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Archive for November, 2008
November 26th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
Last week, I talked about what brand can’t do on the Search Results Page. Today, I’d like to talk about one of the many things that brand can do on search.
If brands can’t build an emotional appeal on the results page, they can certainly reinforce their presence at just the right time. This was at the heart of our brand lift studies. Remember, we use search when our intent is squarely aligned with researching a purchase. We’re actively looking for information. And the appearance of brands can be a powerful influencer in these types of searches. Here are some of the surprising and not so surprising things we’ve found in our many brand lift studies (now done in 7 categories, 5 markets and with thousands of respondents):
There is brand lift that comes from dominating the top of page
The biggest question for our first study was, how valuable are those top of page slots? If you own the organic position, do you need to buy the top sponsored spot? Is there lift by owning both spots? The answer is yes, to both. The lift we saw in most metrics was well into double digits, significant for marketers. You gain a bigger share of mind when you own more top of page real estate. But that’s not all…
You lose brand awareness when you’re not there
For generic keywords, even if you have a strong brand in a category, if you’re not in a result set and your competitors are, your position of dominance will start to erode. In fact, we’ve seen people looking for dominant brands in a result set when they weren’t present, and their confidence in both the quality of the search results and the brand position started to erode. Often, it’s the biggest and strongest brands that are the least concerned about their search visibility. This arrogance could wipe them from the consideration set of many prospective buyers.
Competition on the Results Page is a Good Thing
If domination of a results page is good, total domination must be better, right? Well, no, actually. We found more engagement with the top of page results when there were a couple of well know competitors, and engagement lead to an overall lift in brand awareness for the test brand. The reason has to do with the intent of the user. If a user is launching a search looking for alternatives to consider in a purchase decision, a results set with only one brand isn’t a very good match to that intent. The user will spend less time considering it, because they’re confidence is lower. But a results set that brings back two or three well known brands is a better match, resulting in more engagement. Of course, you’re now competing with those brands, so effective messaging, positioning and landing page strategies become more important. But you already knew that, right?
Top Sponsored Ads are Read More
Top organic placement is a beautiful thing to have, but our studies have shown that people actually spend more time reading the top sponsored ad. This doesn’t make the top organic placement any less important. It’s a default choice for many users. But the fact is, people take the time to read the title of the top ad, just because it is an ad and people will spend more time deliberating before they click. People are less wary with an organic listing, so a quick glance is all that’s needed to click. Marketers can use this to their advantage to reinforce their marketing message in a top sponsored ad (often not an option with organic placement) and drive clicks to a tailored experience.
This covers off the brand benefits of search for the well known brands, the ones that jump out at you in a results set. But what if you aren’t fortunate enough to be a category killer brand? Can search still work for branding? The short answer is yes. The longer answer will have to wait until next week’s column.
Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider November 20, 2008
November 24th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
This whole question of branding in search came about because of a rather fuzzy definition: what exactly is brand lift? How do you measure it?
This was the problem we wrestled with when we did the first search brand lift study for Google and Honda. Failing anything better, we did the standard tests of aided and unaided message and brand recall. I’m not a huge fan of these metrics, because I don’t think they adequately capture the neural basis of brand. But given the nature of the study (which included a survey and some eye tracking) it was our only feasible alternative.
What is Brand Lift?
Before I talk more about the metrics, let’s talk more about the concept of brand lift, as it’s central to the argument. What is brand lift? As measured by brand recall metrics, it’s awareness of the brand. Rather, it’s to see if a concept of the brand is lodged in working memory immediately after exposure to the brand. So, let’s walk through this a bit. We create different search results page scenarios with variations of exposure in our test brand, including a control with no exposure. We create scenarios that set up a reasonably natural interaction and scanning of the results page. And, at some point after this interaction (usually immediately following) we ask participants if they remember seeing a brand on the results page. We start with an open ended question (unaided) and then provide a randomized list of brands to see if they choose the test brand (aided). We then measure variance against the control, correlated with the nature of the exposure.
Given this framework, we did find brand lift. Significant brand lift. And in one aspect, this is great news for marketers. The fact that a brand remained lodged in working memory is a very big win for search in capturing consumer attention. I’m going to be talking about why this is so in the next column. If we equate brand lift with engaged attention and carving a (temporary) niche in the prefrontal cortex, the study proves there’s a strong connection with search.
Brand Lift is in the Eyes of the Beholder
But this is where the metrics get fuzzy. Brand lift seems to be many things to many people. This is why ARF decided that we needed a new metric and started down the road of defining engagement. But the problems that soon plagued this endeavor highlighted the inherent challenge. Our engagement with brands is not a one size fits all, measurable occurrence. Brand relationships, like all relationships, are complex and shifting. There are many degrees. In additional, there’s a question of modality, based on context and intent. My relationship with a brand, say Apple, can be significantly different if I’m shopping for a new laptop for work than if I’m helping my daughter with an iTunes download. Advertisers want a single, simple quantifiable number that defines our brand relationship. Such a beast doesn’t exist.
