There is no question that search marketing has gotten extremely competitive, cluttered and cut-throat, but by no means has it lost its effectiveness and usefulness, not yet anyway.
According to eMarketer, a study was done between Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) and Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization which proved that search marketing is still effective. The study focused on four consumer packaged goods categories and found a significant number of searchers conducting online searches within those categories during the three months ending April 2007. Here are the results:
- Nearly 44 million visitors searched for packaged foods
- 15.7 million searched for baby products
- 9.8 million searched for personal care products
- 1.7 million searched for household products
The study suggests that consumer packaged goods companies who have historically invested the majority of their marketing budgets into brand advertising and promotional efforts to drive in-store purchasing may be missing a big opportunity. The study also found that nearly 75% of searchers were motivated by product research, and 60% wanted help with their purchase decisions.
In addition, nearly half of searchers were looking for promotions while fewer than 30% were looking for a specific company's web site. Add to those statistics the fact that searchers spent about 20% more than non-searchers across all four categories, and it's evident that consumer packaged goods companies have a golden opportunity in front of them to capture that "searchers" market. Shifting a portion of the marketing budget for consumer packaged goods from advertising and in-store promotions to online promotions and branding campaigns that attract the "searchers" market could equate to attractive increases in sales.
What do you think? Should consumer packaged goods companies rethink their marketing strategies to capture the online searchers market?
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