Is this what you're searching for?

Singaporean marketers aren't exactly lining up to dump budget into search marketing campaigns and the experts say it is largely to do with ignorance of the channel as compared to traditional avenues. Here Marketing offers an overview of search marketing and looks at why it deserves more of your attention... and possibly your budget.

By Tony Kelly with additional reporting by Chia Ming Chien

It's the never fail, can't lose and idiot proof marketing proposition Singaporeans can't resist - cheap and good - and they will beat a path to your door. Start a line for something free or cheap and no one will ask too many questions before joining the queue.

So how could an advertising channel which offers the opportunity to run marketing messages without paying a cent, until a potential customer interacts with your brand, fail to grab Singaporean marketeers' attention?

In its simplest form this is precisely what search marketing offers.

Search marketing still remains largely the domain of smaller family businesses whose marketing budgets (they probably wouldn't call them marketing budgets) mean, apart from the sign on the front door, this is about the only marketing they can afford.

As the guys at Google say, it's all about "organising the world's information". So while consumers may just be able to survive without their YouTubes or their Facebooks, it's unlikely they could survive without their Yahoo!, MSN or Google.  Actually they would probably survive, but the web would be a chaotic jumble of rubbish with some imbedded useful stuff. The problem would be how you would find the useful stuff unless you knew the exact locations of the sites you were looking for.

Search curious? Here's the run down.

The real kicker is that there is so much information contained online, consumers often don't know exactly what they are looking for. The genius of search engines is that consumers don't have to know exactly what they are looking for, they can use fairly vague terms - keywords - to seek out what they are or might be looking for.

Search marketing allows marketers to ride the search engine's coat tails and suggest their products and services at locations consumers might like to go when they are looking for vague or more specific information online.

The theory behind search marketing is pretty simple despite the many attempts by consultants to complicate it. A search engine says "why don't you place ads on our content - actually it's not really our content but we are indexing it - and when someone goes looking for the sort of thing you are selling we will make sure they see your ad". 

So even if your company's website doesn't come up in the organic listings you can still cheat the system and get your brand in there anyway. Afterall, how does the consumer know what they are looking for if you don't tell them.

As any good marketer knows, the search engines are well aware that their most important assets are their customers, in this case the searchers, so while they let you cheat the system by getting your sponsored or paid link ads next to the real or organic results, they are very careful not to overwhelm the free ads.

What's holding marketers back?

Forrester senior analyst Brian Haven who wrote the report Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2007 thinks marketers are moving slower into emerging media channels like this than consumers and found in his research that marketers wanted "proof of use".

"Many marketers refuse to try new channels until they see how they deliver for comparable businesses. For example, 42% of marketers won't try behavioural targeting without case studies and 38% say they need to see successful examples of microsites before giving them a whirl," Haven says.

Web Analytics

Web analytics (data gathered from a site user's movement with a website) provides hard numbers that can be readily applied.

Chris Tang, founder of Bain & Mercer, a company specialising in search marketing and web analytics cites an example: "We recently did work with a company who was about to commit a huge budget to print media. We used search marketing to test their marketing messages and headlines. We tested ‘Featuring Singapore's Top Interior Designers' and ‘Featuring Singapore's Most Reliable Interior Designers', to see what matters most to home owners looking for renovators, and how differently they responded to these headlines.

Interestingly, (web analytics showed) the conversions for the latter headline doubled the former. If he didn't use search marketing to test his messages, it would have been a colossal disaster committing big ad spend on headline that he thought would have work but didn't."

So what do you need to know?

The steps to setting up a search campaign, if you decide to go it alone and without an agency or consultant, are fairly straight forward. First you select search terms that you feel are most relevant to your products and services.

Chose keywords - keywords that are relevant to your site's content but aren't too obvious, the obvious ones will be taken and will be very expensive to buy. If you are paying top price for your keywords and you aren't converting customers then it might be an expensive error. The hot new thing is buying multiple keywords for a combination of keyword searches.