So, how do you measure lift? What is lift? Is it a temporary lodging in working memory? Is it a long term strengthening of the synaptic connections in long term memory? Is it firing up the limbic systems that are our emotional gatekeepers, getting a lump in our throat when we see a tearjerker ad? Is it digging out our deepest primal drives when we see attractive women hanging around guys on a golf course, implying the beer they’re carrying around (but, of course, not consuming) is the reason they’re volunteering for caddy duties (Yeah, like that takes place in the real world). We were asked to prove brand lift on the search page, and we did, by one metric. It’s an important metric, a vital one in fact. But when advertisers hear brand lift, they all hear different things. The definition of brand lift seems to be in the mind of the beholder. Ironically, I’ve been reading a book that’s taken on the impossible task of explaining Quantum mechanics to me. The mind numbing problem with Quantum mechanics is that physical nature of something isn’t defined until it’s observed. Until then, it’s a probability wave. I’m suspecting the same thing might be happening with brand metrics. They don’t take shape until someone tries to define them. There are just too many variables.
A Call for Consilience
The problem with branding is that marketers don’t know what they don’t know. They have learned marketing and the art of pushing a message out, but very, very few marketers have taken the time to understand what happens on the receiving end. They know nothing about cognition, emotional tagging, the formation of memories or any other workings of the human brain. Only now, with the consilience ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience) that is beginning to happen in the academic world, are we applying neuroscience to marketing. So, marketers are desperately trying to apply a universal metric to something that largely defies measurement, and the marketers don’t even know why it’s not working. They’re getting numbers they can plug into the dashboards, but no one is sure if they’re indicative of what happens in the real world, or, more accurately, our neural representation of the real world.
November 17th, 2008 by ChrisD
Our friends at Business.com are trying to encourage businesses to share successful business solutions with others in order to generate prosperity in today’s economic decline. Enquiro is proud to be involved with a competition of this nature.
The What Works for Business Contest is designed to help shift the focus from what’s wrong with the economy to what businesses can actually do to survive and thrive in 2009. Business.com wants to reward businesses showing ingenuity and resourcefulness during these uncertain times. They also want to share business solutions that have worked for others with businesses who are struggling to find answers to tough questions.
Have you solved a business challenge? Submit an entry describing your solution for a chance to win $10,000 and a year’s worth of publicity for your business.
How does the contest work?
Simply submit a short description of ANY challenge your business has tackled. An expert panel of judges, including Enquiro’s own Gord Hotchkiss and Bill Barnes, will narrow down the field to 50 finalists. Then winners across 10 categories will be determined by popular vote in December.
Am I eligible to enter?
If your business is located in the U.S. or Canada and enters by December 3, you are eligible to win. You can enter as many times as you’d like. Just make sure each entry describes a new challenge/solution.
What are the prizes?
One business will win the grand prize of $10,000 and nine other category winners will receive $2,000 each. All winners will receive a year’s worth of publicity from Business.com and partner sites.
November 10th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
Even as a Canadian, I was amazed by what happened the night of November 4th. History was made in many, many different ways. And for that reason, I’m interrupting my series on Search and Branding, just for this week.
Obviously, every journalist and pundit will be falling over themselves talking about the historic implications of this election. Democrats and Republicans alike were gushing and seemed a little speechless about the implications of Obama in the White House. I have my own feelings but that’s not what this column is about. For me, this election was fundamentally historic for another reason. It changed forever the fabric of democracy in America.
3 years ago, I sat in a hotel conference room somewhere (it might even have been Chicago) and heard Dana Todd, then the President of SEMPO, say that search would be a very important factor in the next election. I smiled to myself, because I had been watching the somewhat ham fisted use of online tactics in the election just finished. “Why”, I thought to myself, “do these candidates fail to understand the fundamental importance of online. Don’t they understand that this provides an amazing new platform for democracy. How could they be so clueless?” The one candidate that did seem to grasp it was Howard Dean, but unfortunately, Dean’s campaign had other challenges that eventually overcame his online momentum.
“But what”, I mused, “would happen if you took the lessons learned from the Dean campaign and fielded a candidate with a campaign that fully ‘got’ the power of virtual connection”. My guess would be that it would be incredibly effective. Even with that, I had no idea how earthshakingly important it would be.
Unknown to me, two people, Jascha Franklin Hodge and Joe Rospars, the architects of the Dean online machine and co founders of Blue State Digital, were already making plans for 2008. The candidate? A junior senator from Illinois who had just rocked the Democratic National Convention with a stirring speech: Barack Obama.
I watched the entire process unfold, and at each step, I was impressed with the grasp of online momentum, its nuances and social connections. With Franklin Hodge and Rospars as architects, and with the help of a very Net savvy staff, Obama’s campaign built an online momentum that shocked Clinton’s handlers in the primaries and eventually rolled over McCain as well. Yes, there were many factors that led to success, not the least of which is the candidate himself, but I can’t help thinking that this campaign managed to crystallize it in a brilliant way online. Obama navigated the currents and eddies of online buzz masterfully, creating mini campaigns of intense interest and passion, mobilizing votes and raising money..lots and lots and lots of money. He (with his campaign architects) understood the fundamental connection of online, reaching many, hearing from many, one at a time. It was a campaign launched and won by we, the people.
