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PPC search: Create, influence, capture, and harvest demand

February 22, 2008 | Internet Marketing

Being demand harvesters, marketers must use search the same way they do other media: to influence consumers positively toward eventual purchase and create new demand for the brand and perhaps for their industry category as a whole.

Much of the traditional advertising we experience alerts us to a problem we didn’t know we had or increases our awareness of the severity of a problem we have. Perhaps the ad is simply trying to convince us that we should take action to avoid a potential problem, such as wrinkled skin, a home burglary, ownership of a crappy car, a dull Saturday night. Advertising often tells a story that provides a solution to that problem. And most advertising is designed to create demand, influence existing demand for a particular brand choice, harness that demand into action (purchase intent), then enable the retailer to harvest that demand.

Most marketers have done a great job harvesting customers from the clickstream driven from search impressions. Those search impressions and their resulting clicks don’t just happen spontaneously; they’re the result of media, advertising, marketing, buzz, store visits, news, or something in the searcher’s life that stimulated a search. Perhaps his coffeemaker broke that morning, or perhaps another medium was involved. Remember: It’s not just your own marketing or PR activities that stimulate search behavior. It occurs at a macro level as a result of all the activities, information, and communication a consumer touches or is touched by. That’s why search marketers must be aware of the overall consumer response ecosystem.

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