Google AdWords: Trouble With New Markets
August 10th, 2006
I’ve come to realize a major shortcoming of Google AdWords (and similar search marketing options) is the inability to advertise innovative products and services. What do I mean?
Well suppose you just invented a electric widget. No one knows about the electric widget yet or the benefits of owning such a device and so they certainly aren’t searching for “electric widgets” on google or anywhere else. You could try to buy search terms related to your competition and build ads saying something like “Still using a manual widget, try the electric version!”
But what about if there isn’t even another thing like the widget out there? You could try to buy keywords that your target market are searching for (suppose many people in the market for electric widgets also enjoy playing soccer). But if you buy “soccer” as your keyword your ad will quickly disappear due to its irrelevance to searchers’ intended information.
Let me make this more concrete. I’m working with a partner on launching a site called Unity3 that sells “inspired fashion” clothing (basically, clothes for Christian teens and twenty-somethings). There is some search traffic for “Christian clothes” and the like but for most Christian teens there is very little awareness of the Christian clothing category at all. Our hope is that the market will continue to get larger (due in part to our marketing) but this isn’t possible through advertising on obvious terms.
One of our strategies has been to advertise alongside other keywords these kids ARE searching for like Christian music (bands like Switchfoot, Anberlin, etc.) The search traffic here is HUGE compared to the Christian clothing traffic and the demographic is right. However, since our ads aren’t as tightly targeted as, say, a CD retailer, our ads are quickly deactivated for search.
What does this mean? It means online retailers in newly or unestablished markets can’t rely on search marketing alone - mainly because no one knows what to search for yet! New markets require old school marketing - print, television, etc. - which can be expensive. So while first mover advantage is key, it is also costly.