Decide where you want the campaign to run. Most engines hosting sponsored search offer geo-targeting which allows a campaign to run only in a specified geographic.

Creating the ad. If you are using traditional text and link ads, there isn't much room for creativity in the way it actually looks as they just consist of a headline or title. Keep it simple and say precisely what the proposition is in as few words as possible.

What are you willing to pay?

Set a price you are willing to pay when someone clicks through to your web page from the ad. You should also set a budget, this means if you are only dipping a toe in and don't want to have to explain why your inexpensive search marketing "experiment" ended up costing thousands for no result.

The Yahoo sponsored search system allows you to start your bidding at 0.51 cents. In most cases, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, thus your ad can appear a million times (free awareness) but you only pay when someone clicks on the ad. 

Monitor and make the changes. With search, unlike mass media advertising, pulling off your ad and starting all over again, with the major search engines, it is just a matter of going into the search marketing dashboard and making the changes and then sending the ads live again. Yahoo offers Ad Testing which allows you to benchmark several styles of ads at once and most other search engines offer similar functionality.

Have a nice arrival hall. Your one chance to make an impact when someone clicks on your sponsored link in search market results is to catch their attention when they arrive at the site.

If the search ad is tactical and it leads to an offer or a competition or even a survey, there needs to be a landing page and it has to be attractive and easy to use and it should fulfill the promise you gave in those few lines in the paid search ad you've posted. You have, after all, grabbed the searcher and now they are primed and ready for your pitch, so it can't fall flat.

It's even more telling when you apply web analytics. You may discover a huge number of people arriving at your homepage but not going any further. Is there a problem with your navigation? Is the copy unappealing? Web analytics will also reveal which are the most popular pages or products being viewed, how long they stayed there, which link was clicked from there... all in all giving you insight into what changes to make that will optimise your website.

Online-Offline Loop

Lori Sobel, Google head of sales, Singapore, sees "marketers leveraging on online to help them make better decisions for their offline marketing". Using Google Trends, a free web service, marketers can see precisely the search activity of users over a period of time or in a particular geographical location: which keywords are used, what's relevant to them, etc.

Honda used this information to launch its offline advertising campaign focusing on ‘fuel efficiency' because that was people searched for most when buying a car.

Lori advises, "We recommend marketers always have a search campaign that is on 365 days of the year. Because we know people are looking for you. Google's fundamental goal is to connect users with information - whether the are accessing from a PC or a mobile phone - at that point of activity. And we suggest you use Mobile Ads because that's just an extension - you get your message in front of people on the go. And once you've got the fundamentals down, we suggest you look at leveraging on Google's more creative solutions like Gadget Ads and Video ads (see box)."

She also notes immediately after a offline ad campaign is launched, search activity for that product surges. It makes sense to integrate a search engine marketing component to facilitate people finding you - particularly when they are making a bee line to you.

Alternative to Web Search Companies

While web search companies such as Google, Yahoo, MSN are the most common engines we use to search the web, they are they not the be all and end all of searching the web. Zia Zaman, executive vice-president of Fast Search & Transfer cited interesting data from IDC, a provider of market intelligence in IT.

 ‘Where are all the clicks were going' was the tagline for this research. Zaman highlights "there is a misconception that everyone out there starts their search for information at a gateway site like Google, go to one of the top 10 sites listed, and if they don't get what they are looking for, revise their keywords."

According to him, only 30% of all search activity start at a gateway site. 70% of the clicks are taking place at destinations sites, which he explains are really "honey-pots of the web, which attract people from all over to their site which has either local or topical relevance."

A good example is a newspaper's website. Often this is the first point of entry for people wanting news on a particular subject. Generally, people would go to their favourite destination site, say BBC.com, to get the latest update on a newsbreaking event. Similarly, travellers go directly to a honey-pot like Lonely Planet.

