Andrew Goodman has an interesting start on a discussion of the relative merits of PPC and SEO. I think he’s found an worthwhile thread, but I believe that there’s a different type of analysis to be usefully applied. It is that clicks have different meanings; here is one model for looking at what clicks mean.
I don’t have the statistical databases of Google, or even a small search engine. I have an acute awareness of how I treat search, three kids and a group of people who I watch using search to find things. I also have had access or have current access to huge web server log files with data from paid search and organic search (and walk ons aka “direct” and email, and so on).
I’ve also, periodically, had formal training in marketing – paid for by me. I *like* this stuff. It’s my entertainment. OK, that might sound wierd, but I get more of a kick from figuring out why some marketing trick works than I do watching a film. It is more deeply revealing of real human psychology and the stories of our lives. Back to the point…
So, what do I see when I watch people search? What do the log files say? What measurements are we missing, as an entire Search Engine Marketing industry, because our web analytics tools don’t provide them?
The Buying Process
I keep mentioning this, and each time a few more people seem to get it. The Buying Process is pretty important in offline, but often ignored online. I think that’s a subtle consequence of how the web analytics got going and the ease of making and understanding certain types of measurements…
The idea of the Buying Process is to identify the kinds of activity that a prospective buyer goes through. By targeting the right message to the right phase, you can influence the course and speed of progress through the buying process. The offline and online models differ, I believe. In particular, the nature of online purchasing injects an extra step, that isn’t articulated offline. Here’s the basic online buying process for a simple sale (one person, small enough value to allow personal decisions):
- Needs Awareness – sudden or slow dawning that they have an unfulfilled want
- Research – Find stuff out about the perceived need, and refine it
- Comparison – read reviews, and get together the data and emotions to make a decision
- Decision – put the whole thing together and make up your mind to go for the safest option
- Acquisition – this is frequently combined with the Decision, offline; how you go about getting what you want
- Post Purchase Evaluation – do you feel good about your decision? Support? Usage?
Prospective purchasers may slide backwards and forwards between these phases. So, for example, on choosing something and trying to buy it, it may not be available or costs more than you thought – so you end up being thrown back to an earlier phase.
Search queries seem to evolve. Different users have different strategies for searching, but one common search usage model seems to map to the buying process like this:
- Needs Awareness – irrelevant
- Research – typically repeated identical searches and looking at a range of organic search results
- Comparison – typically a wider range of different searches, honing in on particular features and benefits, or problems; can be Organic, or PPC
- Decision – usually irrelevant
- Acquisition – searches for a brand, web site, or specific product name and attribute – Both SEO and PPC can help (multiple messages, increased Share Of Voice, etc), often focus on adverts – PPC CTR can exceed 60%
- Post Purchase Eval – only relevant if there is a problem, a support group or online interaction – Organic is terrific for this
Organic search tends to be great for that early phase and the post purchase phases. Using paid search in these phases can result in a low conversion rate – and a signature is that you get repeat visits from the same visitor, on the same search. Ideally, for early phase searches, you’d use the organic search activity to get someone enrolled in a newsletter or other direct marketing activity – so you can send messages targeted at their activity, with their permission. You can then avoid search, thereafter, in some cases – not all, though.
When you get to the comparison steps, depending on the product type and the nature of the comparison, PPC may work better – because the precise message is more easily shaped. Organic can act as a support – so if you know that an organic result is present to take the other traffic, you can shape the advert copy to help attract buyers closer to conversion, or who need a message that the organic listing can’t properly support – a segmentation exercise, essentially. You may also be able to get an advert up when your SEO won’t let you show a reasonable ranking.
At Acquisition phases, you can do really well with PPC – or completely crash and burn. If someone has typed a brand name, they’ve probably made up their minds. Your chances of deflecting that purchase intent are going to be very low. Even if you can get a non-zero CTR, the conversion rate is low… unless you can shape a message to a competition-killing weakness and support that with the right Landing Page. Note that SEO generally finds it hard to rank at all on a competitors name… and Google’s usage of trademarks may make this difficult to do in certain countries, using PPC. It isn’t easy, or always possible. However, when the decision to acquire is actually a decision to research where to buy, then you get a serious chance.
