Search 3.0: Direct Response Marketing in an Indirect World
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 23, 2009 | Share This
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The bread and butter of the paid search world (and of many forms of advertising and marketing) is good ‘ol direct response. Though not as “sexy” as some other forms of marketing when done right it is swift and to the point. Click here to buy my stuff.
On a search engine reply page a good direct response ad can be gold, indicating clearly and relevantly to the user that you got, to paraphrase James Brown, what they need.
In Search 3.0 however, those intangible qualities that are associated with brand marketing come tromping onto the reply page like a high school marching band playing “Louie Louie”, whether marketers want them to or not.
Where even now most reply pages are made up of links to relatively static websites on the left with a short snippet description and search ads on the top and right rail, as Search 3.0 takes hold reply pages are going beyond what even universal search had to offer. Already a Wikipedia entry is likely to be sitting In one of the top five results.
Soon, as reply pages are re-organized, even more content from Twitter search results, Facebook pages, individual blogs, as well as YouTube videos will be jostling for attention. The paid search ad is still an important entry point – a way to lead searchers directly and unambiguously to take an action.
What muddies the water around it are the potential for negative social media commentary to show up on that reply page – or positive commentary about a competitor in a more generic search. For now, direct marketers can mostly ignore the existence of these but as the segregation between search and social media breaks down that option will no longer exist.
It’s also important to point out that people are using social media for directional information in some cases before going to a search engine. They might ask their Facebook network something like “Have you guys ever bought a vacuum cleaner?” If one of the responses was “Yeah, I bought a Brand X and it died after a year,” your ad in search for Brand X is going to struggle mighty hard.
This in no way is meant to imply that brand marketing will “kill” direct marketing – it can’t. What it does mean is that direct marketers have to either learn how brand marketers are already using social media to listen, interact, and seed information on behalf of their brands or alternately join forces with brand marketers who can help even the odds that your message will make it to the consumer unmolested.
For brands looking for help, marketers who know how to do both already have a clear advantage in this new landscape.
Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them here or check out Reprise Media folks on Twitter.
Topics: Blogging, ECommerce, SEM: Paid Search, Search 3.0, Search: Innovations, Search: News, Social Media, Twitter |