What FAST does is to provide a search engine platform for such destination sites that helps make it easy for users to navigate the site. FAST also helps monetise the ad potential for these companies. Larger companies have a powerful vehicle to fully exploit the search marketing potential of their website as research shows huge traffic flows directly to such destinations sites.

The future

While Singapore marketers are two to three years behind their US and Japan counterparts, everyone Marketing spoke to working in this industry was very optimistic. The potential is huge and both clients and agencies are slowly, but surely, climbing on to the bandwagon. We're still at the stage where clients and agencies need to be educated about search marketing, but it's a trend here to grow.

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Google's latest search technology for marketers

Launched worldwide in September 2007, and now in beta trials with selected advertisers in Singapore, Google Gadget Ads and Mobile Ads allow you to reach customers in more creative ways.

Google Gadget Ads are interactive, with rich media capabilities that enable advertisers to target audiences in a flexible and timely manner via regular updates within the ad. The ad is a standalone micro-site. As Google's head of sales Lori Sobel explains, it's effective because "you are interacting with consumers in a new way, and they are interacting and spending more time with your brand.

You can watch a video, or play a video game, or (for instance) ask a band member questions... consumers are going to interact more and more and they are going to have a great experience; then they are going to remember you."

Google Mobile Ads now enables marketers to reach customers on the go. It works similarly to Google Adwords (what you see on your PC browser) except that the technology recognises the search is from a mobile phone and feeds the appropriate ads.

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The search marketer's cheat sheet

1.  Just do something. The best way to get a grip on search marketing is to try it. Sign up with Yahoo!, Google, Baidu, MSN or any search engine that delivers the desired audience and meets your needs. You'll get your hands dirty and you'll be surprised what you will learn about the channel.

2.  Avoid popular and obvious search terms. Look for words that describe your business but are a little unique and chose combinations that could drive people to use your defined search parameters and arrive at your ads quicker.

3.  Think about your ad. Yes they look simplistic those little text and link ads but you need to compete with the organic search results. Creating an impactful message and linking in a few words can be as challenging as getting your message out in 45-sec cinema spot.

4.  Create an unfair advantage. The upside to the United States and Europe moving quicker than Asia is they are doing a lot more on the innovation front. Think beyond text and link ads, think images, audio and video search marketing options.

5.  Track, tweak, tinker. Those in built measurement tools aren't for show, use them and if something doesn't work test out different ads, different keywords and don't settle until the results hit the up curve.

6.  Get some learning. Hit the blogs of the search engines - the Google guys are particularly prolific - and read their tips on running campaigns and choosing keywords.

7.  Call for help. If you want to try paid search and haven't got time to get yourself up to speed, a lot of agencies are bolting on search marketing skills or growing them organically, so seek them out but stay in the loop so you continue to learn.

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THE GRILLING: DOES SEARCH REALLY MATTER?

Marketing asks founder of search marketing and web analytics company Bain & Mercer Chris Tang what's so great about search and why aren't more Singapore marketers using is.

What is so great about search marketing?

Search marketing offers fast results. With some systems like Google AdWords, you can generate targeted traffic within minutes of setting up the ad campaign.

It also satisfies the increasing need to prove a return on investment for ad spending because the advertiser only pays for the clicks generated from targeted traffic.

Where natural search engine optimisation or other forms of advertising can lag weeks or months behind changing audience behavior, you can adjust most pay-per-click campaigns in hours. That provides unmatched ability to react to market conditions.

Is search marketing the marketing revolution some say it is?

Search marketing offers a level of accountability to ROI and transparency in costs and conversion tracking that traditional advertising cannot match. It allows advertisers to pay only for what he gets. Marketers can no longer hide behind ‘brand awareness' as an excuse to explain for poor ad performance, as in the traditional advertising.

