DIGITAL MARKETING
SECTION ONE
SECTION TWO
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SECTION THREE
Capitalize on Three Search Trends
To Enhance CPG Marketing
Now that Google has defined pre-purchase online consumer research as the
“Zero Moment of Truth,” the company is promoting several new search trends
contributing to information gathering. Consumers are using smartphones,
online video, and social media to map their path to purchase.
“Keep your eyes open and follow your consumers. That is going to guide you.
Understand where your consumers are spending their time, and make sure you
are there with that message,” says Catherine Roe, head of industry for CPG
for Google.
Here is a look at these search trends:
Mobile Search
By end of this year, over half of Americans will have a smartphone, making it the fastest growing consumer technology ever. Corresponding to this, U.S. mobile search queries are “exploding,” with growth over 400% in the past year.
Mobile use, which includes tablets and smartphones, complements the use of regular computers. For example, the use of mobile search peaks in the evenings and on weekends when people are on the go away from their computers. Some people even take their tablets to bed to keep in touch with their social networks as long as possible before falling asleep or engage in various forms of entertainment such as “Angry Birds.” No matter the motivation, the result is an overall increase in searches, making the Zero Moment of Truth all the more important.
There are three key mobile trends for shopper marketing:
- Mobile is local One in three searches is local. Google found that, after looking up a local business on a smartphone, 59% actually visited. Meanwhile, one in five searches on a desktop computer is local. This reveals how consumer engagement with mobile is somewhat different from a regular computer. Companies can’t just duplicate their Internet presentations for mobile.
- Mobile is immediate Nearly nine of ten (88%) of local information seekers on mobile devices take action within a day. When a consumer is on a mobile device, they want their answer right away. This confirms the need for special websites optimized for mobile platforms.
- Mobile is the key to shopper marketing Eight of ten (79%) smartphone users use their device to help them shop; and three of four (74%) have made purchases due to using their smartphones while shopping.
Last year, 10% of searches were done with mobile devices, so websites for mobile need to be user-friendly. There is much work to be done, as 79% of the top 500 websites are not mobile-enabled.
Black Friday is coming soon, and with it, more mobile searches. Last year mobile jumped from 10% of searches to more than 20% that day. This year, that is even going to be higher. Granted a lot of these people will be looking for the “screamin’ flatscreen deal,” but the reality is, they have figured out how to use their mobile phone to find out what they need to know, and they don’t have to go home and research on their desktop
Online Video
Online video is massive. It is social, helps spread a company’s message, reaches new audiences beyond TV, and gives the viewer a choice. It delivers engagement. The irony here is, among today’s college graduates, more than half will never have a cable subscription because they get all their content online. Not just YouTube, although that is a huge place for them, but a lot of them have an $8 subscription to Netflix. They download everything they need to their computer, and then they can actually still watch it on a TV. But they don’t differentiate between the TV and the computer. It’s all one universe of where “I want my content and when.”
There were 5.1 billion online video views just in April and 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute. That number is up from 8 hours per minute in 2007, 13 in 2008, 24 in 2009, and 35 in 2010. There is
a 50% year-over-year increase in views on video on YouTube vs. static TV viewership, which is not going up.
So video plus social equals earned media. In this new world, we can have our paid media and our earned media that doesn’t cost us anything. People are passing that video along. For example:
- 30% of viewers share with a friend after watching a YouTube video.
- 400-plus video views are shared via Twitter every minute.
- 100 million viewers comment or share a “like” on a YouTube video each week.
- 150 years of YouTube videos are viewed on Facebook every day.
An activist in Cairo, Egypt, was quoted in March 2011 as saying, “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” This couldn’t have happened 10 years ago.
In summary, online video is massive and drives efficient scale. If nothing else, marketers need to make sure TV commercials and informational video content are uploaded on video. It is social and helps spread a company’s message, and then reaches new audiences beyond TV.
Social Media
Facebook and Twitter are familiar to billions, while people are just learning about Google +, a newcomer to social media. It will enable social communication, even with groups of friends who are all equipped with computer cameras.
Meanwhile, there is a marketing side that is just launching, which will allow companies to have a page to represent their brand. Google’s new “+1,” which allows users identify ads they see online, is integrated into Google+.
Celebrity annotations are another new part of the technology, allowing for the endorsements of these spokespersons. For example, Kid Rock is one of the spokespeople for Jim Beam, and the bottom of a
Jim Beam ad will say, “Kid Rock endorsed this.”
Roe sums up: “Your consumers’ buying habits have changed. Are your marketing efforts keeping up? What are you doing to keep up with that Zero Moment of Truth, and start thinking about engaging them. Video, mobile and social are exploding. How can you take advantage of these new mediums?”
This article was abstracted from a seminar at the third annual LEAD Marketing Conference hosted by the Shopper Technology Institute in Chicago. The presenter was Catherine Roe, head of CPG for Google.