Some Reports Don’t Tell the Whole Story

I recently read an article about how paid search may not be the best way for retailers to advertise because less than 10% of retailer site traffic comes from search engines. Of that small percentage a good amount of it includes typing the retailer directly into the search box and not a category term (typing “Coach” instead of “purses”).

At first glance these stats would confirm that maybe paid search isn’t meant for retailers. But then I thought about it. Yes, there may be sites that you go to directly because they are your favorite stores or you’ve had a good experience there. But, when it comes to something that you want specifically, you go to a search engine to see what pops up. At that point you are completely clueless as to who sells what it is that you want.

The study done to get to this conclusion doesn’t seem to have taken into account the fact that people research before they make a purchase. If I want a digital camera I am going to search for certain features, reviews, and models. At that point I don’t care who sells what, I just want to know what is out there that will serve my purpose. And chances are, through my many searches I will see ads for retailers and not click on them. But, once I figure that out what I want, I’ll probably go directly to besbuy.com and whatever other retailer’s website I saw an ad for. Sure I didn’t click on the ad when I saw it, mainly because I wasn’t at that stage of the purchase cycle yet. But it did make an impression on me and I may visit the site later as a result of seeing the ad (often referred to as a latent visit). Had I not seen the ad for Kohl’s (see above), I would not have put it in my consideration set of stores because I didn’t know (or had forgotten) it sold digital cameras. Once I get to the purchase stage, the retailer may get a sale out of me, a sale it may not have gotten had I not seen that ad during my search.

The point that I am hoping I made is that we cannot always take analytics for face value. If I was a retailer, having read this article I may consider pulling my paid search campaign. And then in a month wonder why my direct visits have gone down.

Analytics are great and we all love seeing them (especially when they are good news), but if we only base marketing decisions on what reports and click throughs tell us, we may be putting our money in places it shouldn’t be or not putting money in places it should be. Delving below the surface is what is really important here. Great media plans are created when we consider what the analytics imply, and also take into account our instincts and the knowledge we have about the target audience.