Marketing Now

How Search Has Changed Your Business

The Keys to an Effective Search Strategy

To incorporate search into your organization:

• Add search metrics to your data mix to better understand your audience, see industry trends, and build a better product strategy.
• Integrate offline and online marketing activities to capitalize on your offline advertising efforts and to keep from losing potential customers that your offline advertising efforts are driving to search engines.
• Develop a search acquisition strategy that fully harnesses the searching behavior of your potential customers.

To successfully execute your search strategy, you should build its importance into every aspect of the organization-not just marketing. A successful search strategy depends on IT and Engineering, Product Marketing, Business Development, Marketing and Advertising, PR, Customer Support, User Research, User Interaction Design, and any other department that thinks about the business, customers, product, or Web site. Google_your-online-strategy-is-your-business-strategy.html/”>Marketing in the Age of Google will guide you toward building a successful search strategy and extending the process for execution throughout your entire organization.

This book talks about organic search-the search results that are generated algorithmically based on what the search engines think is most relevant for the query. Paid search (the ads that appear beside the organic results) is also an important piece of the search strategy puzzle but a number of resources exist to help businesses better understand and use paid search so in this book we’ll only be talking about it as it influences organic search.

What is your organic search strategy? If you don’t have one, you’re missing a key piece of your business strategy-and shutting out many potential customers who are looking for your business. If you’re an executive, this book will give you a holistic view of how search fits into your overall business strategy and how to integrate it into the organization. If you’re a marketer, developer, user interaction designer, or otherwise work on customer engagement, product development, or company awareness, this book will show you how to incorporate search into what you’re already doing for an even better return.

Search as the Entry Point of the Web

For many of us the search box has become our entry point to the Web. When the Web first gained popularity, it became important for a busi- ness to have a Web site. As online activity became more prevalent, it became important for a business to include a domain name in advertising and other materials. Now things have shifted again, and it’s vital for a business to rank well in search results both for their brand name and for queries relevant to the business.

But integrating offline and online marketing is only half the story. It’s just as important to understand the needs of your customers. For years, companies have commissioned focus groups and large-scale surveys and conducted massive market research to find out what their potential customers want and how their current customers think about them. All of those activities are still valuable, but there’s now an easier (and cheaper) way. Search can provide powerful data about exactly what your potential customers want and what they’re thinking about you.

Source: Vanessa Fox, “Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy is Your Business Strategy,” JohnWiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2010

Republished by Marketing Now

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