is the place to market. We’ve stopped print ads all together.
@ Dallas – you’ve stopped offline altogether? Really, my point was just that online supports offline, so a combination of both should be used. Thanks for the comment!