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Search and Social Are Changing. What You Need to Know
Search engines have been a mainstay of marketers since 1996 after Yahoo! and Google (both conceived at Stanford University) and Lycos, Excite, Alta Vista and Ask Jeeves came to be. We have since seen consolidation and the expansion of MSN, later to become Bing, while Google has continued to grow its market share, capabilities and services.
Search engines have changed our lives. There are currently 34,000 searches are conducted on Google every second.
The way we find knowledge and information, conduct research and shop for products and services, both B2C and B2B is vastly different than it was just 10 years ago. Additionally with the rise and significant computing power of smart wireless devices such as the iPad and smartphones, the expansion of high speed internet virtually everywhere we are, and the advancement and proliferation of “apps,” we now have the ability for our devices to help run our lives, to entertain us and connect us with others.
Behind almost every online app, function, web connected destination, social network, smartphone or media is a search engine. Search engines have become the connecting force and directional guide to everyday life.
But there is change happening, as innovative technologies continue to push forward, adapting to user needs and technology capabilities. The two major internet innovations of the past fifteen years, Search Engines and Social Media have begun to morph into a dual realm, moving from two separate and distinct functions, into an interdependent symbiotic relationship that will eventually become singular in its function.
Google maintains over 65% of all Search Engine traffic, but has also launched into the space of Social Media with Google+ and many other communication and publishing tools. Facebook now has its Graph Search and sponsored Search results, and Yahoo! is currently working on acquiring content engines and acqui-hiring—adding smart developers and entrepreneurs to its staff, presumably to inject fresh blood into the company and its businesses to reinvent its business.
So big change is coming in how businesses find their customers. Here is a quick read on where is it all going and how you can stay ahead of the game, and your competitors.
1. Data and Analytics
Data capture and data management (Business Intelligence) technologies have become the new internet frontier. By combining sophisticated data mining capabilities and cutting-edge data analytics, organizations today can determine a potential customer’s specific individual needs and preferences, and can serve solutions towards the purchase or research of a product or service at the precise time a prospect may be looking, or provide relevant information to help build credibility and decision-making for the brand during the various stages of the buying cycle (1. Awareness. 2. Consideration. 3. Preference / Intent. 4. Purchase. 5. Repurchase.)
Today’s customers have heightened expectations, and creating new sales revenues for businesses is extremely competitive. Mistakes or limited sales capabilities can be catastrophic. Competitive businesses today are using real time information, analytics and insight from data to provide improved performance, enabling daily intelligent decision making in volatile markets.
The ongoing capture (data mining) of key business data, and the application of statistical modeling, adaptive learning, historical performance and benchmark analysis give business leaders immediate insight into root causes and trends over time. Using Business Intelligence (BI) methodologies, key insight is provided across the company, driving collaboration between top leaders and key decision makers, recommending specific actions and strategies where applicable. The real time data helps guide decisions and improves business performance.
2. Reading our Minds
The new web, with its advanced personalization and data processing capabilities is already moving towards the ability to apply intelligent logic (artificial intelligence), with software agents to perform anticipatory actions. Big data and the considerable amount of data from our devices, allows the combination of automated agents (apps & SaaS), contextual search and related services, and the Internet of Things, to combine together to become vastly more useful and efficient to both users and marketers than it already is.
As Search Engines move away from today’s millions of options per keyword search term (while 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results, towards just a few highly personalized options, customized for you. This is becoming possible through a focus on your likely intent (purpose), over Semantics. In the past Search has largely been a semantic play with Search Engines requiring you to enter some variation of the term you’re targeting. Now Search Engines are evolving to understand synonyms of the word’s intent. This capability, combined with knowing what your location is (Geotargeting), your previous search history data, your social graph from Google+, and your device type from your user agent.
The components are coming together with agents like Siri and contextual search like Google Now. As it all continues to come together, the highly relevant and personalized information we need will be delivered to us just when we need it, without our having to invest time and effort looking for it.
3. Search & Social as an Extension of Your Brand
Both Search and Social are direct routes to brand interaction. A Brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, experiential, rational, and cultural image that someone associates with an organization, product, person or issue. Perceived brand quality and customer value directly affect Search Engine rankings and Social Media interaction. People decide what quality is, and Search Engines follow what people want.
Today’s brand conscious consumers want and expect the interactions (Search Engine and Social) they want to be timely, relevant and based on their previous interactions with the brand or program. They expect organizations to know what interests them consumer wants based on tracking their interests and preferences over time, to provide relevant and customized offers and information based on their specific individual interests, both from past searches and social content through past purchases and previous interactions. Through technology advances we are now able to facilitate this activity, and provide content and offers that meet individual consumer needs – building on brand strength.
Social networks provide trusted advisor status for people, who in turn provide brand preference input across media. This is a key element of brand building, and a strong factor in the evolution of search and social.
4. Geographic Proximity at Any Specific Moment
With the rise of mobile and smartphone use, Geotargeting is becoming a significant factor in the ability to serve content, based on a persons location. Geotargeting is the ability to determine the geolocation of a website visitor to deliver personalized content based on their location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, ISP or other criteria.
Geotargeting gives Search Engines the ability to serve very specific options, based on an individual’s location, but factored with their personal preferences, from tracked interests and preferences of web searches, mobile content options and online(and moving towards in store) purchases over time.
5. The Rise of Mobile
Smartphones and tablets are now (62 percent of adults aged 25-34 own smartphones). 25% of all searches are on mobile devices (8,500 per second) and mobile advertising is currently 30% of Facebook’s ad revenue. Websites increasingly becoming responsive, and Search Engines are adapting to smaller screens to create an optimal user experience with easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling on a smaller device.
Social shopping is becoming a very fast growing segment of online ecommerce (53% of shoppers compare in-store prices to online prices while shopping). Social shopping gives input from friends and trusted advisors by allowing valuable insight from social peers.
6. Social Listening
Social listening is being practiced more, as companies review online trends and comments by users within social media. At this point companies may hear what their customers say online, but they rarely respond effectively. More, brands often overlook how to leverage what they pick up on Twitter and Facebook. Social will become an even greater asset for companies, as they review and discuss the user experience, and adjust strategies accordingly in the future.
Peter Ashworth is a Principal of Webhomes. (www.webhomes.com)
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