Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Well, in our business, convincing people to go into search has actually been fairly easy.
For our people, it’s all about selling products and selling them profitably. And luckily,
the search channel is actually fantastic for that. You have a very good view into the amount
of money that you spend to sell products. You can also see the changes that you're going
to make in your campaigns and how that will positively or negatively impact your sales
overall. And so it’s not that hard, actually, to convince them to be able to spend more
on search and look at search as a fantastic channel for them.
The one challenge that’s actually fairly interesting is if you ask a retailer or manufacturer,
if I can sell your product at the margin target that you have, can I sell it anywhere, essentially?
And by and large, the answer is yes. You know, please sell more. Rinse, repeat, as much as
you possible can. But what’s funny is that every now and again, when they look at the
budgets that they're setting aside for search or other channels, there’s a hard dollar
amount that they have. I’ve only got X to spend on search. But when you repeat to them
what they said about their margin targets and say, “But you're hitting your margin
targets, why not spend more,” it’s hard for them to get out of the old way of thinking
from a marketing standpoint. Our budget was $100,000, we have to spend $100,000. Versus
we wanna make a 20 percent margin, we're hitting a 20 percent margin, we should continue to
spend until that margin goes down. So that’s been the bigger challenge to them, to see
overall. But that’s starting to change over time as people get more sophisticated in the
channel.
The great thing about online, and specifically search, is you can actually see that spend
that you do and what it immediately means to your bottom line in sales. And you can
continue to spend more and actually generate more profits. And I think that’s just something
that they're not used to. They’re so not used to, in the TV world or in the magazine
world, you spend some money, and you see some kind of results, and then hopefully you get
budget the next quarter to do it. And in this world, it’s a lot easier to say, “I should
be able to spend an unlimited amount because I'm hitting all of the targets we have to
sell our products. And at the end of the day, the more we spend, the more we sell, and the
more profits we add.” And that’s just a whole new paradigm shift for retailers and
manufacturers.