So what does search intent versus interruption marketing mean? Search intent marketing you will find through Google, and other search engines. You search for a particular phrase or keyword and up comes the results. At the top of the results page you will usually notice some paid adverts. Those are ads run by marketers who show their ads specifically for certain search phrases which match their business.
Search intent marketing is pretty good for marketers because they can limit wastage by only showing their ads to likely buyers. They know who is more likely to buy through their search intent – or the keyword or phrase they have entered into Google. So if you’re selling an yoga course, for example, the keyword which triggers your advert might be “yoga for beginners”.
Search intent marketing is also good because you can determine through experimentation which keywords are best for your business. Once you’ve done some testing, you will know which keywords perform the best and help bring in customers.
Search Intent Versus Interruption Marketing
“Interruption” marketing is so called because you’re interrupting someone on a platform in order to show them your advertising message. Facebook, for example, is a platform where you use interruption marketing. The user hasn’t particularly searched for your product/service, but you show your ads to them because they meet the criteria of your market demographic.
In some cases, the user has expressed an interest in your particular product (in the past), or one like it, and this information is used by a marketer to find them. The Facebook marketing platform is pretty clever and you can target people according to a number of criteria such as:
- Age
- Location
- Interests
- Sex
- Connections
- etc.
Interruption marketing is useful for marketers because they can target people who are likely to want their products, even if they aren’t specifically looking for it. So although the end user isn’t (in that moment) specifically typing in a search query, as with Google, you can still zone in on people who are likely to buy if you’re a marketer.
Search Intent Versus Interruption Marketing – YouTube
YouTube is another platform where you can find targeted individuals for the purpose of promoting your products or services. With YouTube, you can also use keywords as well as simply placing your advert in front of likely customers based on their watching habits.
If someone is actively searching for Yoga videos on YouTube, there’s a good change they might be interested in a Yoga course you might be selling. Or you could target people of a certain age, or with certain ailments, who might benefit from Yoga. You can also target people based on the videos they have watched on YouTube, their age, location and even their income.
YouTube is a search based platform and you can actively use the search bar in order to find videos of interest. But it’s also a platform which uses interruption marketing. You will have noticed that the adverts on YouTube interrupt your viewing a certain video. So you aren’t actively looking for those particular adverts, as with search intent marketing on Google.
YouTube
YouTube is a good place for a marketing campaign if you carefully identify your target market. The target market is the small slice of the online marketplace who is most likely to want your product/service. (See also customer avatar worksheet pdf). If you notice on YouTube adverts there’s often a “hook” in the first segment of a video advert. The advertiser says something to “hook” you in. That’s to engage with their target audience. Those who identify with the first few seconds of an advert will stay on and often click through to the offer/product.
If someone stays on an advert for longer, the marketer will have to pay. But if someone clicks off straight away, there’s no cost for the marketer. So the best adverts for YouTube marketers are those which repel those who aren’t interested and attract those who fit the description of the marketers target audience. This is the first few seconds of an ad – the “hook”.
Search Intent And Organic Marketing
Search intent marketing also includes organic search results you will find on Google. Those are the listings you will find on page one of Google’s search results for any given keyword. Usually there’s some adverts at the top of the page.
These are paid for ads run by Google’s Adwords program. Depending on the topic you are searching for these may or may not appear. Under those results you’ll find organic search results. These are the results which Google ranks “organically” without having to pay.
It’s worth pursuing some organic listings for your business, especially if you have a local business. However in the top niches, it’s very competitive and difficult to obtain a high ranking listing for a competitive keyword or phrase. Organic listings are highly sought after because if you can get free traffic, and make sales from your listing, you’re in a high profitable position.
However this can take a long time and a lot of effort, and there’s still no guarantee of a first page listing.
Summary
Search intent marketing is where someone uses a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo.com etc) to search for a keyword or phrase. The advert pops up at the top of the search results and links through to a website where something is for sale. The marketer carefully selects keywords which are only relevant for their business so that they have a greater chance of making a sale for each click they pay for.
With interruption marketing, you are “interrupting” the user of a social media platform such as Facebook for example. The user isn’t specifically searching for your product/service so you “interrupt” them while they are on social media. Interruption marketing can work really well for marketers because they can target people very specifically based on a number of criteria. These are things like someone’s location, age, interests and hobbies, for example.
Whether you use search intent marketing or interruption marketing will depend on what you’re selling and how you intend to sell. With a location specific business, you can focus in on your local area, which can help you save your marketing budget and not waste it on those who are too far away to subscribe to your services.
Whichever form of marketing you use, it’s useful to identify your target audience. The target audience is the specific type of person you intend to attract to your business. You can identify them through their search queries, interests, location, age, and other demographics. Once you have built up a solid idea of who your customer avatar is, you’ll save a lot on your marketing budget because you can eliminate people who are less likely to buy from you and avoid spending marketing budget on them.