Knowing the intention of an online shopper makes it much easier to convert them into a buyer. If a shopper says he wants the Blu-ray of the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and an e-retailer immediately shows the sci-fi fan the Blu-ray and nothing else, the odds he will buy the film are greatly increased.
This is why paid search marketing is performing well in spite of the economic recession, experts say. Shoppers are trimming their spending and looking for specific items as opposed to browsing, and using search engines to get to e-retailers’ specially designed landing pages puts them right where they want to be.
In this month’s Internet Retailer survey, 41% of web-only retailers, retail chains, catalogers and consumer brand manufacturers say during the last six months of the recession, paid search advertising has performed better than other forms of marketing. 37.6% say it has performed the same; only 21.4% say paid search was performing worse.
“Paid search is going directly at the intention of the consumer. When you know the intent, the ability to convert them is substantially higher,” says Daniel Yonts, president of PayingAttention.net, an Internet marketing consulting firm that specializes in search engine marketing and optimization.
That’s one reason, he adds, why retailers are putting more money into paid search today. “As competition heats up for customers who today are spending less, you see, for example, many retailers completely abandoning online display advertising and putting that money into search, where there is clear buying intention as opposed to building brand awareness with display,” Yonts says. “So the conversion rates and ROI will be higher.”
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