Promises have not been my strong suit lately. I had promised a timely follow up to the last NetProfit, way back at the beginning of April. Obviously, my timing is a bit off. Secondly, the follow up was supposed to cover more findings from our focus group. I’m about to break that one too.

I’ve just spent the last 3 days at Ad:Tech in San Francisco. The show was wildly successful, with over 4000 attendees jamming every nook and cranny of the Palace Hotel. The air was abuzz with the comeback of online advertising. Yet, strangely, search, which has fueled that comeback, was almost entirely absent from the session roster. More about that later.

First, I’d like to dig a little deeper into an issue that emerged at a session I participated in, Integrating Search in your Cross Channel Strategy. I was fortunate to be able to talk briefly about our research at the end of the session. Prior to that, three panelists presented their experiences using search as a direct response and branding channel.

Let me say right now that I love being at Ad:Tech because it serves as my bellwether for where the industry is going. This show draws the smartest and most innovative marketers out there. These are the classic early adopters, always looking for the new, hot online channels to reach their customers. And the panelists are the cutting edge of this crowd. If you can introduce a new concept to these people, you know you’re doing something right.

So, as I listened to the panelists present, I was impressed by their savvy when it came to search. By the accepted rules of the game, they were doing everything right. They were monitoring the performance of every aspect of their campaigns. They understood that keywords have different conversion potentials and had allocated them to separate baskets accordingly. They were continually optimizing and adjusting their paid search strategies. At first glance, it seemed there was little to teach these people.

Two things were consistently missed, however, that I believe are vital. First, none mentioned organic search and its importance until after I mentioned it in my presentation. Secondly, they fell into the trap that almost all search marketers do. They were thinking straight lines to conversion, and people tend to search in circles.

Think Circular, not Linear

Each of the panelists talked about high converting keywords and the generic, brand building ones. They acknowledged that brand building is important, but was secondary to their primary strategy of driving to the conversion. And, in doing that, they tended to focus on a core basket of high converting words that showed measurable ROI.

These are the low hanging fruit, the prospects at the very bottom of the buying funnel that have their credit cards in hand and are ready to buy. Given search’s direct marketing roots, it’s little wonder that the focus is on these consumers. They have direct impact on the bottom line, and are the makings of a great quarterly report to the CMO. But, they are the minority of people using search in a consumer interaction. Many more people use search to be introduced to a product and learn more about it than to buy the product. The problem is they’re not ready to buy for awhile. But it’s vitally important to introduce your brand and product as early in that process as possible. If you wait until they’ve qualified themselves as a “hot prospect”, you’ve missed the boat if you’re using search as your channel.

Take Away #1: Most Marketers aim their entire search strategy too low in the buying funnel. Aim for these customers, but don’t forget the ones higher in the funnel as well.

There’s another element here that tends to represent a paradigm shift for most marketers. A search interaction is not a straight line from one keyword to one listing to one site to a final conversion. For most consumers, search is a circular funnel. We start with broad, generic phrases, and narrow down our search focus as we go. And as we do so, we interact with the search results we see and can be led in totally new directions based on those results. Most often, this all happens in one single search session. So to say that broad phrases don’t convert is wrong. They represent the beginning of a process that can eventually lead to a conversion, but ROI tracking only captures the end of the process, not the beginning.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is to look an actual search interaction that took place during our focus group. It explains this rather nebulous concept better than I could ever hope too.

Cruising on Search

We had a young female who was looking for information about a cruise. She started with the vague notion that she wanted to go to the Caribbean, but actually began her search process by just searching for “cruises”. When asked why, she said she wanted to keep her options open and just wanted to see what came up. What did come up were listings for major cruise lines, including Princess in a prominent organic position (she tended to look at organic listings first). She knew the brand and saw by the listing text that they offered cruises to the Caribbean. She didn’t actually click through to any site.

Her next search was for “Caribbean cruises”. Again, Princess’s site was prominently placed in the top organic listings. This time, she did click through to Princess and did some investigation of the Caribbean itineraries. One option that caught her eye was the Panama Canal Cruise. At this point, it was a few clicks on the back button to get back to the search engine results page.

From here, she searched for “Caribbean Cruise Reviews”. She wanted to get some objective third opinions. She found a site that offered this as the number one organic listing and read some encouraging reviews of Princess Cruises. At this point, she again backed up to the search engine results page and launched a new search for “princess panama canal cruises”. When asked why she did this, rather than just go directly to the Princess site and navigate to the appropriate page, she said she thought using the search engine to get there would just be faster and easier. She did find the page she wanted, and clicked through the listing to the site. This time, she spent a fair amount of time reading about the cruise and the ports of call. She was ready to convert, but she wouldn’t do it online. She would print off the page and take it to her local travel agent, because she wanted to finalize the purchase with a face to face interaction. When she got there, she would ask for more information about Princess Cruises through the Panama Canal.

