Don't Sit So Close to the TV
SearchInsider has a remarkable article today on what effect a U.S. recession would have on search. Here's the article
It’s a compelling argument– that if U.S. disposable income goes the way of Eudora and “You’ve got Mail”, people might start looking to tighten their belts, and ultimately stop surfing for new and exciting toys online. The resulting slowdown in search, so goes the argument, might be a pretty abrupt wake-up call to those search professionals who are counting on search engine budgets’ steady march upward.
Chris Copeland’s article is an interesting posit – that consumer confidence is slipping and resulting query volumes may dip– but we think he may have missed the main idea by suggesting that TV ad spending is the answer. Certainly if Copeland is suggesting that a $3 million Super Bowl ad is the antidote, he must not have been watching the ads for the last couple of years. Branding, yes, but have you seen a lot of compelling calls to action? And really, are you slicing and segmenting your target audience when you have a third of the U.S. market barely paying attention while they drink and socialize?
Doesn’t it make more sense to just do search better?
Stuck in between Copeland’s ‘paid search is dying’ and ‘TV is the answer’ rhetoric is a superficial response that moving the bar in organic search might provide a solution that triages this ROI slip. But in our opinion – that’s real the answer, not multi-million-dollar-all-or-nothing gambles.
Invest in organic search. Measure your ROI. Test. Repeat.
Our customers know that targeted and specific investment in organic search pays off big.
If indeed we are heading into a recession – doing search right isn’t becoming less important, it’s becoming mission critical.
