Intent Driven Marketing
There’s a reason Google’s stock price has reached such lofty heights. It’s because they know what every business wishes they could…they know what people want.
And I’m not being glib here, they really do know what people want, and not just in the “we’ve done some market research” way. What else is a search query but a signal of a searchers need, or put another way a signal of intent. Google has become so valuable because they’ve figured out how to build an advertising market around that signal of intent. Everytime someone, anyone, does a search Google is auctioning of that signal of intent to the highest bidder. Of course it is a little more subtle than that (more on that soon), but Google is basically selling each search as a unique opportunity to market to someone who has flagged a specific intent based on a keyword query.
As a marketer that’s an exciting prospect, so the amazing thing from my perspective is why New Zealand businesses have collectively been quite slow to adopt paid search marketing. Some industries have jumped in both feet (travel for example), but most are missing a big opportunity to drive highly qualified traffic to their web site. At no other moment in time do consumers flag a more specific intent than when they do a keyword search, so if you can interpret that intent, and then deliver on it, then the rewards are there for the taking. That’s why I like to think of paid search marketing (aka PPC or Adwords advertising) as ‘intent driven marketing’.
In future posts about paid search, the team will be exploring some of the subtleties of managing an effective campaign so please make sure you subcribe to The OnlineMarketer RSS feed.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Hi, I am interested to know what minimum CPM or CPC rates are being paid here in NZ for keyword advertising such as mentioned in this article, especially keywords located in email, chat rooms, blogs and instant messages.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Hi Doug,
The average cost per click for any given keyword will depending entirely on the competition for that given keyword…it really does range enormously from market to market, so you can literally pay anything from $0.05-0.10/click right up to $10.00-20.00 or more per click for something really competitive.
Of course what any one is prepared to pay depends on what kind of conversion rate they can achieve from that traffic and what the sales are worth to them.
Cheers,
Charles
July 17th, 2008 at 8:42 am
[...] post goes on to talk about one of my favorite topics, searcher intent, but one of the take aways for me was the reminder that Google not only has to solve the problem of [...]
September 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
It is pretty amazing that despite how effective a well-run PPC campaign can be, it’s very difficult to convince clients of this. And this is despite showing very quantifiable results that PROVE it worthwhile. Granted, a poorly run and managed PPC campaign can drain the bottom line very fast!