Search Marketing is the buzz word, today for Marketer’s all across the globe. Most of the e-marketing/digital marketing is the mantra for a quick return specifically buying the Pay-Per-Click option as the key to their success for lead generation, diverting traffic to their website.
The other key aspect is Google key word ranking; the attitude is if you are in the first top 10 ranking in the game of key words you are pretty much up there. The war is fought on the bidding of key words, where the relevance take the second seat and the bidding war takes it to the level that if I am not in the ranking on those generic key words then I am not their in the internet world. (Yahoo’s, MSN please excuse me, you were once their but no longer exist in the internet search user frame of mind).
The bigger question is in this bidding game who is the winner, is it you the advertiser or it is the Google, who ends up with Billions of Dollar of your advertising money.
More, so when the world is changing relevance and who generates the content is becoming the order of the day. Try, looking for “Best recipe for Chicken Pizza” or round the corner store that will give you the most delicious “Pasta” the answer will be not based on that single result that will meet your criterion but perhaps Google search will throw up 10,000 pages of the search. Get the picture…. Now, consider the scenario Face Book, Linked in, Orkut and many others of social networking sites irrespective of their positioning of business and fun usage have millions of user driven content. Add to it, the new trends of online journalism of billions of user’s blogging and constantly adding to the content for the search in the website.
Presto, you have added more than 100 Billion of content on various topics across the globe dynamically and getting added every second. Imagine, these entire social networks were having 100 Million users and each one was writing 1 blog a month, how much content will come into the public domain, i.e. 1.2 Billion blogs worth of content. Consider, who will be the owner of this content, it will be owned by the Network and being supplied to the search engines i.e. Google. The Billion Dollar question that is, if these networks were to put a price tag on supplying this content, where will be the Google will be getting content for the searches.
Add, to it to the relevance of the searches for advertisers to monetize the search through advertising or SEO. The situation looks pretty bleak for advertisers and users from a search prospective. This has already led to players entering into last mile searches and you find VC’s running after localized Search Engine companies to fulfill the gap. The situations for the Local Search Engine’s are going to face the same onslaught from the Social Network through blogs and other user generated content.
The Future, as it seems to unfolding to me is coming to paradigm shift, where the joining of the social and business network as one and creating a content generation and search engine of their own for revenue and survival. The focus will be to generate revenue for pretty much all the aspect of a human need that can be fulfilled online and for advertisers, sliced and diced direct customer segments that can be reached directly with a fraction of cost. Users will get access to the most relevant and authentic content as it will be generated by its peers in the internet world.
Interesting, isn’t it, though I have not gone in the detail of enhancing the relevance. I am sure at this moment, there will technology geeks who will be on the job to figure it out and may also be in the process of rolling out their new companies, with oodles of dreams in their eyes to make it big with millions and millions of dollars pouring in for them.
My prediction for future is the Social & Business Marketing Networks will be the key to marketers with all due respect to Google and individuals who may differ with me.
Written by: Puneet Sinha: A Global Marketer and self confessed student of Online Marketing. This is my personal view and in no way represents the view of my business affiliations and organizations that I work or worked for.
1 comment:
Very Interesting and well written article. Good work Puneet!! I see its alignment with Danny Kahnmen, a psychologist and nobel prize winner for economy, theory on " emotional economy being the next key for success in business". Hence taking the cue on people factor and harnessing the emotions and the power of social networking sites will be a turning point for new era of Business and IT.
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