the role search should play in your digital marketing
every day, 15% of Google searches are new
You read that right. Each day, 15% of the searches made on Google are brand new. As in, they have never been searched before. This has been true since long before cohort.digital existed and each year at their annual summit, Google affirms this same rate of new search continues. As of the time of this writing in 2024 this constitutes 1.275 billion unique queries every day! Outside of being interesting and wildly statistically significant, we think about the implications of this reality for our clients’ digital marketing plans.
why does this matter?
When 15% of the daily searches queried have never before been searched, it solidifies a couple of things. The first is that search is a powerful vehicle and it should likely be a part of your overall marketing strategy. The second, and possibly more important, is that a set it and forget it approach to digital isn’t in your best interest.
We think of it this way. With that rate of new search, Google has to constantly work to sort, index, and serve results for all of those queries. Given such a volume it’s no surprise that AI and dynamic tools have become an integral area of research and development. While these automated tools have incredible potential to simplify our lives and marketing campaigns, they still lack the context needed to be responsive to real time events that might impact your search campaigns. Examples of this context might include broad match results, local versus national searches, or unforeseen events that produce the wrong kind of publicity.
When we say broad match, what we mean is Google supplying car mufflers to every muffler related search. This is great if you’re strictly servicing cars, but not as helpful if you need a muffler for an aircraft, large machinery, etc.
Secondly, consider the local element of campaigns. Not everyone is searching big, national brands if they’re looking for a provider right there in their backyard. They want to know what’s going on locally, which takes time and input for Google to gather enough contextual information. Small and medium sized businesses open, close, or make changes to their service offerings all the time. If you are one of those small or medium sized businesses, you want to show up before or alongside those national brands when users are looking for what you offer.
Lastly, unforeseen events can really drum up searches. What comes to mind here is that the old adage “all publicity is good publicity” is not necessarily true. If something tragic happens at a particular location, searches almost always increase. Google sees this surge and thinks because search volume has increased, your business should put more emphasis or budget behind it. This is where a human touch can save the day. A human media manager has the context to know that being searched for a negative event is not the kind of traffic wanted or needed and optimizes away from the rubbernecking traffic Google would mistakenly feed into.
the consumer’s experience
It’s important to remember the consumer experience is always changing and how they get to you may be pretty varied. Consider that some of their exposures may be in real life without an opportunity to click. Outside of your brand name, it’s becoming more and more difficult to obtain a first page ranking for organic search results–especially if your name is somewhat common. For many brands, this means utilizing an omni-channel approach with a variety of vehicles throughout the sales funnel.
This means the role of search is to take advantage of all of the brand awareness you’ve been generating everywhere else that wasn’t necessarily clickable. So when your prospect finally conducts that search, it’s an easy answer that reaffirms everything else they see that you’ve put out there. If you do all that work and spend media budget to put your message out, you want to take advantage of the awareness you’ve built up in order to catch them when they’re ready.
TLDR – Search is a bottom of the funnel strategy taking advantage of your brand awareness and not missing the opportunity you’ve built toward in that moment.
Do you have search questions? Hit us up!
Go Forth. Go Digital.
-cohort.crew
