Engineering your own search

If you are in the financial sector and believe search engine marketing doesn't work for financial products, or perhaps your brand is well-known, so much so that users don't search for it, read on. Findings of this survey will make you think twice about how much money should you put into search engine marketing, and the right reasons for doing so.

Around 94 per cent of the 600 Singaporeans surveyed by Media-Screen say search engines are very important for financial product research. The survey, commissioned by Google, examined the role of the internet when obtaining financial products among the adult online population of Singapore. It revealed that almost 70 per cent of respondents always go online to research products that interest them. Around 64 per cent visit the financial company websites and almost an equal share hit the search engines for financial research.

"We realised that more and more consumers are going online to research for information on financial products such as credit cards, banking accounts and insurance. As such we decided to commission a study to gather insights into how Singaporeans are using the Internet for this purpose. With the information gotten, Google is able to advise our customers on how they can more effectively strategise their online marketing efforts to achieve better results," Anand Tilak, senior sales manager, Google Singapore, says.

This, adds Tilak, is particularly valuable in light of the current economic downturn when financial institutions are forced to do much belt-tightening and get more bang for their buck. In fact, search works better in the scenario of a downturn, as people tend to research more.

Combinging with the survey results are industry experts who think it is vital for companies to climb up to page one of any search engine. Anthony Coundouris, MD of Firestarter, says "search engine marketing is imperative for branding a firm online. A common complaint of internet marketers is 'I can't find our brand online' or 'when I search for our brand online, I get search results irrelevant to the brand'. Typically sites which are not updated often, or have been built in flash, will generate poor search rankings. Search engine marketing promotes visits to your site, and guarantees brand visibility on page one of a search result."

An interesting deduction the survey makes and which can be seen as a parameter to gauge the serious returns search engine marketing offers, is that fact that 46 per cent of people researching on financial products use search engines, regardless of knowing the URL to the home page. This even leaves behind search through bookmarked sites or through the ones in the ‘my favourites' list or followed links from other online sources.

On how important is it for local financial institutions to be more strategic in terms of reaching out to their customers, the survey states that, traditionally such institutions in Singapore spend only about five per cent of their budget on online advertising, which is much less than their counterparts in the UK and Europe (who spend about 35 per cent), but local users rely much on online sources to research financial service products.

"Given that online marketing is 50 per cent cheaper for acquiring new customers than offline methods and online users of financial services are more affluent with higher net worth than offline users, it is prudent for local financial institutions to rethink their marketing and outreach strategy - to synergise online and offline communication for a more effective means of reaching out to the FSI audience," the survey concludes.