Was this a successful search interaction for Princess? Absolutely. But what if we didn’t have the advantage of watching the searcher during the search process? From the ROI metrics used by most search marketers, this would have been a dismal failure. They would have never realized that their brand was introduced in the search for “cruises”. They would have recorded no conversions for the searches for either “Caribbean cruises” or “princess panama canal cruises”. It would have been recorded as a lost opportunity.

By the way, there’s another case study involving running shoes illustrated in the “Inside the Mind of the Searcher” white paper that also clearly demonstrates this tendency on the part of the searcher.

Take Away #2: Don’t get too hung up on ROI metrics for keywords. Spend some time instead getting to know what a typical search interaction for your customer could be and realize that the words your monitoring for ROI only represent one small slice of that interaction. Understand that it could be 4 or 5 keywords that lead to a conversion, not just the final one.

Take Away #3: Realize that conversions will happen offline more often than not. Not all your customers will cross the Anonymity Threshold (see more in the last Net Profit) to convert and become a measurable lead online.

Think Long Term, Not Immediate

This preoccupation to conversion when it comes to search is understandable. Ultimately, that’s the goal we’re all shooting for. But to use search effectively, think of your sales channel as a continuum that can have prospects introduced and managed cost effectively at any point. As much as we’d all like qualified prospects that are one step away from the close, the reality of search is that you’ll be getting leads that could be weeks or even months away from a sale. Use the strengths of search as a research vehicle to introduce yourself to new prospects where it makes the most sense for them, not where it happens to fit your sales channel the best. Be patient and nurture the leads. Give them a reason to continue to have a relationship with you.

And Finally, A Few Words About Ad Tech

As promised (I’m determined to keep one this month), I’ll wrap up with a few words about the San Francisco Ad Tech show.

As I mentioned, the topic of search was conspicuous by its absence. Of 43 sessions, there were only 3 that touched on search, and these tended to be on how search can integrate with other marketing channels. By my calculation, that’s about 7% of the entire show content. The disconnect becomes obvious when you consider that over 30% of online advertising spends go to search, over 25% of Ad:Tech’s sponsorship support came from search marketing vendors and 30 of the 101 exhibitors were there hawking search engine marketing services as their core business. Many of the other exhibitors offer search marketing as part of their total service bundle. You’ll excuse the search marketing industry for scratching our heads and uttering a collective “Huh?”

At the end of the last session of the last day, Ad:Tech Chair Susan Bratton found herself surrounded by a gang of hungry (literally, not figuratively. It was lunch time) search marketers. She graciously agreed to go to lunch with us. We search people tend to be a little single minded and evangelical about our industry, and the topic about the lack of search sessions had come up once or twice over the duration of the show. I couldn’t help thinking that the next hour and half played out somewhat like an agnostic finding themselves locked in a Jehovah Witness convention. To make Susan’s predicament even more uncomfortable, she found herself next to Barbara Coll, president of SEMPO and high priestess of search. If you don’t know Barbara, suffice to say she’s no shrinking violet.

Susan handled it all in stride, being very gracious and even picking up the tab for lunch. While Susan was kind enough not to say it to us, I strongly suspect the reason there wasn’t more search on the schedule was because of attendee feedback. Past shows have had strong search content and my guess is that attendees said “Enough search already. Give us something else!” To use an analogy that shows my age only too clearly, search is like Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island. It’s nice, it’s quietly effective, it gets the job done, but it’s no Ginger. Topics like rich media, influence marketing, social networking, now that’s sexy. That’s Ginger. Innovative marketers like sexy. Search will never be sexy. Search sessions are usually full of technical jargon and tactics. This is not the stuff of which marketing dreams are made.

But this is my column, so I get the last word. Because of some of the reasons I covered in this column, plus many many more, the strategy of search needs a lot more attention. We’re only beginning to understand the true nature and potential of this channel. I believe as we dig down into search behaviors and patterns, we will find opportunities that are innovative, exciting, and, dare I say it, just a little bit sexy? Maybe we can dress up Mary Ann for the next Ad:Tech and turn a few heads.

Back to promises. I will do my best to get the long awaited follow up to the first article on our focus group up in the next few weeks.