I was reading an article about Social Media from Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrem about the lack of spend on social media sites and it seems so obvious. In PPC intent is king. That is why it is better to bid higher on keywords where intent is high.
I first learned about intent at Old Navy. Back in the day when I was working at Old Navy (a college job) one of our tasks was to give out shopping bags to customers. The floor manager would hold a contest where the person who gave out the most bags would win a little prize. I loved these competitions, mostly because I quite like candy. It was easy to win the competition just by smiling big and asking as many people as possible if they wanted a bag.
Most people would see my seemingly huge enthusiasm for giving them a bag and didn’t realize that I was just visualizing them as a big bag of smarties and they would take the bag. Obviously, Old Navy’s management knew that someone holding a bag is more likely to put things in that bag and then are more likely to buy some of those things. It is one of those click-whir persuasion techniques
It is much more difficult as a search marketing manager to guide a customers intent like putting a bag in someone’s hand. Rather you are trying to find people who seem to already have a bag in their hand and get them to come to your site to finish the transaction. People searching for keywords associated with your brand and product is a great way to gauge intent. It is clear that a person who is hanging out with their friends, i.e. visiting social media sites, has extremely poor intent. At Old Navy I could also gauge poor intent in nearly the same way. I could be pretty sure of being rejected if people were chatting and not looking at the clothes, fussing with their children, or if they felt interrupted in some way. Being a sugar loving fiend I would ask anyway.
Agencies are still constantly pitching social media and speakers at conferences are regularly talking about how important it is as a place that big advertisers just have to be, because “that’s where the people are”. Well I could go stand outside a local church and hand out fliers, because that’s where the people also are. When I hear all that non-sense about social media I just look with big eyes and picture them as a bag of smarties.