On November 19th, 1863, another politician from Illinois gave what was intended to be a few impromptu remarks at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lincoln finished that speech with these words:
“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
On Tuesday night, there was a new birth of democracy, the culmination of an election that used a new technology to bridge millions of gaps between Washington and people, to erase decades of division, estrangement and alienation. Yes, it was a brilliant campaign tactic, but it was more than that. It was an understanding that people needed to reconnect with their President and to have their voices heard. It was true democracy. No matter what your political affiliation and your feelings about Obama, the man, you have to feel hopeful that somebody in the White House finally “gets” the Internet and its awesome power to connect and effect change.
Note: The Obama Campaign Story will be told from an insider’s perspective at the opening keynote of the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. You can find out more and register here.
November 10th, 2008 by Jody Nimetz
In this day and age, benchmarking is extremely important. Knowing how you measure up to others is critical if you are to improve and remain competitive. With regards to your online marketing efforts, benchmarking is the process that can be used as a key identifier to determine how you measure up with your competition. The question becomes which competitors should you be looking at? Many neglect to treat their online competitors and offline competitors as, well as different. Of course in some cases they will be one in the same. However if we look at it from an SEO perspective, your online competitors can differ greatly from your traditional offline competitors.
So from an online perspective, how do you determine whom you should be measured against? Well the easiest way is to perform a query in Google or your search engine of preference and see who occupies the real estate on the SERP for your important key phrases. Depending on the type of search that you do (i.e. a search for a more general "head" type keyword or a more focused "long-tail" keyword), you may see the same sites showing up or you may see completely unique site showing up. You may see entirely different sites come up than what you expected. The reason for this? Well you can thank SEOs, bloggers, online marketers for this. The process of "optimizing" a web page has allowed Webmasters and site owners somewhat position sites in the search results. The search engines are trying to communicate the most relevant result based on the query, but unfortunately the most relevant results do not always show up.
Before we proceed, we need to define online competiton and offline competition.
Online Competition - these are websites that show up in the search results for a given query related to your busineess or your industry. For example a search for "plumbing supplies" returns sites such as plumbingsupply.com, plumbersurplus.com, and showerbuddy.com. When in fact the user may have been looking for something more along the lines of a plumbing retailer such as Lowe’s or Home Depot. Lowe’s or Home Depot, may not consider "plumbersurplus.com or "showerbuddy.com" a competitor per se, but in reality if Lowe’s or Home Depot is trying to rank for "plumbing supplies" all of the above mentioned sites are examples of online competition.
Offline Competition - offline is the more traditional way we think about a competitor. For Coke it’s Pepsi, for Home Depot it’s Lowes etc. Your offline competitors tend to be the businesses that you are trying to obtain market share from (not that you are not from an online competitor) but think of an offline competitor as the "traditional" competitor of a given business. Depending on the keyword searched for, your offline competitor may or may not show up in the results.
It should be noted that there are also "category killers" in the search results that also become a form of online competition. These might be directories, blogs or sites like Wikipedia that come up for a given term. If they are frequenting the search results space that you should be in, then consider them an indirect online competitor.
Well now that we have defined what an online competitor is, what does this mean for your marketing effort? Well from an SEO perspective it means being aware of the competitive landscape on a search engine results page. Understand who else is positioning for your key phrases that are of interest to your business or your industry. From an SEO perspective there are some simple steps that you should follow in identifying and dealing with your online competition.
- Identify Your Online Competition - know who you are competing with for a given set of queries. Start with Google and look at who is showing up for a sample of keywords that you are attempting to gain visibility for.
- Identify Relevant Keywords - continue to refine your keyword list to ensure that you are focusing on the keywords that your customer or your prospect will be searching for.
- Review your Online Competitor’s Websites - specifically the site(s) that are rnaking strong efforts and are gaining a presence in the online space. Look at what they are doing right from an optimization point of view. Examine things such as their meta data, page copy, on-page headings and interlinking strategies to identify ways to improve your own web properties.
- Monitor the Search Engine Results Pages - the Internet is a dynamic environment. The search engines results are just as dynamic. Make it a habit to periodically check the search results for a sample of yout key phrases. This will help you determine which sites are making the effort to succeed online. If you are able to identify such sites, you will be able to better compete with this online competition.
When asked about their competitors, many site owners or more importantly C-Suite executives will refer to their traditional offline competition. However the focus needs to change to include being aware of those web sites that have gained great visibility on the Web; the competition that one may not think of as a traditional competitor. Online competitors are websites that are taking eyeballs away from your site and if not addressed, can collectively obtain prospects and customers that you are seeking. Failure to optimize and promote your website in an organic manner could mean that you are missing an opportunity to maintain or gain a competitive edge in your industry. Your online marketing efforts need to target both the offline and online competition. The Internet is a hyper-competitive environment. Understanding who you are competing with for online real estate is something that 10 years ago we never had to worry about. In this day and age, understanding your online competiton is becoming as important as understanding your traditional competitor.
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