I hope that this research will help them understand more about search engine marketing and the mindsets of agencies and clients, and they can take further action. The purpose of this research is to investigate the reason why search engine marketing is underused in Thailand compared to developed countries such as the United States and Japan. The study reveals that agencies have actual knowledge of how to use search engine marketing and understand how it helps meet clients' goals.
Facebook advertising has usually been preferred over search engine marketing because customers want to see likes, follows, shares and consumer feedback in the comment section. To do search engine marketing for their websites, tagging is needed to track the performance. Because of these limitations, most brand owners usually give up and decide to turn down search engine marketing.
INTRODUCTION
- Research Objectives
- Introduction
- Why is the topic important?
- Why Search is important?
- Is search still growing?
- How does SEM work?
- Search Auction
- What are research questions?
- Research Method
- Limitations of the research
- Benefits of the research
Right now, in Thailand, the highest search engine penetration is Google, which contributes about 98% of the total search engine consumption as in the figure below. Therefore, if you are not there on the search engine page when they look for you, you lose the opportunity that can already lead to sales or conversions (Think with Google, 2015). Advertisers or agencies can manage under either AdWords UI, AdWords Editor or Search Engine Marketing Tools to create SEM campaigns.
The ads are shown when search terms people search match with keywords purchased in the system. Google uses the quality score [Max. bid * (expected CTR%, landing page experience, ad relevance) + extension formats] to calculate ad rank (runner-up auction) and then adjust how each advertiser ranks on the search results page. Based on work experience with large clients, this research aims to discover the perspectives of agencies regarding search engine marketing in the Thai market.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- What is Search Engine Marketing?
- Television
- Radio
- Print ads
- Billboard ads
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Definition of Terms Used
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Media Agency
- Adwords
- Quality Score (QS)
- Search Engine Optimization
- Performance Marketing
- Possible why search is Lagging in Thailand
- Related Studies & Opportunities
Result of two search terms, “agoda” and “hotel booking” in the Google search engine on mobile. Research has shown that your search engine presence is strongly linked to the number of leads and sales your business can generate. One of the disadvantages is that any negative reactions can have rapid and major consequences for business, because everything is public and easy to record on social media.
Search Engine Marketing is a form of advertising used to drive traffic to websites and requires paying for each click a business receives. Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves promoting websites by increasing their visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM can incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and website architecture to achieve higher rankings on search engine results pages to improve pay-per-click (PPC) listings (The State of Search Engine Marketing, 2006).
A search engine results page (SERP) is a page displayed by an online search engine in response to a searcher's query. The main component of SERP is the list of results returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query (BJ Jansen, A Spink, 2008). Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and volume of web traffic to a website using a variety of proven SEO techniques that help a website rank higher on major search engines when certain keywords and phrases are entered into the search box. (Brick Marketing, 2018).
This is a very large number if you compare it to the condensation of people using social media: 67.14% of the total population in Thailand. So, spending on SEM is much lower than spending on social media when it comes to online media spending. We can see below that Thai and US exhibit different behavior when it comes to the way they consume social media.
Although this is only one of many studies on digital marketing, it represents the popularity and trend of SEO, which received its own share of the spotlight more than Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or paid search (Neupane, 2013).
METHODOLOGY
- Research Methods
- Data Collection
- Research Approach: Semi-structured Interviews There are four main sections to study as follows
- Informants of the Study
The main reason for selecting managers to interview is that they would have good knowledge in the field and provide relevant information on the current situation of search engine marketing in Thailand, as well as the root cause of the lack of widespread use in comparison with other channels (hhs.gov, n.d.). The informants of this study consist of 25 target participants, including online media bidding team and online media planners from five agencies in Thailand, which are GroupM, OMG, Dentsu, IPG and Starcom. What are the drivers of client media choice and specifically in Search (from an agency perspective).
DATA ANALYSIS
- Part I. Search in Thai Market
- Question: Why search spending is low in Thai market?
- Question: What is the current status of Search in Thailand market?
- Question: Will the trend of Search in Thailand change in the future?
- Question: What are opportunities and challenges of Search in the market?
- Part II. Agencies’ Media Choice
- Question: What are agencies’ media choice drivers and especially on Search?
- Question: What are your choice factor between media channels?
- Question: How does your media planner allocate the budget into search spending?
- Question: Are there usually any struggle when it comes to working on SEM?