Effectively, when someone decides that they want a holiday in Cancun or a specific model of car, they haven’t decided to buy… They’ve gone back to Research and Comparison phases, but they are now looking for *where* to buy, not *what* to buy – they are now more likely to be looking at paid search adverts, because those can carry, for example, current prices, specific messages that you can’t or shouldn’t carry in organic results (unless using Subscribed Links – but that’s another story).
Paid Search shines here – and has another trick that is hard to manage for Organic. Now, you still need the organic listing present – because you don’t want to lose the traffic doing early phase research. So the paid advert can focus on buying messages. “Book online now” – leave the organic listing to offer “Search/Browse online now”. The advert often needs to imply that you are ready and waiting to take the order and you have whatever it is that people are looking for and you’ve got.
You probably don’t want to advertise for post purchase evaluation – but you might in rare cases. If, for example, you have people proud to use your services and products, you might let them use icons or graphics to display their affinity. This supports hard-to-measure viral activities – and getting the right page, right message and rank with SEO is fairly uncertain. Placing an advert will let you support after sales activities that may be otherwise difficult to do. Similarly, if important events have just happened, then Paid Search can usually give you a head start on getting the new messages out.
And that, of course, is the final significant difference in the communication strategic strengths and weaknesses. If your tactical needs are for fast changes – new campaigns, promo prices – then Organic is a generally more sluggish responder. This, for example, makes PPC a suitable tool to conduct practical marketing research into consumer interest – something that you just can’t sensibly do with organic search. Note that with busy sites, you might be able to get the Snippet updated, almost in real time – that’s actually faster the editorial review, without asking for an expedited review.
PPC Tricks
Some things that help PPC, are not easily available in SEO. For example, day parting (where you can specify which set of adverts run at specific times of day), and geotargeting – ostensibly reaching only your desired audience.
Depending on the business, these may be more or less meaningful. For example, in some sectors you may be able to identify that businesses are the primary users of certain queries in the morning, and in the afternoon the audience switches to consumers. PPC lets’ you tune the adverts. However, other products may not have such an easily deconstructed appeal.
Geotargeting is less of an issue for SEO – because exposure to foreign geotargets is less of a problem. Google has made a minor pigs-ear of geotargeting – confusing where you want to show adverts and where the service area is. For example, if you are selling Plumbing Services in Florida, you probably don’t want jobs in Washington State. The query “plumber” may net all sorts of SEO that isn’t useful for you – but correct application of geotargeting could yield a local plumber. IME, geotargeting has been so poorly understood and exploited that it isn’t much of an advantage for PPC.
Measurements
I don’t know any current web analytics tool that reveals the evolution of search for a purchase, in any useful way, out of the box. This “missing tool” means that people are focused on the “first click that leads to a sale”, and this betrays the complexity of marketing messages. As purchases become more complex, the number and type of different messages increases, and the communication method to get the right message to the right user becomes increasingly important. But even quite simple sales often involve several searches that lead to the same site, often in the same session – or I wouldn’t see this search evolution in single vendors web server logs.
Latency is also often ignored. Well, actually, I can’t cite any Web Analytics package that offers latency of conversion as a standard measurement, but I’ve only properly used four packages in the last year. Anyway, by adjusting advert copy, I know that I can control latency – how long it takes between a click and a purchase. That’s because the Advert Copy is selecting people closer to buying, or in an earlier phase. Latency is significant – for cash flow – but also because of what your site offers. Some sites support long latency sales better than others, so the right site may actually achieve overall higher profits by obtaining long latency clicks. Other sites will be focused only on supporting final phase processes and can’t properly support a long latency sale activity.
Summary
Paid Search and Organic have a somewhat false competition. The nature of the two is different, and complementary. Failing to consider either would be a strategic marketing error. The reason is that the tools attack different messages and opportunities in the Buying Process. Failing to use one or the other would be like not-using email – it addresses a different message in a different way.
The way that we, as an industry, think about problems is partially a consequence of what we think we can observe. There’s a lot of underexploited information out there, and a lot of stats that would be useful to marketeers, that we aren’t getting and probably aren’t asking for, from our web analytics vendors.
