By Kevin Gold, Practical eCommerce
All advertising channels, whether Internet or traditional, reach specific demographics. Unlike traditional ad channels, evaluating search-engine demographics is a complicated practice because of a lack of reliable and available data. Yet emerging research shows some impressive differences among the top search-engine properties.
Demographic data provided by comScore Network in Internet Retailer (September 2005) showed MSN’s audience represents significant buying power. Similar research presented in June 2005 stated, “...visitors to Google sites were 43 percent more likely to buy online than the average Internet users, versus Yahoo! visitors who were 31 percent more likely to purchase; MSN users were 48 percent more likely to purchase; AOL users, three percent and Ask.com 17 percent.”
A study conducted by iProspect revealed, "MSN search had the highest percentage of U.S. visits from sites Hitwise categorized as “shopping and classifieds,” “business and finance” and “travel,” while Yahoo! Search and Google received more U.S. visits from the sites in the “education,” “news” and “media and entertainment” categories. Equally insightful, Hitwise discovered that “Google was the preferred search tool for males, while MSN Search appealed to females. Yahoo! was the more popular engine for 18- to 34-year-old searchers and MSN Search captured the over-55 crowd.”
Further, a Search Insider article written by Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro stated, “We also found that men were more likely to use advanced search queries. They also tended to spend a little less time actively reading listings and made their decisions to click faster. Women tended to be a little more deliberate in their search sessions. Men scanned more of the search results page, but women spent more time with the page.”
Research your customer demographics from sources like comScore Network, Forrester Research, Shop.org, JupiterResearch, E-tailing Group and other research providers to identify high-performing ad-channel segments. As Chris Copeland stated in a Search Insider (May 2006) article on visitor segmentation, “the goal of segmentation is to identify patterns of behavior and leverage them.” Find patterns among your customers and leverage them in selecting the most effective advertising channels that attract the right visitors using the right message.
In search marketing, whether paid or natural, the searcher drives the experience. By entering a keyword into a search engine, the visitor is revealing to you some degree of their intentions.
Beyond the keyword and ad channel, the message you use to attract attention and motivate a click-through further exposes intention. Carefully craft your ad copy to qualify visitors and attract those with the strongest intent for completing your conversion objective.
You gain insight into visitor intentions by performing quantitative and qualitative research. Analyze web analytic data, interview your sales and customer-service staff, and conduct formal and informal surveys, focus groups and usability tests. Your objective is to form an educated guess about your visitors’ intentions and shape it over time through continually testing and measuring new channel, keyword and message performance.
<< Back to IPOWER Informer
