Kevin Ryan said it is very hard to run a session like this because he knows everyone for a long time. "We were doing this when no one else was." Here are some of the "founding fathers of the industry" as we know it today.
Rob Graham, Vice President of Creative & Technical Training, Laredo Group is first up.
How do we use search as a market research tool?
How do we know what we know... about our brands, customers, customers. What do they really want.
So does marketing research ask the right questions? - Do you like this product? - etc.
But what they don't ask is... - How often do you do x - What factors would make you choose this brand over others - Would you go out of your way for the brand?
Sometimes it's about being polite: - The observed consumer behaves very differently from the unobserver consumers - Consumers often tell marketers what it is they think they want to hear - Sometimes the market research doesn't reveal real consumer intention
What Marketers Need to Think About When Introducing New Brands
It's Never Cheap to launch a new product - Product Design/Development/Importation - Marketing, web site dev - Distribution and infrastructure - Staffing
Use Search to Test the Market Place - Create a simple test page to see - Tweak your keywords and ads and see the results
Doron Wesly, VP Strategic Services, Millward Brown Inc. is next up.
(1) Search volume rise immediately after the start of the print campaign (2) Search volume remains higher after TV campaigns, when the print campaign is continued.
They have been doing studies to show this. But some instances don't make sense to build brand with search. It would not be appropriate to bid on competitors brand names and point them to you, but you can point them to a comparison site.
We need to always take into our objective and understand the cost of getting to those objectives are. Why? Because it can be very costly.
Stephen DiMarco, CMO, Compete is next up to tell us about him. He is a new guy in the old timers. He gives the company speech, caused he was asked to.
Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, Didit. He does PPC stuff, and gives the about Did It. He does a weekly column for ClickZ on paid search.
Kevin Lee asks if he can talk about branding, so Ryan finally lets him...
Kevin Lee said branding was invented by ad agencies. So they came up with brand metrics to sell it. Direct marketers say, if I can get you a sale, awesome but if I can get you branding, that is just gravy. One thing many marketers dont think about, that is not just the SERP that generates brand awareness, but also the web site, landing page. As you start to think about search and branding, don't just think about the SERP. Think more about that this is only stage one of the ad, it starts with the click and continues until they stop with your web site (hopefully leading to a sale). To not include that, he says, is "kind of selling search short."
Lee adds people search because they are stimulated to search. And to add to Wesly, yes, marketing campaigns offline can and do trigger searches.
Then Wesly and Lee start arguing about diapers. But it is about, does media trigger search... Yes.
Ryan asks about recession...
Graham said its category specific, people in loans and mortgages have pulled out. There are less consumers searching for mortgages, he said.
JP Morgan from the audience said that they seen an increase in mortgage searches and the rates are lower.
Search as an advertising medium is increasing and more and more people are coming in. In certain categories, we may loose some advertisers but in other categories you will gain. In any market, there are up and downs in different categories.
Lots of Q&A going on... Might add more if things spike my interest.