- Part III. Clients’ Media Choice and Spend
- Question: What are clients’ media choice drivers and especially on Search?
- Question: How do your clients prefer the budget to allocate in each media spend?
- Question: What are clients’ choices factors between media channels?
- Question: Does Search budget they have match with their perspectives?
- Question: Do you think clients have sufficient knowledge to be able to utilize Search effectively?
- Part IV. How to Efficiently Scale and Educate Search in Thai Market
- Question: How to efficiently scale and educate Search in Thai market?
- Question: How agencies can help efficiently scale and educate Search in Thai market?
- Question: How Google can help efficiently scale and educate Search in Thai market?
Most brands know that search engine marketing is more difficult to do than buying an ad on Facebook or selling through LINE messenger. Thus, search engine marketing may be an ever-present medium in brands' media plans in the future. Another respondent said that search engine marketing will become increasingly important as both platforms and clients focus more on action-oriented goals.
One respondent said that search engine marketing should grow in line with the growth of the mobile phone and internet market. And marketers may use more search engine marketing in the future as people's behavior nowadays tends to look for product details before making purchase decisions. One respondent said that this opportunity is that it can help consumers to know more about the product, but the challenge is that the quality of the website is based on search engine optimization.
Another respondent said that the challenge is that small and medium-sized businesses need to become more knowledgeable about search engine marketing. Another respondent responded that search engine marketing has evolved to the point where it can really help customers achieve their business goals. Another respondent said that the opportunities in search engine marketing are that doing search marketing covers the consideration stage in the consumer journey, leading to a higher chance of consumers ultimately purchasing the products.
He said the decision to do search engine marketing usually depends on the budget the client spends on search. In this case, search engine marketing usually requires tactics to implement and time to see results. The problem agencies face when working on search engine marketing is that it is difficult to estimate accurate costs.
The majority of respondents indicated that customers understand search engine marketing enough to know how important it is and how it can help achieve their business goals. When asked how the Thai market can efficiently gain knowledge about search engine marketing, the respondent suggested posting courses on YouTube so that people can learn from them themselves. However, one respondent said that this may only be useful in certain industries that need to focus heavily on search engine marketing.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary of the Study
Findings and Discussions
Because brands normally measure performance based on sales conversion, search engine marketing has the highest potential to optimize sales conversion from media spend because it drives the pull marketing strategy, rather than the push strategy. marketing, such as on Facebook and Youtube. This data also shows that Thai consumers use e-commerce because it offers convenience in terms of travel time and not because of the discount. So, as consumers are more focused on e-commerce, there is great opportunity in the future for brands to still sell their products online without using heavy discount promotions to generate sales conversion.
The main and most important reason that currently and may continue to affect the future of search spending is that the existing job market lacks skilled resources that know how to use search engine marketing. Although agencies have plenty of trained staff to optimize search marketing performance for brands, brand clients wouldn't commit their budget to search marketing if they don't understand the concept of how it can help their business goals. By analyzing responses to survey questions about their media choices, agencies actually understand which media to target based on client campaign goals.
According to respondents surveyed, most customers, especially those from the FMCG industry, are used to relying on offline media to market their brands and products. There are many customers from large corporations whose scale is quite large and have many product SKUs that they want to upgrade to sell their products through e-commerce, promoting them through the search marketing engine. These corporations usually have their own websites created, either for the corporation or just for the brand.
Since e-commerce is still not popular and widely practiced when developing the websites for the first time, these websites do not have tags placed in different touch points so that online marketers can track the ad performance. Because of all these limitations, most brand owners will eventually give up and turn search engine marketing aside. So, given the reasons discussed above, training on search engine marketing should not only be focused on the agencies, but it is equally important to educate staff from the clients' side, because clients are the ones who make the decision on the budget allocation and they need to know how it can help with their brands goals and target with a certain amount of budget.
Additionally, training should be done by Google so that the trained staff gets the same exact messages about the techniques and mechanics in doing search marketing.
Recommendations for Future Research
And revamping websites and putting branding at every touch point within websites requires highly skilled web developers, time and is very expensive. Future research could explore the experience of the simulated SET platform to work out how it can be applied to search engine marketing.
Marrë nga: http://www.ereleases.com/pr/new-study-findsmore- than-half-of-advertising-expenses-are-a-waste-10012. Marrë nga: https://quarizmi.com/blog/how-adrank-impacts- your-cost-per-click-rate-and-position-in-the-serp/.
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Data from interviews