In traditional advertising, you select to advertise in the medium with the demographic that most closely matches your desired target profile. Search marketing challenges that long held concept of demographic targeting. With search, its about absolute relevancy and user interests in the product. For example, when a user searches with the keyword ‘Nike shoes' on Google, would it matter if he's 60 or 18? I don't think so, because he is interested in your product and he is a potential customer. With search, you reach out to potential customers who are already searching for what you sell.

Are there specific categories which are a particularly good fit for a search campaign?

Search generally works well for all business types, regardless of budget size, and it is especially favored by small-medium-enterprises because it is cheap to start and is tied closely to ROI, compared to traditional advertising.

We saw early adopters in some categories, such as the travel & hospitality sector, especially the OTAs (online travel agents) like AsiaRooms which started as early as 2002. The trend is the large hotel chains are cutting past the OTAs and advertising directly on search engines. We are also seeing some airlines doing the same now.

You will be surprised to know that it is the small-medium enterprises that were among the first adopters of search marketing and laid the path for its proliferation.

How measurable are the results of search marketing and paid search campaigns and how are they measured?

Web analytics will become a mainstream measurement and analysis tool for most businesses. The increased usage of search advertising has meant, especially for smaller businesses, simple hit counters and traffic measurement tools are just not adequate for providing the necessary information to plan and evaluate online marketing efforts. We are likely to see major search engines introduce their own versions, as more advertisers realise the importance of understanding their online presence.

Web analytics goes beyond telling you how many clicks you get from your search advertising, but also tells what the targeted traffic does on your site, which parts of your site attracted it most, how long it stayed, and its loyalty to you.

There must be some downside?

While the pay-per-click model is efficient, it does expose marketers to click fraud. That means dubious clicks from unknown sources with no intention of purchasing anything advertised. Such fraud can drive up the cost of search advertising for a marketer with no offsetting revenue from sales. However, we believe click fraud represents a very small percentage of total clicks. In fact, major search engines have robust fraud prevention strategies and Google provides refunds to advertisers for fraudulent clicks.

There's no perfect advertising solution. But search marketing is by far the closest to it.

How should marketers integrate search marketing into their overall strategy?

If you have a short-term campaign for a new product, service or special issue, pay-per-click can be a great way to generate buzz. You can start a pay-per-click campaign within 24 to 48 hours and you can generally change the text of your ad in mid-campaign, so adjusting your message is easy.

But do those paid search results irritate consumers?

Of course not! Unlike online banner advertising, paid search results is non-intrusive and it displays only highly relevant ads to consumers. It also allows consumers to avoid sifting through all those related-but-not-applicable organic search results.

Search campaigns have generally meant those coloured text and link ads, is there anything new in search?

We believe pay-per-call will take pay-for-performance advertising to the next level. But this may a several years before it crosses the chasm. Pay-per-call offers an alternative for companies without transactional sites and is especially good for local, serviced based companies (for example, a plumber or a pest control company). However, it could cost a few times more than pay-per-click price as the customer is considered more valuable since they are already on the phone!

Many observers claim Asia is lagging behind in search and online marketing, should we feel offended or accept it's a reality? How does Singapore compare?

The adoption and appreciation level of search and online marketing varies within parts of Asia. In Japan and South Korea, the adoption was already high by 2002. This is no surprise given their high internet penetration, high speed broadband accessibility.

Yes, Asia as a whole is considered behind but it also represents a much bigger latent potential. On the same note, I don't think it is a fair comparison of Asia and the West, because these markets had different start points both in terms of search marketing proliferation and internet penetration.

Is it just marketer's ignorance or are agencies at least partly to blame?

It took the agencies a while to understand search marketing, and understanding it enough to be confident to propose to their clients. If they do not understand it well, most will not include it in their marketing mix. And even if they do put forth to their clients, it will not be a significant part of the overall ad spend. So it is important that we educate the agencies about search. I don't think they can continue to exclude it from their marketing plans as more marketers are aware of it now.